H-1B Cap and Lottery 2026-27: What to Expect
The H-1B cap lottery 2026 cycle is the most consequential in the program's history, and it is not close. In a span of nine months the government replaced the random lottery with a wage-weighted selection system, imposed and then lost in court a $100,000 fee on new petitions, and watched registration volume fall by more than a third. If your company sponsors H-1B workers, or if you are a professional hoping to be sponsored, the rules you remember from past years no longer describe the program you are entering. Here is where things stand as of June 2026, what the FY 2027 results actually showed, and what Lehigh Valley employers should be doing between now and the next registration window.
The Cap Itself Has Not Changed
Start with what stayed the same. Congress sets the H-1B cap by statute, and it remains 65,000 regular cap visas per fiscal year under INA section 214(g)(1)(A), plus an additional 20,000 for beneficiaries holding a U.S. master's degree or higher under INA section 214(g)(5)(C). That combined figure of 85,000 cap-subject approvals per year has not moved in over two decades, and no pending rule changes it. Demand has exceeded supply every single year since electronic registration began, which is why a selection process exists at all.
What changed is how those 85,000 slots get allocated. For fiscal years 2021 through 2026, every properly submitted registration had an equal chance. Beginning with the FY 2027 cycle that ran this spring, equal chances are gone.
The First Weighted Lottery in H-1B History
On December 29, 2025, DHS published a final rule in the Federal Register titled Weighted Selection Process for Registrants and Petitioners Seeking To File Cap-Subject H-1B Petitions. The rule took effect February 27, 2026, just in time for the FY 2027 registration period that opened March 4 and closed March 19, 2026. You can read the rule itself and the agency announcement.
The mechanics of the new H-1B cap lottery are simple to state. Every registration is still placed in a single selection pool, but the number of entries a beneficiary receives now depends on the Department of Labor OES wage level assigned to the offered position. A Level IV position, the highest, is entered four times. Level III is entered three times, Level II twice, and Level I once. The selection itself is still random, but the deck is now stacked toward higher-paid, more senior positions.
The practical effect is exactly what you would expect. Analysts who ran the FY 2027 numbers estimate that Level I registrations faced selection odds around 15 percent, Level II around 31 percent, and Level III around 46 percent, with Level IV higher still. Compare that to the flat 35 percent or so that every registration enjoyed in FY 2026. An entry-level offer now has less than half the chance it had a year ago, while an experienced-level offer has a meaningfully better one.
What the FY 2027 Numbers Showed
USCIS announced on March 27, 2026 that it had completed the initial selection and received enough registrations to reach the cap, including the master's cap. Registration volume came in around 211,600, a steep drop from the prior year. Some of that decline reflects the integrity reforms of recent years, including the beneficiary-centric selection rule that ended multiple-registration gaming. Much of it reflects employer hesitation in the face of the $100,000 fee proclamation that was still in force during the registration window, along with the new weighting that made entry-level registrations look like long shots.
For employers the lesson sits in the wage levels. We have already seen sponsors rethink how they classify positions, and that carries real risk. The LCA wage level on Form ETA-9035 has to honestly reflect the job duties and requirements. Inflating a wage level to gain lottery entries invites a fraud finding, and USCIS has said it will scrutinize wage-level designations on selected petitions. If a petition draws a Request for Evidence on the wage level or the specialty occupation, that is a solvable problem, and our firm handles exactly those situations through our RFE Rescue service.
The $100,000 Fee Was Just Struck Down
The September 19, 2025 presidential proclamation, numbered 10973, required a $100,000 payment before certain new H-1B petitions could be filed for beneficiaries outside the United States. It hung over the entire FY 2027 cycle and plainly suppressed registrations.
On June 8, 2026, three days before this post, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the fee, holding that the payment was an unconstitutional tax that Congress never authorized and that the agencies exceeded their statutory fee-setting authority, which covers only cost-recovery adjudication fees. As of today the $100,000 requirement is unenforceable, and employers filing new petitions should not be submitting it absent further judicial or executive action.
