H-1B cap registration for FY 2026 opens on March 7: Check key dates and process updates

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Wednesday announced that the initial registration period for the fiscal year (FY) 2026 H-1B cap will open on March 7 and continue through March 24, 2025.

During this period, employers seeking to file H-1B cap-subject petitions must register each prospective employee electronically through their USCIS online account and pay a $215 registration fee per beneficiary.

The registration process continues to use the beneficiary-centric selection method introduced in FY 2025, which limits each beneficiary to a single lottery entry regardless of the number of job offers received.

If USCIS receives enough registrations for unique beneficiaries by March 24, selections will be made randomly using the lottery system.

“Prospective H-1B cap-subject petitioners or their representatives are required to use a USCIS online account to register each beneficiary electronically for the selection process and pay the associated $215 H-1B registration fee for each registration submitted on behalf of each beneficiary,” the agency said in a release.

For employers new to the process, creating an organisational account is mandatory. Existing H-1B registrant accounts from FY 2021 to FY 2024 will be converted to organisational accounts upon the next login, provided they were inactive during the FY 2025 season.

USCIS will notify selected registrants by March 31 through their online accounts.

The agency has also introduced improvements for organisational and representative accounts. These include allowing paralegals to collaborate with multiple legal representatives, easier addition of paralegals to company accounts, pre-population of certain Form I-129 fields from selected registrations, and the ability to upload spreadsheets of beneficiary data to pre-fill registration forms.

To accommodate high transaction volumes, the US Department of Treasury has temporarily increased the daily credit card transaction limit from $24,999.99 to $99,999.99 for the FY 2026 H-1B cap season. Transactions exceeding this limit can be processed via Automated Clearing House (ACH), subject to specific banking requirements.

H-1B visas, introduced in 1990, cater to individuals with a bachelor’s degree or higher in specialised fields such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Major technology companies, including Infosys, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, and Google, are among the top employers of H-1B workers.

Last year, lottery bids for H-1B visas dropped nearly 40% as USCIS implemented measures to curb system abuse through multiple applications. The agency received 470,342 entries for the 2024 lottery, down from 758,994 the previous year, a major decline in duplicate submissions.