The H-1B FY 2027 Cap Is Full and There Is No Second Lottery — Here’s What Registrants Can Do Now

H-1B Cap FY If your registration still says “Submitted” and you have been quietly hoping for a second draw, stop waiting. It is not coming.

On 17 July 2026, US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced it had received enough petitions to fill both allocations of the fiscal year 2027 H-1B cap. The filing window had run from 1 April to 30 June 2026. With the numbers met, USCIS confirmed it will not conduct an additional selection round and will continue processing the petitions that were properly and timely filed.

That closes the FY 2027 cap season. The next cap lottery is expected in March 2027.

But “the cap is closed” is not the same as “there is nothing you can do.” Several H-1B routes were never subject to the cap at all, and three separate US rule changes land between now and the middle of September that will shape what your options look like. Here is the full picture.

Has the FY 2027 H-1B cap been reached?

Yes. On 17 July 2026, USCIS confirmed it had received enough petitions to meet both the 65,000 regular H-1B cap and the 20,000 advanced degree exemption — 85,000 in total — for fiscal year 2027. No second selection round will be held. Registrations not chosen in the March 2026 lottery are now marked “Not Selected.”

What happened in your USCIS account

Within days of the announcement, USCIS began updating online accounts so that pending FY 2027 registrations moved from “Submitted” to “Not Selected.”

There is no appeal, no waitlist and no reconsideration process attached to that status. It simply means the registration was not picked, and — because the cap is now full — will not be picked later in the year.

This mirrors what happened the previous year. USCIS ran no additional selection rounds for FY 2026 either. Two consecutive years without a backup round is the pattern to plan around, not the exception to hope against.

The number that explains this season

According to analysis published by immigration firms tracking the cap, USCIS reported roughly 211,600 properly submitted registrations for FY 2027 — down about 38 percent from 343,981 the year before.

A sharp fall in registrations, and yet the cap still filled on the first round. Two things were happening at once: fewer people entered, and a far higher share of those who did entered seriously, because the rules changed.

Why the odds shifted against early-career applicants

FY 2027 was the first cap season run under a wage-weighted selection process rather than a straight random draw. The final rule took effect on 27 February 2026.

Under the weighted system, a registration receives additional entries based on the offered salary measured against Department of Labor Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics levels, which run from Level I (entry level) to Level IV (most senior and highest paid). The higher the wage level attached to the role, the more entries the registration gets, and the better its chances.

The Department of Homeland Security’s stated aim was to direct more H-1B visas toward higher-paid positions. The practical effect, as immigration practitioners have noted, was to reduce the odds for entry-level and early-career candidates relative to the old lottery.

The same season also introduced a revised Form I-129, which requires additional disclosures about the terms and conditions of the employment being offered.

If you are a recent graduate on an entry-level salary, this is the single most important thing to understand about your result. The system did not fail you at random. It was designed to weight against your wage level, and that changes what you should do differently before March 2027.

What is still possible right now: the cap-exempt routes

The annual cap does not reach every H-1B filing. USCIS continues to accept and process cap-exempt petitions throughout the year, and this is where most of the remaining opportunity sits.

Cap-exempt employers. Petitions filed by qualifying institutions of higher education, affiliated nonprofit entities, nonprofit research organisations and governmental research organisations are not counted against the cap. Universities, university-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes can sponsor an H-1B at any point in the year, with no lottery involved.

This is not a technicality — it is a genuine, year-round hiring channel that most candidates never look at because job boards do not label it. If your field has an academic or research equivalent, that is where to search next.

Filings that were never cap-subject. The cap also does not apply to:

• extensions of stay for people already in H-1B status
• changes to the terms of employment for existing H-1B workers
• transfers of H-1B workers between cap-subject employers
• concurrent H-1B employment in certain circumstances

If you already hold H-1B status, none of this year’s cap news restricts your ability to change employer or extend.

Other work-visa categories. Depending on your profile, the routes that commonly get considered after an unsuccessful cap season include O-1 for individuals with extraordinary ability, L-1 for intracompany transfers after qualifying employment abroad, E-2 and E-3 for nationals of specific treaty countries, TN for Canadian and Mexican professionals, and employment-based permanent residence through EB-2 or EB-3. Each has its own strict eligibility tests, and none is a general-purpose substitute for the H-1B.

If you were selected: what to watch

Selected registrants whose employers filed on time should keep monitoring adjudication. Two details matter:

• FY 2027 cap petitions had to request an employment start date of 1 October 2026 or later, and no more than six months after the petition receipt date. Petitions requesting “as soon as possible” are rejected.
• If you are moving from F-1 OPT into H-1B, the cap-gap provision still bridges the gap between the end of your OPT and the start of H-1B status, as long as the cap-subject petition requesting a change of status was properly filed while your OPT remained valid.