Two cautions belong next to that good news. First, a different federal court in the District of Columbia upheld the proclamation in December 2025, so there is now a split, and the government is widely expected to appeal the Massachusetts ruling and may seek a stay. Second, a parallel case remains pending in the Northern District of California. The fee is dead today, but it is not buried. Employers making sponsorship budgets for the FY 2028 cycle should plan for both outcomes. This is a fast-moving area, and it is one of the main things we monitor for the businesses we advise through our business immigration practice.
Key Dates: The Filing Window Closes June 30
If your registration was selected in March, the petition filing window opened April 1, 2026 and closes June 30, 2026. That is less than three weeks from the date of this post. A selected registration is worth nothing without a timely filed Form I-129 petition supported by a certified LCA, and LCA certification itself takes about seven business days. An employer sitting on a selection notice today needs to move immediately.
Petitions approved from this cycle carry an employment start date no earlier than October 1, 2026, the first day of fiscal year 2027. For students working on F-1 OPT whose status expires before then, the cap-gap rule at 8 CFR 214.2(f)(5)(vi) extends status and work authorization through September 30 once a timely petition requesting change of status is filed.
Will There Be a Second Lottery?
Whether USCIS runs a supplemental selection later this summer depends entirely on how many selected registrations convert into filed, approvable petitions by June 30. In FY 2026 the agency announced in July 2025 that the cap was reached with no second H-1B cap lottery round. For FY 2027 the calculus is different in both directions. The vacated fee removes a deterrent that may have kept some employers from filing, which argues against a second round. But the fee was still in force for most of the filing window, and the adjudicative holds affecting nationals of certain countries may have suppressed filings too, which argues for one. No one outside the agency knows. If a second selection happens, it would likely come in late July or August, and registrations that stayed in the pool from March would be eligible automatically.
What This Means in the Lehigh Valley
The Lehigh Valley's H-1B story is bigger than people assume. Health networks, universities, and the manufacturing and logistics employers along the Route 22 and I-78 corridors all sponsor specialty occupation workers, and the region's colleges and universities, including Lehigh University in Bethlehem, occupy a special place in the system because institutions of higher education and their affiliated nonprofits are cap-exempt under INA section 214(g)(5). A researcher or instructor sponsored by a cap-exempt employer never enters the lottery at all, and time spent in cap-exempt H-1B status can sometimes be a bridge to a later cap-subject filing.
Consider a scenario we see regularly in our Allentown practice. A Bethlehem software company offers a data analyst position to a recent Lehigh graduate at a Level I wage. Under the old lottery that registration had roughly a one in three chance. Under the weighted system it has roughly one in seven. The honest answers to that problem are structural, not cosmetic. The employer can build the role it actually needs at a Level II wage with genuinely greater responsibilities, consider cap-exempt partnerships, or plan a multi-year strategy that includes O-1, TN, E-3, or an employment-based green card track. Misstating the wage level is the one option off the table. We walk employers through all of this on our employment-based immigration page.
Looking Ahead to FY 2028
Registration for the FY 2028 H-1B cap lottery should open in early March 2027, and as of now it will run under the same weighted selection rule. Litigation against the weighted rule is pending, so that could change, but no employer should plan on it changing. The smart preparation between now and then is straightforward. Audit the wage levels of the positions you expect to sponsor. Identify candidates who qualify for the master's cap, since an advanced degree plus a higher wage level compounds the advantage. Evaluate cap-exempt options and lottery-free alternatives like TN for Canadian and Mexican professionals and E-3 for Australians. And budget for legal contingencies, because if the appellate courts revive the $100,000 fee, sponsorship economics change overnight.
If you were selected this spring and have not filed, if you were not selected and need a plan B, or if you are an employer building next year's sponsorship strategy, we can help. Schedule a consultation and we will map the options against your actual timeline.
This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Lehigh Valley Immigration Law LLC. Immigration law changes rapidly, and the litigation described here is ongoing. Consult a licensed immigration attorney about your specific situation.