H-1B in 2026: The $100k Fee, the New Lottery and Your Options

The H-1B changed twice in a year, and the two changes pull in different directions. The lottery now favours higher-paid offers. The $100,000 payment that frightened so many applicants in September 2025 is currently blocked by the courts, even though the proclamation behind it was renewed in September 2026. If you are an Indian engineer weighing a US move, both matter, and neither is quite what the headlines suggest.

Read together, they point at the same person: the junior hire. The weighted lottery gives a Level I offer the fewest entries, and the $100,000 payment, if it ever came back, would weigh most against the smallest salaries. This piece walks through what changed, what it means with real numbers, and what to do depending on where you are today.

This is where things stood on 18 October 2026, with the official sources at the end. It is a summary of published rules and court orders, not legal advice.

Do employers have to pay the $100,000 H-1B fee?

Not right now. Here is the sequence:

• 19 September 2025: a presidential proclamation required a one-time $100,000 payment for certain new H-1B petitions filed from 21 September 2025. USCIS said it did not apply to visas already issued or petitions filed before that date, and agency guidance applied it to new petitions for people processing through a consulate abroad.
• 8 June 2026: a federal court in Massachusetts (California v. Mullin) ruled the payment unlawful and vacated the policy.
• 24 July 2026: the First Circuit refused the government's request to pause that ruling while it appeals.
• 18 September 2026: the proclamation was renewed for another year, to 21 September 2027.
• 30 September 2026: a federal court in California (Global Nurse Force v. Trump) blocked agencies from implementing the original proclamation and its extension until the required notice-and-comment rulemaking and small-business analysis are done.

So the proclamation still exists on paper, but the payment cannot currently be collected. USCIS says it will follow the court orders, and also says it intends to collect if the orders are lifted. A refused stay is not a final ruling: the appeal is still pending. The honest status is blocked, not dead.

Two other fee items are easy to confuse with it. On 24 August 2026 DHS proposed a new $103,265 fee for cap-subject H-1B petitions. That is a proposal, not a charge in force, and it would not apply to cap-exempt employers such as universities. And from 9 September 2026 a 9-11 biometric fee applies to employers with 50 or more employees where more than half the workforce is on H-1B or L-1. Neither is the $100,000 payment.

How does the new H-1B lottery work?

The bigger long-term change is the weighted lottery. A final rule published on 29 December 2025 took effect on 27 February 2026, ahead of the FY2027 season. Each registration now gets a number of entries based on the wage level of the offered job, using the four levels of the government's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics:

Wage level	Entries	Modelled chance of selection
Level I	1	about 15.29%
Level II	2	about 30.58%
Level III	3	about 45.87%
Level IV	4	about 61.16%

All four headline figures are simple multiples of the Level I figure: total selections divided by total entries, times one to four. They are an approximation, not observed results. The rule's own simulation, which removes a person's other entries once they are picked, gives about 17%, 31%, 43% and 53% for Levels I to IV, so the shortcut overstates the top levels. Our H-1B lottery odds by wage level guide walks through the simulation and where posted AI salaries land. Treat them as a sense of scale, not a promise. Level I is not shut out; it just holds one ticket where Level IV holds four.

What does the weighted lottery mean in practice?

Take one engineer with two offers for broadly similar work. Company A files the registration at Level I. Company B, paying more, files at Level III.

	Offer at Level I	Offer at Level III
Entries in the pool	1	3
Modelled chance in one season	about 15%	about 46%
Chance of at least one pick across two seasons, same odds each year	about 28%	about 71%
Across three seasons	about 39%	about 84%

The arithmetic is plain: three years of trying at Level I, at the modelled rate, still leaves you below a single attempt at Level III. Selection is also only the first gate. A selected registration still has to become an approved petition.

The practical lesson is that the offer itself is now part of your visa strategy. When you compare two US offers, the wage level the employer will register at belongs in the comparison next to base pay and title. It is a fair question to ask an employer's immigration team before you sign.

Do US AI and software job postings say they sponsor?

Mostly, they say nothing. We looked at live US AI and machine learning postings and US software engineering postings in our index, and at what each posting says about visa sponsorship.

	AI and ML roles	Software engineering roles
Says it can sponsor	2.5%	2.5%
Says it cannot sponsor	6%	13%
Says nothing either way	91%	84%
Of those that say anything, share that say yes	about 28%	about 15%

Silence is the norm. That is not the same as a no, and it is why so many applicants waste time: the answer usually sits with a recruiter, not on the page.

When a posting does speak, it is more likely to rule sponsorship out. AI roles are friendlier than general software roles on this measure: among postings that state a position, a little over one AI role in four says yes, against roughly one software role in seven.

Seniority changes the picture sharply:

Seniority	AI and ML: says no	AI and ML: says yes	Software: says no	Software: says yes
Entry	18%	2%	14%	2%
Mid	10%	2%	23%	2%
Senior	7%	1%	13%	1%
Staff	4%	1%	7%	5%
Principal	7%	3%	11%	5%

The loudest "no" sits at the junior end. Nearly one entry-level AI posting in five rules sponsorship out in writing, and almost a quarter of mid-level software postings do. At staff level in software, about four in ten postings that state a position say they can sponsor. That lines up with the lottery: employers who expect to register at a higher wage level have better odds, so they are more willing to say yes. Our H-1B sponsorship jobs page lists US tech roles whose posting says the company can sponsor, read daily from each company's own careers page.