Where the $100,000 H-1B fee actually stands

This has moved so fast that even official pages have lagged behind, so it is worth stating the sequence carefully.

A presidential proclamation issued on 19 September 2025 imposed a one-time $100,000 payment condition on certain new H-1B petitions — broadly those for beneficiaries outside the United States who would be approved through consular processing. It did not apply to extensions, amendments or change-of-status filings for people already inside the country.

On 8 June 2026, the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts vacated the agency actions implementing the payment, concluding the charge functioned as a tax rather than a routine regulatory fee and that the rollout had not complied with federal rulemaking requirements. The government appealed and sought a stay; a brief administrative stay allowed collection to continue in the interim.

On 24 July 2026, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit denied the government’s request to pause the district court ruling, finding it had not shown it was likely to succeed on appeal. With that denial, the vacatur takes effect and USCIS should not be assessing the payment while the appeal continues.

Three caveats that headlines skip:

1. The First Circuit ruled only on the stay request. The merits appeal is still pending, and further review — potentially by the Supreme Court — remains possible.
2. Federal courts have reached conflicting conclusions on this fee, so the position is not settled.
3. Reporting on the proclamation notes it carries a twelve-month term under its own text, which would place its lapse around 21 September 2026 unless it is extended or replaced by a formal regulation.

If a petition in your case might have been treated as covered, that is a question for an immigration attorney and a fresh check of USCIS’s own pages immediately before filing — not something to settle from a news summary.

Two more September dates on the US calendar

The cap result does not sit in isolation. For anyone currently studying or working in the United States, two further changes land within days of each other.

15 September 2026 — duration of status ends. A DHS final rule published on 17 July 2026 replaces “duration of status” for F-1 students with a fixed end date on Form I-94, capped at four years, and shortens the post-completion grace period from 60 days to 30 for those admitted under the new framework. It also bars students who complete a programme after that date from starting another at the same or a lower academic level — which closes the “enrol in a second master’s while I try the lottery again” strategy for anyone who already holds a US degree at that level. Cap-gap protection is unchanged.

18 September 2026 — a new public charge framework. Immigration firms report that DHS has rescinded the 2022 public charge rule and is introducing a new discretionary framework, with a revised Form I-485 required from that date, changing how officers weigh benefits such as Medicaid, SNAP and housing assistance in green card decisions. If you have an adjustment of status filing planned, confirm the current form edition before you send it.

Taken together, the runway between graduation and sponsorship is shorter than it was a year ago. That argues for starting employer conversations earlier in a degree, not in the final semester.

How to improve your position before March 2027

The next lottery is expected in March 2027. Between now and then, the levers that genuinely move the needle are:

• Target the wage level, not just the job. Under weighted selection, the OEWS wage level attached to your offer directly affects your number of entries. A more senior role, a higher-paying metro area, or an additional year of experience before you register can change your odds materially.
• Search cap-exempt employers deliberately. Universities, affiliated non-profits and research organisations hire year-round without touching the cap. Time spent there is not wasted time.
• Get multiple legitimate registrations, not duplicate ones. Registrations are per unique beneficiary, and genuinely separate job offers from unrelated employers are permitted; duplicate registrations by related entities for the same person are not.
• Keep a second country in play. Candidates who treat the H-1B as their only route lose a year on each failed draw. Sponsorship routes in the UK, Germany, Australia and Canada run on entirely different calendars and criteria.

Key Takeaways

• USCIS announced on 17 July 2026 that the FY 2027 H-1B cap was met — 65,000 regular plus 20,000 advanced degree, 85,000 total.
• There will be no second selection round; USCIS also ran none for FY 2026.
• Non-selected registrations have been updated to “Not Selected”, with no appeal or waitlist.
• Around 211,600 registrations were properly submitted, roughly 38 percent below the prior year, per firm analysis.
• FY 2027 was the first season under wage-weighted selection (rule effective 27 February 2026), which lowered the odds for entry-level and early-career candidates.
• Cap-exempt petitions continue year-round, including those from qualifying universities, affiliated non-profits, non-profit research and governmental research organisations — plus extensions, amendments, transfers and concurrent employment.
• The $100,000 fee is not currently enforceable after the First Circuit’s 24 July 2026 denial of a stay, but the merits appeal is still pending.
• The next cap lottery is expected in March 2027, and two further US changes land on 15 and 18 September 2026.

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