U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced that it has received enough petitions to meet the H-2B statutory cap for the second half of fiscal year 2026. However, the filing dates for the second and third allocations for the supplemental H-2B visas for FY 2026 are now available.
In the announcement, USCIS stated that enough petitions to meet the congressionally established H-2B cap for the second half of FY 2026 have been received. The cap of 33,000 H-2 B visas for the first half of FY 2026 was reached on September 12, 2025.
March 10, 2026, was the final receipt date for new cap-subject H-2B worker petitions requesting an employment start date on or after April 1 and before Oct. 1, 2026. USCIS will reject new cap-subject H-2B petitions received after March 10, 2026, that request an employment start date on or after April 1 and before Oct. 1, 2026.
Currently, Congress has set the H-2B cap at 66,000 per fiscal year, with 33,000 for workers who begin employment in the first half of the fiscal year (Oct. 1 – March 31) and 33,000 for workers who begin employment in the second half of the fiscal year (April 1 – Sep. 30).
Any unused numbers from the first half of the fiscal year will be available for employers seeking to hire H-2B workers during the second half of the fiscal year. Unused H-2B numbers from one fiscal year do not carry over into the next fiscal year.
64,716 Additional Visas
Beyond the 66,000 visa cap, there are additional or supplementary visas. On January 30, the Department of Homeland Security, through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Department of Labor, announced a temporary final rule making available an additional 64,716 H-2B temporary nonagricultural worker visas for fiscal year 2026, on top of the statutory cap of 66,000 H-2B visas that are available each fiscal year.
Of the 64,716 additional visas, 46,226 will be available only for returning workers (workers who received an H-2B visa or were otherwise granted H-2B status in one of the last 3 fiscal years). The remaining 18,490 visas do not require the alien to be a returning worker. These visas are for employers with late-season needs for H-2B workers who will begin work between May 1 and Sept. 30, 2026.
Congress created the H-2B non-agricultural temporary worker program to allow U.S. employers to bring foreign workers to the United States to fill temporary non-agricultural jobs. The H-2B program is used by US companies to hire foreign nationals for temporary non-agricultural occupations in the United States. The maximum length of stay under the H-2B classification is three years. A person who has had H-2B nonimmigrant status for three years must leave the United States and stay outside for three months before applying for reentry.