USCIS Completes H-1B Lottery for FY 2027

USCIS has completed the selection of the registrations submitted in this year’s H-1B visa lottery and notified employers whose registrations have been selected. The agency has not yet released the number of registrations it received. USCIS normally releases this data later in the year, and we will update you with these numbers once they are available.

If your registration was selected, you should have received an email notification from USCIS to the email address associated with your myUSCIS account.

To view the status of your registration(s), please log into the sponsoring employer’s myUSCIS account. The status of each beneficiary registered will display one of the following: Submitted, Selected, or Denied - duplicate registration. “Submitted” registrations will remain in consideration for selection until the end of the fiscal year on September 30, 2027, at which point they will become either Selected or Not Selected. If your registration shows as Denied, please contact us to discuss further. This could mean the beneficiary used different passports to have more registrations filed on their behalf.

If we submitted a registration on your behalf, and it continues to show Submitted, unfortunately, your registration was not selected. USCIS may select additional registrations later this year if it does not receive enough petitions based on the registrations selected. USCIS has made additional selections in prior years, so the same may happen this year. We will definitely keep you updated about further selections by USCIS. We also would be happy to set up a call to discuss alternative visa options.

For those with selected registrations, we have 90 days from April 1, 2026, to file the complete H-1B petition with USCIS. The agency has updated the Form I-129 Petition for Nonimmigrant Worker with additional questions about the salary listed in the H-1B registration, requirements for the role, and whether the H-1B beneficiary will supervise other employees.

Due to the high volume of petitions the agency receives, USCIS may delay sending out paper receipt notices, so we recommend filing the petition online or using a delivery service, like UPS or FedEx, to document receipt of the petition by USCIS. The agency will not accept prepaid mailers with which to mail approval notices because its process for mailing out approval notices through first-class mail is fully automated. Online filing has become much better since last year and approvals tend to come faster than paper-filed petitions.

As a reminder, H-1B petitions filed for beneficiaries who are outside the United States require an additional $100,000 filing fee. More information can be found here.

Litigation challenging the $100,000 fee has not been successful thus far and employers requesting a waiver of the fee based on National Interest have had very limited success to date.

The agency’s full announcement about the H-1B lottery is available here.

We look forward to working with you over the next few months, either with the preparation and filing of your H-1B petition or discussing alternative visa options.

This alert is for informational purposes only. Please contact us if you would like to discuss this development further.