DV-2027 Registration Still Closed: Where the Lottery Stands

As of November 8, 2026, DV-2027 registration has not opened. The Department of State has not announced an entry period, and the official entry portal is not accepting DV-2027 entries. If you have seen a website claiming registration is open, it is wrong, and in most cases it is trying to sell you something.

That is the short answer. The longer answer matters, because the reason registration is closed changed on October 29.

What happened, in order

The Diversity Visa program for fiscal year 2027 should have opened in the autumn of 2026 on the normal annual schedule. It did not. The program was suspended in December 2025, and no DV-2027 entry period followed.

An immigration firm, Red Eagle Law, sued over that suspension. On October 14, 2026, a federal district judge in California, Jinsook Ohta, issued a preliminary injunction. The order, amended on October 21, directed the Department of State to do three things: announce the registration dates by October 29, open the entry period by November 1, and notify selected entrants by December 3.

The government filed a notice of appeal on October 19 and asked the appeals court to pause the order while the appeal was heard.

On October 29, 2026, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted that request. The district court's order is stayed, which means the three deadlines in it are suspended. State was not required to announce on October 29, and it did not. The appeal is pending as Ninth Circuit case number 26-6943.

What the Ninth Circuit decided, and what it did not

This distinction is the most useful thing in this article, and almost every summary gets it wrong.

The panel did not rule that the State Department was right to leave DV-2027 closed. It did not reach that question at all.

What it concluded was narrower and more technical: Red Eagle Law was unlikely to establish that its own interests fall within the group of interests the Diversity Visa statute protects. This is a doctrine called zone of interests, and it is about who is entitled to bring a particular lawsuit rather than about who is right on the merits. A law firm's business interest in having clients to file entries for is not obviously the interest Congress had in mind when it wrote the diversity visa provisions.

Reports of the order note that the panel went out of its way to say it was not endorsing the Department's failure to open DV-2027.

Why that matters to you: the stay is not a ruling that the program is lawfully closed. It is a ruling that this particular plaintiff probably cannot force it open. A differently positioned plaintiff, for example an individual who would have entered, could raise the same challenge without the same standing problem. One such suit has already been reported.

What a stay actually means

A stay pauses a lower court's order while a higher court considers an appeal. Nothing in the underlying dispute has been resolved. Three things can happen next, and none of them has a published date:

The Ninth Circuit could decide the appeal and reverse the injunction, which would leave DV-2027 closed unless some other case succeeds. It could affirm the injunction, which would put the opening obligation back in force on a new schedule. Or the Department of State could announce a DV-2027 entry period on its own, independently of the litigation, which it is free to do at any time.

The deadline nobody can move

There is one date in all of this that no court and no agency can extend: diversity visas for fiscal year 2027 must be issued by September 30, 2027. That limit is in the statute. A visa not issued by then is lost, and the number does not carry over to the following year.

This is the real pressure in the case. Every month that registration stays closed compresses what is left: a thirty-day entry period, processing, selection, notification, consular interviews, and issuance. All of it has to fit before the end of September 2027. That is why the litigation is moving at the speed it is, and it is also why a late opening would be a very different program from a normal year, with a much tighter timeline for anyone selected.

What to do right now

Do not pay anyone to enter. There is no entry to make. Entering the Diversity Visa lottery is done only through the Department of State's own site, and in a normal year the entry itself is free. Any service charging you to register for DV-2027 today is charging you for nothing.

Watch one source. The Department of State publishes the official DV instructions and entry dates at travel.state.gov. Everything else, including this article, is commentary on that.

Use the time to prepare documents. Two requirements have changed since the last time many people entered, and both of them can be satisfied before registration opens:

A valid passport is now required at the entry stage for most entrants, under a final rule published on March 11, 2026 and effective April 10, 2026. The entry form asks for the passport number, country of issuance and expiration date, and requires a scan of the passport biographical page. The scan must be a JPEG, not a PDF, and no larger than 5 MB. Exemptions are narrow. If your passport is expired, renewing it is the single most useful thing you can do while waiting.

A one dollar electronic registration fee applies to DV-2027 entries, under a State Department final rule that first applies to this program year. It is separate from the immigrant visa application fee that selected entrants pay later.

Photograph requirements have not changed, but they are the most common reason entries are disqualified. The specifications are strict on size, background, head position and recency.

If you were planning on DV-2027

Two points worth being honest about.

First, nobody can tell you today whether DV-2027 will open. Any firm that tells you it definitely will, or definitely will not, is guessing.

Second, the diversity lottery was never a plan. In a normal year the odds are long, and this year it may not run at all. If permanent residence in the United States is the goal, it is worth knowing whether you qualify under a route that does not depend on a lottery or a court. Employment-based categories, family petitions and the national interest waiver all have their own requirements, and some of them fit people who assume they have no option but the lottery.

Where this article will be updated

The moment the Department of State announces a DV-2027 entry period, or the Ninth Circuit rules on the appeal, this page and our diversity visa guide will be updated with the dates. Until then, neither page states a calendar as settled, because there is not one.

Last reviewed: November 8, 2026.

Sources

• Ninth Circuit order staying the district court's injunction, October 29, 2026, appeal no. 26-6943, as reported by Fragomen and Bloomberg Law
• Preliminary injunction, Judge Jinsook Ohta, U.S. District Court, California, October 14, 2026, amended October 21, 2026
• Department of State final rule on the electronic registration fee, first applicable to DV-2027
• Department of State final rule requiring passport information at entry, 91 FR 11891, published March 11, 2026, effective April 10, 2026
• Statutory issuance deadline, Immigration and Nationality Act section 204(a)(1)(I)(ii)(II)
• Official entry instructions and dates: travel.state.gov