The DV-2026 Diversity Visa Year Ends September 30: What That Date Means for Selectees and Their Families in Texas

What Changed, and When

Three separate developments sit on top of one another, and they have different mechanics. Keeping them apart is the first thing a lawyer does with a diversity visa file.

December 23, 2025 — the issuance pause. The Bureau of Consular Affairs published Diversity Visa Issuance Updated Guidance, which states that “effective immediately, the Department of State has paused all visa issuances to diversity immigrant visa applicants.” The same page answers its own questions plainly: DV applicants “may submit visa applications and attend interviews, and the Department will continue to schedule applicants for appointments, but no DVs will be issued,” existing appointments “generally will not be rescheduled or cancelled,” and asked whether there are any exceptions, the guidance answers “No.” The Department describes the measure as allowing a review of screening and vetting protocols in the DV program.

August 25, 2026 — a federal court ruling. In Ivanov v. Trump, No. 1:26-cv-00915, Judge Richard J. Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that the diversity visa issuance pause and a related USCIS processing pause were unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act. According to the ruling and contemporaneous reporting, the court found the government had identified legitimate national-security interests in reviewing how diversity visa applicants are screened, but had not adequately explained imposing sweeping categorical pauses. Judge Leon described September 30 as an “unforgiving deadline” and wrote that “the stakes are unusually time-sensitive.”

The relief was narrow. The court limited the injunction to the named plaintiffs and their derivative beneficiaries, ordering the State Department to take reasonable steps, where practicable, to reconsider applications that had been refused solely because of the challenged pauses. That is a materially different thing from reopening the program for every DV-2026 selectee, and it is the single most important distinction on this page.

August 2026 — a separate, worldwide appointment interruption. The Department has also temporarily paused or rescheduled immigrant visa appointments worldwide while consular officers receive additional training on public-charge screening. A State Department official told the Associated Press that the interruption began in early August and was not expected to extend beyond early or mid-September, with affected interviews moving to September, October or November. For most immigrant categories that is a delay. For a DV-2026 case it can land on the far side of the fiscal year.

What the September 30 Date Actually Is

This is not an agency preference or a processing target. It comes from how the diversity visa category is written, and the Department restates it in the September 2026 Visa Bulletin (Number 18, Volume XI):

Entitlement to immigrant status in the DV category lasts only through the end of the fiscal (visa) year for which the applicant is selected in the lottery. The year of entitlement for all applicants registered for the DV-2026 program ends as of September 30, 2026. DVs may not be issued to DV-2026 applicants after that date. Similarly, spouses and children accompanying or following to join DV-2026 principals are only entitled to derivative DV status until September 30, 2026. DV availability through the end of FY-2026 cannot be taken for granted. Numbers could be exhausted prior to September 30.

Three facts follow from that paragraph, and all three come straight from the bulletin:

• There is no rollover. A selection that is not used within the fiscal year does not carry into the next one.
• Derivatives ride on the principal. A spouse and children are entitled to derivative DV status only through the same date.
• The numbers can run out first. The bulletin says availability through the end of the year cannot be assumed. The same bulletin states that amendments “will further reduce the DV-2026 annual limit to 52,101,” down from the statutory 55,000 ceiling.

The September bulletin also publishes the regional rank cut-offs for the month. Diversity visa numbers are available in September to qualified DV-2026 applicants with regional lottery rank numbers below these figures: Africa 101,250 (except Algeria 85,000 and Egypt 50,000); Asia 40,000 (except Nepal 13,500); Europe 47,500; North America (Bahamas) Current; Oceania 3,000; South America and the Caribbean 4,750. A selectee’s rank number and region are on the Entrant Status Check confirmation, and where that number falls relative to the cut-off is one of the first things an attorney checks.

The Department’s Update on Diversity Visa (DV) Program 2026 page adds the procedural point: “In order to be scheduled for an interview, selectees who wish to immigrate must first submit a complete DS-260 application,” and selectees should be prepared to provide all required documentation at the interview, including a medical exam.