How we got these numbers (19 October 2026): live, non-duplicate postings in the landed index located in the US, in the AI and machine learning family and the software engineering family, with the sponsorship position read from the posting text. Software engineering figures use a random sample of several thousand postings. Seniority is our classification of each posting; roles with no clear seniority are left out of the second table.

What would the $100,000 payment mean against a typical salary?

The payment would fall on the employer, once, for covered new petitions. Set against the midpoint of the salary ranges US postings publish, its weight depends heavily on seniority.

Seniority	AI and ML: median posted midpoint	$100k as share	Software: median posted midpoint	$100k as share
Entry	$160,000	62%	$127,500	78%
Mid	$195,000	51%	$156,300	64%
Senior	$208,100	48%	$195,000	51%
Staff	$254,000	39%	$225,000	44%
All levels	$216,300	46%	$193,400	52%

For a typical US AI role, the payment would be close to half a year's posted pay. For an entry-level software hire it would be more than three quarters. An employer weighing a junior candidate who needs a new petition from abroad would be paying the lottery's lowest odds and the payment's highest relative cost at the same time.

That is why the court status matters more than the headline number. While the block holds, the payment is zero. If the appeal went the government's way and the orders were lifted, USCIS has said it intends to collect, and the hit would land hardest on exactly the hires who are already least likely to be picked.

How we got these numbers (19 October 2026): live US postings in the landed index that list an annual salary range, by our seniority classification, using the midpoint of each range. These are posted ranges, not total compensation, and they skew toward employers that publish pay. About six in ten US AI postings, and a little more of software postings, list a range.

Which employers can sponsor without the lottery?

Some employers are cap-exempt, which means no lottery at all:

• US institutions of higher education.
• Qualifying nonprofit research organisations.
• Government research organisations.

Being a nonprofit, or doing research, is not enough by itself; the employer has to fit one of these categories. A company doing AI research does not become cap-exempt because of the work it does. Cap exemption also does not remove the other H-1B requirements or filing fees, though it would keep an employer outside the proposed $103,265 fee.

Which path fits you: in India or on F-1 OPT in the US?

Start from where you are today. The routes and their gates differ.

If you are working in India:

1. Does your current employer have a US entity, and have you worked for the group for a continuous year in the last three? If yes, ask about an L-1. L-1A covers managers and executives (up to seven years); L-1B covers specialised knowledge (up to five). A new US job offer alone does not create L-1 eligibility.
2. Do you have a cap-exempt offer from a US university or qualifying research body? If yes, there is no lottery.
3. Can you document sustained national or international recognition? If yes, consider the O-1A. USCIS asks for at least three different types of qualifying evidence. A strong title is not enough. No lottery applies.
4. Otherwise, it is a cap-subject H-1B. Aim for an offer registered at the highest wage level you can justify. Note that the paused $100,000 payment was aimed at petitions processed through a consulate abroad, which is your situation, so keep watching the appeal.

If you are in the US on F-1 or OPT:

1. Is your employer filing a cap-subject H-1B with a change of status while your F-1 status or OPT is still valid? If yes, "cap-gap" protection can keep you in status, and usually able to work, until 1 April of the fiscal year or the start of your H-1B, whichever is first.
2. Will the petition be filed during your 60-day grace period instead? Your status can be extended, but your permission to work is not. Plan your income around that gap.
3. Is the employer cap-exempt? Then there is no lottery, but the cap-gap rule does not apply either. Check your timing separately.
4. Planning to travel? Leaving the US while a change of status is pending abandons it.

For both groups, the EB-2 NIW is a green card petition you can file yourself, without an employer or labour certification, if your work is in the national interest. A bachelor's degree plus at least five years of progressive experience can count as the advanced-degree equivalent. For people born in India, the wait is long: the October 2026 Visa Bulletin shows a final action date of 1 November 2013 for EB-2, with a date for filing of 15 January 2015. It is a long-term route, not a substitute for a work visa next year.

Which companies sponsor H-1B visas now?

USCIS publishes employer-level approval data in its H-1B Employer Data Hub, currently through the third quarter of FY2026. Comparing a full FY2025 against three quarters of FY2026 would mislead, and we did not find a verified full-year comparison that shows a shift from IT services firms to AI and product companies. So we are not going to claim one.

What we can show is the live picture, from postings rather than approvals. For any role, confirm sponsorship with the employer before you rely on it.

What should you do now?

• Treat the $100,000 payment as unresolved. It is blocked today, with the appeal pending. Plans that only work if it never returns are fragile.
• Make wage level part of every US offer comparison. One season at Level III beats three seasons at Level I on the modelled odds.
• Ask early, because most postings are silent. About nine in ten US AI postings say nothing on sponsorship. A direct question to the recruiter saves weeks.
• If you are early in your career, widen the routes. Cap-exempt employers, an L-1 through a multinational, and steady O-1 evidence-building all avoid the lottery that favours senior offers.

Sources

• USCIS: H-1B FAQ (updated 28 July 2026); H-1B cap season; cap-gap extension of OPT (updated 17 January 2025); H and L filing fees; DHS proposes additional H-1B fee (24 August 2026); weighted selection small entity compliance guide (12 January 2026); H-1B Employer Data Hub; O-1, L-1A, L-1B and EB-2 pages.
• Federal Register: Weighted selection final rule (29 December 2025).
• The White House: Restriction on entry of certain nonimmigrant workers (September 2026).
• US District Court, D. Massachusetts: California v. Mullin, decision of 8 June 2026.
• US District Court, N.D. California: Global Nurse Force v. Trump, order of 30 September 2026.
• US Department of State: Visa Bulletin, October 2026.
• landed job index, live US postings on 19 October 2026.