U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has received enough petitions to meet the annual H-1B visa cap for fiscal year (FY) 2027, closing the door on additional lottery selections for employers seeking to sponsor foreign workers under the program.
USCIS confirmed July 17 that it received sufficient petitions to fill both the congressionally mandated 65,000 regular H-1B cap and the 20,000 visas reserved for individuals holding U.S. advanced degrees, commonly known as the master’s cap. Employers selected in this year’s lottery had until June 30 to submit their petitions for employment beginning Oct. 1, 2026.
Because the cap has been reached, USCIS said it will not conduct a second H-1B lottery for FY 2027, said Angel Feng, an attorney in the Boston office of Mintz. “Any H-1B registration not selected in the draw that was conducted in March will not be eligible to file an H-1B cap petition for FY 2027. The next opportunity to sponsor an individual under the H-1B cap will be in March 2027 for the FY 2028 cap,” she explained.
This year’s H-1B selection process marked a significant departure from the traditional random lottery system. “This H-1B lottery was the first conducted under the new weighted selection process, which assigned additional cap lottery entries to beneficiaries based on their salary and the corresponding Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics wage level,” said Daniel Ruemenapp, an attorney in the Boston office of Ogletree Deakins.
The change is intended to prioritize higher-skilled, higher-paid positions while reducing incentives to flood the system with registrations.
Additionally, a new Form I-129, which requires additional disclosures regarding the terms and conditions of H-1B employment, was implemented in conjunction with the weighted selection rule, Ruemenapp said.
Although USCIS has not yet released complete data on this year’s registration and selection rates, preliminary figures shared by the agency in May suggest the new system altered the makeup of the applicant pool.
According to USCIS, 211,600 registrations were submitted for FY 2027, down 38.5% from 343,981 registrations the previous year. The agency also reported that 71.5% of selected beneficiaries hold U.S. advanced degrees, compared with 57% in FY 2026. Meanwhile, only 17.7% of selected registrations fell within the lowest prevailing wage category, reflecting the new emphasis on higher-paying job offers.
USCIS will continue accepting petitions that are exempt from the annual cap, including extensions of stay for current H-1B workers, changes of employer, amended petitions, and petitions filed by cap-exempt organizations such as colleges, universities, and nonprofit research institutions.
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