FY 2026 H-1B Cap Initial Registration Period Opens on March 7

Today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the initial registration period for the fiscal year 2026 H-1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 7 and run through noon Eastern on March 24, 2025. During this period, prospective petitioners and representatives must use a USCIS online account to register each beneficiary electronically for the selection process and pay the associated registration fee for each beneficiary.

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.

If you are an H-1B petitioning employer who does not have a USCIS online account, you will need to create an organizational account. If you are an H-1B petitioning employer who had an H-1B registrant account for the FY 2021 – FY 2024 H-1B registration seasons, but you did not use the account for FY 2025, your existing account will be converted to an organizational account after your next log in. First-time registrants can create an account at any time. You can find additional information and resources on the organizational accounts, including a link to step-by-step videos, on the Organizational Accounts Frequently Asked Questions page. These FAQs will be updated with FY 2026 information before the start of the initial registration period.

Representatives may add clients to their accounts at any time, but both representatives and registrants must wait until March 7 to enter beneficiary information and submit the registration with the $215 fee. Selections take place after the initial registration period closes, so there is no requirement to register on the day the initial registration period opens.

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 beneficiary rather than by registration. 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.

An H-1B cap-subject petition, including a petition for a beneficiary who is eligible for the advanced degree exemption, may only be filed by a petitioner whose registration for the beneficiary named in the H-1B petition was selected in the H-1B registration process. Additional information on the electronic registration process is available on the H-1B Electronic Registration Process page.

Organizational Account Enhancements for FY 2026

For FY 2026, we have 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.