United States: USCIS Completes FY 2027 H-1B Cap Selection Process

To learn the lottery results, your Fragomen attorney and your company’s authorized signatory will need to access their my.USCIS.gov account and review the status of each beneficiary. For each registered beneficiary, the USCIS online system should reflect one of the following statuses:

• Selected: Selected to file an H-1B cap petition.
• Denied: The passport or travel document information listed on the registration is invalid, or multiple registrations were submitted by or on behalf of the same registrant for the same beneficiary. If denied as a duplicate registration, all registrations submitted by or on behalf of the same registrant for this beneficiary for the fiscal year are invalid.
• Invalidated - failed payment: A registration was submitted but the payment method was declined, not reconciled, or otherwise invalid.
• Deleted: The submitted registration has been deleted.
• Submitted: If there are subsequent registration selections for this fiscal year, this registration remains eligible, unless subsequently invalidated.

Foreign national beneficiaries must have a “Selected” registration notification for FY 2027 in order for the prospective employer to properly file an H-1B cap-subject petition on their behalf. The status of registrations that are not selected as part of the initial selection process, and are not denied or invalidated, will remain as “Submitted” and eligible for selection in a subsequent FY 2027 cap lottery, should one occur.

Your H-1B sponsoring employer(s) and their Fragomen counsel will access the USCIS registration system to determine the outcome of the FY 2027 cap lottery. Employers will review selections and follow their agreed communication protocols for notification of selection. Please rest assured that you will be notified in due course. For those selected in the lottery, your employer’s Fragomen team will proceed with next steps for filing an H-1B petition with USCIS. If your registration was not selected, you can expect a communication and any related immigration strategy to follow from your employer’s Fragomen team or from your employer, consistent with the company’s protocols.

USCIS will begin to accept H-1B cap petitions on behalf of lottery selectees on April 1, 2026. Selection notices reflect an April 1 to June 30, 2026 filing period. All FY 2027 H-1B cap petitions must be submitted during this period for beneficiaries selected in the initial lottery.

Starting April 1, a new version of Form I-129 is mandatory, and requests more detailed information about the H-1B position than prior versions of the form. Your organization should work with your Fragomen team to provide this information, which focuses on the minimum requirements necessary to perform the duties of the H-1B position. Also new this year, related to the new wage-weighted cap lottery selection process, H-1B cap petitions must include the source material relied on for selection of the OEWS wage level in the foreign national’s submitted registration.

Though in most cases a cap petition can be filed at any point during the filing period, some cases may need to be filed by a specific date within the filing window. For example, an F-1 student with an optional practical training (OPT) employment authorization document (EAD) that expires before the end of the filing period must have their change of status H-1B cap petition filed before the OPT EAD expiration date to ensure cap-gap work authorization benefits through the start date of their H-1B cap petition or April 1, 2027 (whichever is earlier). Your organization should work with your Fragomen team to identify beneficiaries with time-sensitive filing needs.

USCIS will again offer the option of online filing of cap and non-cap H-1B petitions and associated premium processing requests. However, because online filing remains unpredictable in the scope and scale needed for the high volume of H-1B petitions and has other limitations and potential risks, employers should carefully consider with their immigration counsel whether it is advisable. Hard-copy submission remains USCIS’s predominant method of H-1B petition case filing. 

New this year, prospective employers are reminded that if an H-1B change of status request cannot be approved for a foreign national – for example, a change of status request from F-1 or L-1 to H-1B – and the H-1B petition can only be approved for consular notification, the petition will be subject to a $100,000 fee in order for the H-1B cap petition to be approved, unless the employer has sought and obtained a national interest exception (NIE) to the new fee. Thus far, no national interest exceptions are known to have been granted for the fee, including denied requests in compelling circumstances such as health care workers planning to work in underserved areas of the United States.

If a beneficiary was not selected in this lottery, they will remain in the registration system for consideration for selection in the event that, by June 30, USCIS does not receive a sufficient number of H-1B cap petitions for unique beneficiaries to meet the 85,000 H-1B annual quota. Whether the agency will conduct more than one lottery selection will depend on how many beneficiaries are selected by USCIS in the initial round, as well as how many H-1B petitions for unique beneficiaries are submitted by employers and approved by USCIS.

In last year’s H-1B cap season, USCIS conducted one lottery selection, whereas in fiscal years 2025 and 2024, USCIS conducted two lottery selections and therefore had two separate 90-day H-1B filing periods. It is not known whether or how the new wage-weighted lottery selection process and new $100,00 fee for H-1B consular notification petitions might impact the number of H-1B petitions ultimately filed and approved in the April 1 to June 30 filing period, and therefore whether a second selection is likely.

Your company’s authorized signatory and your Fragomen attorneys will need to log into the registration system to determine which beneficiaries have been selected and obtain the USCIS selection notice for each such beneficiary.

To facilitate the submission of H-1B cap petitions, work closely with your Fragomen team so that essential supporting evidence, including the company documentation, H-1B position information, beneficiary educational documents, copy of beneficiary’s passport used for registration, and other required documentation, can be collected promptly if not yet gathered.

Fragomen is closely monitoring H-1B cap developments and will issue updates throughout the cap season.