USCIS Announces Fiscal Year 2026 H-1B Cap Initial Registration Period

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that the initial registration period for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 H-1B cap will open at noon Eastern on March 7, 2025, and remain open through noon Eastern on March 24, 2025. During this registration period, prospective petitioners and representatives must use a USCIS account online to register each H-1B beneficiary electronically and pay the associated registration fee ($215.00) for each registered beneficiary.

Existing H-1B petitioning employers who do not have a USCIS online account will need to create an organizational account. For those H-1B petitioning employers who had an H-1B registrant account for the FY 2021-FY2024 H-1B registration seasons, but did not use the account for FY 2025, their existing account will switch to an organization account after their next log in. First-time registrants can create an account at any time.

Representatives may add clients to their account at any time but all parties, including representatives and registrants, must wait until March 7, 2025, to enter the beneficiary information and submit the registration with the $215.00 fee. It is important to note that selections take place after the initial registration period is completed, 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 that was introduced in FY 2025. If USCIS received enough unique beneficiary’s registration by March 24, 2025, then it will randomly select unique beneficiaries and notify individuals through their online USCIS accounts. However, if not enough registrations for unique beneficiaries are received, then all registration for unique beneficiaries that were properly submitted in the initial registration period will be selected. USCIS plans to notify petitions and representatives whose accounts have at least one registration selected by March 31, 2025.

Organizational Account Enhancements for FY 2026

Additionally, for FY 2026, USCIS has made various enhancements for organization and representative accounts for H-1B filing. The enhancements include:

• The ability for paralegals to work with more than one legal representative. A paralegal now has the ability 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.
• A straightforward way for legal representatives to add paralegals to company clients.
• Pre-population of certain Form I-129 fields from selected H-1B registrations
• The ability to prepare a spreadsheet of H-1B beneficiary data and upload the information to pre-populate data in H-1B registrations.

The H-1B program is critical to both the nation’s immigration system and economy. For individuals participating in the H-1B program, it is important to stay up to date on all progressions to ensure proper submission of petitions. As this matter is subject to changes, we encourage readers to check our website regularly for updates on this and all matters related to immigration law.