FY 2026 H-1B Cap Registration Period To Begin On March 7, 2025

The FY 2026 H-1B cap registration period will open on March 7, 2025, and close on March 24, 2025. During this period, prospective H-1B cap-subject employers must use a USCIS online account to register each beneficiary electronically for the H-1B lottery. A registration fee of $215 is required for each registration submitted.

Below are the essential details regarding the FY 2026 H-1B cap registration process that employers and prospective H-1B applicants should take note of.

• Employers who do not already have a USCIS online account will need to create an organizational account. First-time registrants can create an account at any time. Existing USCIS online accounts of employers who had an H-1B registrant account for the FY 2021 – FY 2024 H-1B registration seasons but did not use the account for FY 2025, will be converted to organizational accounts upon their next login.
• Employers must wait until March 7 to enter beneficiary information and submit the registration along with the $215 fee.
• After the registration period closes on March 24, 2025, USCIS will conduct the H-1B lottery if they receive enough unique beneficiary registrations. If USCIS does not receive enough registrations, all properly submitted registrations will be selected. The results of the H-1B Lottery are expected to be known by March 31 and USCIS will send selection notifications through the employers’ USCIS online accounts. Only petitioners whose registrations are selected can file an H-1B cap-subject petition for the named beneficiary.
• Similar to last year, USCIS will use a beneficiary-centric selection process, where registrations are selected by unique beneficiary rather than by registration.
• USCIS is also introducing enhancements to organizational and representative accounts for H-1B filings, including the ability to prepare and upload a spreadsheet of beneficiary data to pre-populate H-1B registrations, enabling paralegals to work with multiple legal representatives to prepare H-1B registrations, petitions, and premium processing requests for different attorneys, and automatically pre-filling certain Form I-129 fields using selected H-1B registration data.

We will continue to monitor the developments related to the H-1B Cap 2025 filing requirements and will keep our readers updated.

If you have any questions regarding the H-1B visa program, or need help submitting an H-1B Cap registration, contact VisaPro Law Firm today. VisaPro attorneys helped clients’ secure near 100% approval with H-1B Cap filings in the past 10 years. We’ll talk through your priorities and recommend strategies for March 2025 H-1B registrations based on our attorney’s prior success.