On February 5, 2025, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the registration for the fiscal year 2026 H-1B cap will open at noon EST on March 7, 2025. The registration period will last a total of 17 calendar days ending at noon EST on March 24, 2025. The H‐1B cap‐subject petitioners, including those eligible for the advanced degree exemption, are required to first register prospective beneficiaries electronically with USCIS to enter the beneficiaries into the selection process for filing an H‐1B cap‐subject petition for fiscal year 2026.
The USCIS made it clear that the registration will be like that used in FY 2025. Companies or prospective petitioners must use a USCIS online account to register each beneficiary electronically for the selection process and pay the associated “new” registration fee of $215.00 for each beneficiary.
If the prospective petitioner or employer does not have a USCIS online account, the employer will need to create an organizational account. If the employer is an H-1B petitioning employer who had a USCIS H-1B registrant account for the FY 2021 – 2024 registration seasons but did not use the account for FY 2025, the existing account will be converted to an organizational account. First-time registrants can create an account at any time.
USCIS has confirmed that prospective petitioners seeking to submit H-1B registrations in the FY2026 H-1B lottery must again use the “MyUSCIS” system. However, prospective employers will not be able to prepare or submit registrations before the appointed period.
Among other things, USCIS will assign a confirmation number to each registration submitted for the FY 2026 H-1B cap. This number is used solely to track registrations; it cannot be used to track a case status in Case Status Online.
Prospective petitioners or their representatives will be able to submit registrations for multiple beneficiaries in a single online session. Through the account, they will be able to prepare, edit, and store draft registrations prior to the final payment and submission of each registration.
USCIS has stated that the FY 2026 H-1B cap will use the beneficiary-centric selection process launched in FY 2025. Under the beneficiary-centric process, registrations are selected by unique beneficiaries rather than by registration. USCIS has also stated that:
If we receive registrations for enough unique beneficiaries by March 24, we will randomly select unique beneficiaries and send selection notifications via users’ USCIS online accounts. If we do not receive registrations for enough unique beneficiaries, all registrations for unique beneficiaries that were properly submitted in the initial registration period will be selected. We intend to notify by March 31 prospective petitioners and representatives whose accounts have at least one registration selected.
The U.S. Department of Treasury has approved a temporary increase in the daily credit card transaction limit from $24,999.99 to $99,999.99 per day for the FY 2026 H-1B cap season. This temporary increase is in response to the volume of previous H-1B registrations that exceeded the daily credit card limit. Transactions more than $99,999.99 may be made via Automated Clearing House (ACH). Use of ACH may require the payor to alert their bank in advance to remove any potential ACH block on their account. We will provide additional information before the start of the initial H-1B registration period.
The USCIS also stated that it made multiple enhancements for organizational and representative accounts for H-1B filing. These enhancements include:
The ability for paralegals to work with more than one legal representative. A paralegal will now be able to accept invitations from multiple legal representative accounts, allowing them to prepare H-1B registrations, Form I-129 H-1B petitions, and Form I-907 requests for premium processing for different attorneys, all within one paralegal account.
An easier way for legal representatives to add paralegals to company clients.
Pre-population of certain Form I-129 fields from selected H-1B registrations; and
The ability to prepare a spreadsheet of H-1B beneficiary data and upload the information to pre-populate data in H-1B registrations.
These enhancements will be live before the start of the initial registration period.
The prospective petitioner/employer will receive an immediate registration confirmation for every registration request that USCIS accepts. The registration confirmation will be printable.
The Greenspoon Marder LLP Immigration Team is assisting clients to prepare for the FY 2026 H-1B Cap Registration.
Please reach out to your Greenspoon Marder LLP Immigration & Naturalization Practice Group for any further questions or concerns.
