DV-2028 Registration Was Supposed to Open This Week. It Hasn't.

What was supposed to happen this week

Every October, for more than three decades, the State Department opened the Diversity Visa lottery registration window for the following fiscal year. The entry period typically ran from the first week of October through the first week of November — approximately a 30-day window. For DV-2028, the expected opening date was around October 7, 2026.

It did not open. As of October 3, 2026, dvprogram.state.gov — the only official entry site for the Diversity Visa program — displays a message stating that entries are not being accepted at this time. The State Department has not published a DV-2028 entry period, a country eligibility list, or any announcement about when registration will begin. The page that normally carries these instructions currently shows information from prior program years.

This is the second consecutive year that the registration window has not opened on schedule. DV-2027 registration would have been expected in October 2025. It never opened either.

The December 2025 pause and why it happened

On December 19, 2025, USCIS issued Policy Memorandum PM-602-0193. The memo placed an indefinite hold on all pending Diversity Visa adjustment-of-status applications inside the United States. The stated rationale was the need to fully assess national security and public safety grounds of inadmissibility for Diversity Visa applicants — language the agency applied to the entire class of DV applicants without individual review.

The administration tied the action to two shootings at Brown University and MIT in late 2025 where suspects were alleged to have connections to the Diversity Visa program. Whatever the precise facts of those cases, the administration used them as the stated basis for an across-the-board hold on all DV-2026 adjustment-of-status processing. The State Department ran a parallel pause through a January 14, 2026 directive that suspended immigrant visa processing at consulates for nationals of 75 countries — a separate action that hit DV-2026 selectees pursuing their green cards through overseas interviews.

PM-602-0193 did not eliminate the program. It suspended processing. But for a program that operates on fiscal years with hard September 30 expiration dates on every issued visa number, a processing hold that runs from December through September is operationally equivalent to denial for any selectee whose case was caught in that window.

DV-2026 ended at the September 30 deadline

On August 28, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an order in Medani, et al. v. Trump, et al. that vacated PM-602-0193. The court certified a nationwide class covering all FY-2026 Diversity Visa selectees and their derivatives and ordered USCIS to take reasonable steps to resume adjudication before the September 30 fiscal year deadline.

USCIS published a notice saying it strongly disagrees with the court's order but would follow it pending possible further judicial review. The 'pending possible further judicial review' language was a clear signal that the administration would seek to limit compliance. Courts can order agencies to act; they cannot conjure interview slots at understaffed field offices or fast-track backlogs that accumulated over nine months of hold. With roughly 33 days between the court order and September 30, the practical outcome was that many DV-2026 selectees who had been waiting since December ran out of fiscal year before their cases could be adjudicated.

September 30, 2026 is now in the past. Unissued DV-2026 numbers expired permanently at midnight on that date. There is no carryover, no extension, and no legal mechanism to recover a forfeited diversity visa allocation after fiscal year close. Selectees whose cases were not completed by September 30 lost their DV-2026 allocations — not to a finding of inadmissibility, but to a processing hold that ran the clock out.

DV-2027 never happened — a whole class year was skipped

The DV-2027 lottery would have required the State Department to open a registration window in October 2025, conduct random selection from among the entries, notify selectees, and begin issuing visas starting October 1, 2026. None of those steps occurred. The State Department never opened a DV-2027 entry period. No DV-2027 selectees were ever notified. The FY2027 diversity visa allocation — 55,000 numbers — will not be issued through the DV program because the program did not select a FY2027 class.

That is an unusual thing to say out loud. The Diversity Visa lottery has run every year since 1995. In fiscal year 2027, which began October 1 and runs through September 30, 2027, there are no DV-2027 selectees anywhere in the pipeline. The entire class was simply never created.

The FY2027 numbers that would have gone to diversity visa holders will instead either spill over into other employment and family categories, be unused, or be redirected depending on how the administration and DOS handle visa demand across the other preference categories throughout the year. The affected population — people in countries that rely heavily on the DV lottery as a realistic green card pathway — has no comparable alternative channel.

What the law says about this program

The Diversity Visa program was created by Congress in the Immigration Act of 1990, codified at INA Section 203(c). The statute directs the Secretary of State to make diversity visas available each fiscal year to natives of countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States. The allocation is 55,000 visas per year. This is not an executive branch program that can be ended by a policy memo. It is a statutory mandate.

The executive branch has wide discretion over how to implement statutory programs — processing timelines, vetting procedures, the mechanics of selection. What it cannot do, without an act of Congress, is simply stop issuing the visas Congress directed it to issue. The Medani court held that USCIS could not place an indefinite hold on DV-2026 applications because such a hold was effectively denying congressionally mandated visa allocations without legal authority to do so.

Whether the administration can simply decline to conduct DV-2027 and DV-2028 registrations — thereby never creating a class of selectees and thus never issuing visas — is a different legal question from whether it can hold already-filed applications. That question has not yet been resolved in court. Legal advocates are likely to argue that failing to operate the statutory program at all is a separate and more fundamental violation than the processing hold addressed in Medani. Courts have not yet issued rulings on that specific claim.

The scam sites are already running

Whenever the DV lottery is in the news, unofficial sites appear that mimic the look of the official program, collect entry fees, and pocket personal information. This year is no different, except that the official program is not running — which creates a perfect environment for fraud. Sites with names like dvamerica.com, dvprogramusa.com, edvamerica.com, and visafortheunitedstates.com present as DV lottery portals and some claim to be collecting DV-2028 registrations right now.

None of these sites are connected to the U.S. government. The only official entry site for the Diversity Visa program is dvprogram.state.gov. Entry through the official program has always been free — there is no registration fee required to enter, and any payment made to an unofficial site buys nothing. A recent DOS fee schedule lists a $1 registration fee that may apply when official registration opens, but that fee is paid on the official government site at the time of official registration, not before.

Do not submit personal documents, passport information, or payment details to any DV lottery site that is not dvprogram.state.gov. An unofficial site that harvests your application data exposes you to identity fraud regardless of whether the DV program ever reopens.

What to actually watch for

The only signal that matters is an official announcement from the U.S. Department of State at travel.state.gov or dvprogram.state.gov. When and if DV-2028 registration opens, DOS will publish the exact entry dates, the list of eligible and ineligible countries, the official entry instructions, and the link to the entry form. None of that information exists right now. Any site claiming to have these details is either speculating or fabricating.

Congress has not passed legislation eliminating the DV program. As of October 2026, the program exists as a statutory mandate, but the executive branch has declined to operate it for two consecutive registration cycles. The tension between statutory obligation and executive inaction is the legal question advocates are likely to pursue in court, building on the Medani framework that successfully forced DV-2026 processing resumption.

If you are from a country that has historically relied on the DV lottery as a realistic immigration pathway — much of sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Eastern Europe, Central Asia — the honest picture is that the program has not run for two years and has no announced future date. Employment-based and family-based pathways, if they apply to your situation, are not subject to the same executive discretion over whether to run the program at all. This article is informational only and does not constitute legal advice. Immigration law is subject to rapid change. Always verify current program status at travel.state.gov and consult a licensed immigration attorney before making any decisions based on this article.