United States: FY 2026 H-1B Cap Registration Begins March 7

For the second consecutive year, USCIS will implement a beneficiary-centric (as opposed to registration-centric) registration system. Under the beneficiary-centric system, a foreign national must have a valid passport or travel document in order for an H-1B cap registration to be submitted on their behalf. The passport or travel document will be used as the foreign national’s unique identifier, serving as the means for their selection in the H-1B cap lottery. Each foreign national will only be entered into the H-1B cap lottery selection process once, regardless of how many registrations were submitted on their behalf. If a foreign national is selected, each potential employer that filed a registration on that beneficiary’s behalf will be notified and eligible to file an H-1B cap petition for the beneficiary.

In order to implement the beneficiary-centric system, there are several rules related to a foreign national’s valid passport or travel document, which are detailed in the next section.

If your organization will be working with immigration counsel to draft and submit H-1B cap registrations, the company must do the following:

• Maintain an organizational account in the USCIS online system. Sponsoring employers must have an organizational account at USCIS.gov; these accounts have replaced the “registrant” account used in the FY 2021 to FY 2024 cap seasons. The organizational account platform, launched last year for the FY 2025 cap season, permits employers and counsel to collaborate more easily on registrations.
• Identify prospective H-1B beneficiaries as soon as possible. If your organization has not yet provided your immigration counsel with a complete list of foreign nationals to be registered for the H-1B cap, it must do so as soon as possible so that registrations can be submitted during the registration period.
• Ensure that each foreign national can provide valid passport or travel document information for their registration. Under the beneficiary-centric registration system, foreign nationals are required to provide valid passport or travel document information for the registrations submitted on their behalf. There are several critical rules in connection with this requirement:
  • The passport or travel document must be valid at the time the H-1B cap registration is submitted to USCIS;
  • The foreign national must use the same valid passport or travel document for all FY 2026 registrations filed on their behalf, or risk invalidation of all FY 2026 registrations submitted for them; and
  • The passport or travel document that is used for the H-1B registration(s) should be the same as the one that would be later used to support the foreign national’s H-1B petition filing, H-1B visa application, and entry/reentry to the United States, if the foreign national is selected in the cap lottery (with exceptions for renewed or replacement passports, legal name changes, and similar circumstances).
• Promptly review each registration drafted by immigration counsel. When your Fragomen attorney finishes drafting an H-1B cap registration for your organization, the company’s designated signatory (called an “Administrator”) will be notified to log into the USCIS system to review, approve and e-sign the registration. This is the time to determine whether any changes need to be made to the company’s registrations. The registration period is brief, so the signatory should review registrations as soon as requested to do so by the Fragomen attorney.
• Prepare for possible technology issues. In recent years, the USCIS system has experienced slowdowns and technical glitches, especially at times of high volume use. Notify your Fragomen team and USCIS if your organization encounters any problems. The risk of potential glitches increases as the registration deadline approaches and log-ins and submissions increase. Prompt completion and submission of cap registrations can help to minimize last-minute problems.

It is not yet known what effect a possible government shutdown on March 15 may have on the USCIS H-1B cap registration system. As a fee-funded agency, USCIS is typically not significantly affected by government shutdowns; however, if federal systems that support the USCIS cap registration platform are suspended, there could be an impact on cap registration.  The business immigration community is seeking clarity on these issues.

Unless and until further information is available, employers may wish to consider planning to file their H-1B cap registrations in the first week of registration, from March 7 to March 14, in advance of the expiration of the current stopgap funding measure. If a shutdown disrupts the registration process, it is likely that USCIS would re-open registration to compensate for lost time once the government resumes full operations. However, the length of a shutdown cannot be predicted.  

In addition to registration, a government shutdown could impact the H-1B cap petition filing period and process. If a shutdown lasts more than a few days beyond March 24, the H-1B filing period would likely need to begin later than its normal April 1 start date. By regulation, the H-1B cap filing period must be at least 90 days, so the filing period would not be truncated, but later start and end dates could be disruptive to some employers and foreign nationals. Further, the U.S. Department of Labor suspends operations during a shutdown, meaning that the Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) required for H-1B petitions could not be drafted, accessed, or processed during that time.

After the registration period closes, USCIS will run two cap lotteries to select the beneficiaries on whose behalf H-1B cap petitions can be filed. The first lottery will contain all registered H-1B beneficiaries. USCIS will use this lottery to select enough beneficiaries to meet the regular H-1B cap of 65,000. The second lottery will contain all registered master’s cap beneficiaries who were not selected in the first lottery. USCIS will use this lottery to select enough beneficiaries to meet the H-1B cap exemption of 20,000 for holders of U.S. advanced degrees. Subsequent lotteries are possible if the number of H-1B petitions received for unique beneficiaries from the initial lotteries is insufficient to meet the FY 2026 quota.

USCIS plans to notify employers and immigration counsel of the lottery results by March 31. For winning beneficiaries, USCIS will notify each employer that filed a registration on their behalf of the foreign national’s selection in the lottery. Each employer will be permitted to file an H-1B petition on behalf of that foreign national. To learn the lottery results, your Fragomen attorney and your company’s authorized signatory will need to access their myUSCIS.gov account and review the status of each beneficiary. Make a record of your selected beneficiaries through screenshots or other means, to guard against any irregularities in the USCIS system.

USCIS should begin to accept H-1B cap petitions on behalf of lottery selectees on April 1, 2025. The petition filing period should end no earlier than June 30, 2025. USCIS will specify the exact end date of the petition filing period in cap selection notices. All FY 2026 H-1B cap petitions for beneficiaries selected in the initial lottery must be submitted during the designated filing period. 

Fragomen is closely monitoring the H-1B registration process and will provide updates.