Preparing for the Upcoming FY2026 H-1B Cap Season, and USCIS Announces FY2025 Cap Reached
It’s that time of the year again — as many of our clients are aware, H-1B cap season is just around the corner. Over the next several weeks we will reach out to clients to discuss employees that would benefit from participating in the upcoming Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 H-1B cap lottery.
How the H-1B Cap Lottery Works
Each year, the immigration law allocates a total of 85,000 new H-1Bs, with 20,000 of these reserved for persons who have graduated from US universities with advanced degrees (the “Master’s Cap”), and 6,800 allocated to nationals of Singapore and Chile pursuant to Free Trade Agreements with those countries. As has been the case for over 10 years, the demand for new H-1Bs has far exceeded available numbers, and the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) has conducted a random selection process (the “cap lottery”) to determine which H-1Bs will be processed under its quota.
Starting with the FY2021 H-1B cap season, the USCIS implemented a new online registration process for employers to submit their prospective H-1B workers for consideration in the lottery. If the USCIS receives more online registrations than available H-1Bs, which is expected, the USCIS will conduct the lottery to select from the pool of registrants. Employers may then file an H-1B petition on behalf of the selected registrants.
As noted above, we will be reaching out individually to each client over the coming weeks to confirm which employees to include on the FY2026 cap list. Please do not hesitate to contact one of our attorneys or specialists with any questions. You may visit our FY2026 H-1B Cap FAQs to read more about the upcoming H-1B cap lottery.
USCIS Announces FY2025 H-1B Cap Has Been Reached
On December 2, 2024 the USCIS announced that the FY2025 H-1B cap had been reached. FY2025 is the first year that the USCIS has used the new “employee-centric” cap selection process, which was designed to prevent beneficiaries from improving their odds in the lottery by having multiple employers submit registrations on their behalf. As indicated in the chart above, the new process has significantly reduced the number of registration submitted compared to previous years. It also appears to have improved the odds of selection, but only slightly. According to USCIS data, the overall selection rate for FY2025 was 28.7%. This is about 4% higher than it was for FY2024. Although the USCIS does not publish selection rates for the regular and master’s cap separately, based on data from the registrations submitted through our office, we estimate that this rate for FY2025 was about 38% for master’s and about 23% for regular cap registrations.