Who in Texas This Reaches

The litigation gives a sense of scale at the low end. Reporting on the Ivanov complaint describes 1,622 individuals from 738 DV-2026 selectee families across 72 countries, including Nepal, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Iran, Albania, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan. The full DV-2026 selectee pool is considerably larger than the group in that case.

Inside Texas, the people carrying this are often not the selectee. They are the U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident relatives, the employers, the congregations and the neighbors who have been paying fees, gathering civil documents, arranging translations and booking travel — and who have been doing it since December without a visa at the end of it. Texas has long-established communities from many DV-eligible countries, and those households are spread across the state rather than concentrated in one metro.

Geography inside Texas matters less here than it does for most legal news. A diversity visa case is adjudicated under federal law — at a consulate abroad, or with USCIS through adjustment of status for a selectee who is already in the United States in a qualifying posture. A family in Amarillo, Laredo, Tyler or Odessa is in the same legal position as one in a large metro. What changes by location is practical: how far the nearest experienced immigration attorney is, and how quickly documents can be gathered and translated.

What This Changes Legally

A narrow injunction is not a program-wide reopening. The August 25 order runs to the named plaintiffs and their derivative beneficiaries. A selectee who is not a party to that case is not automatically covered by it, whatever the headlines say. Whether that matters for a particular family is a question about that family’s own posture, not about the ruling in the abstract.

“Refused solely because of the pause” is a record question. The order speaks to applications refused only on the challenged pauses. Whether a specific refusal fits that description depends on what the notice says, which section it cites, and what else is in the consular or USCIS file. Two families with similar-sounding stories can be in different positions once the paperwork is read.

The fiscal-year limit is statutory, and a court order does not erase it by itself. This has been litigated before. In the DV-2020 program year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Gomez v. Trump reserved 9,095 diversity visas past the end of that fiscal year and later ordered them processed — a remedy that took additional litigation and years to work through, and that reached far fewer people than had been selected. That history is documented by the American Immigration Lawyers Association. It is background, not a prediction: whether anything comparable is available in this program year is a question for counsel on a live docket.

An appeal remains possible. District court rulings can be appealed, and an appellate court can stay the effect of an order while it considers a case. Anyone making a decision that assumes the August 25 order stays in place is making it against an open docket, which is a reason to have someone tracking that docket.

These are separate matters from the other 2026 immigration changes. The DHS public charge rule taking effect September 18, 2026, covered in our August 19 post, and the 75-country immigrant visa pause vacated on August 21, covered in our August 25 post, are different actions with different mechanics. A diversity visa case can be touched by one, several, or none of them.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

Nothing on this page is a prediction about any individual case, and a general summary is not an answer about anyone’s own selection. What an immigration lawyer can review, on the specific facts and documents, includes:

• Whether the DS-260 is complete and where the case actually sits — at the Kentucky Consular Center, scheduled at a post, interviewed and pending, or refused — and what each of those states permits next.
• Where the regional rank number falls against the September cut-off published in the Visa Bulletin, and what that means for scheduling in the weeks remaining.
• Whether adjustment of status with USCIS fits the facts for a selectee who is already in the United States, and what the August 25 order says about the USCIS side of the pause.
• What a refusal notice actually says, and whether the stated ground matches the pauses the court addressed.
• Whether litigation is a realistic option on this calendar, what joining an existing case involves, and what it does and does not accomplish.
• Whether anything in the file has gone stale while the case waited — medical examinations, police certificates, translations, passport validity, or civil documents that have to be re-obtained.
• What the family’s position looks like if September 30 passes, including any other categories that may remain open to them and how a future diversity visa program year works.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

The part of a diversity visa case that consumes calendar time is rarely the filing itself. It is the evidence that has to come from someone else — a civil document from a foreign registry, a police certificate from a country the applicant left years ago, a certified translation, a medical exam scheduled with an approved panel physician abroad. A file that is complete when a slot opens is in a different position from one that starts gathering documents on the day the appointment appears.

The Visa Bulletin states plainly that numbers could be exhausted before September 30, so the practical horizon can be shorter than the calendar date. Reviewing where a case stands, and what options exist for it, is work that takes less time the earlier it starts. If a lawyer in our network offers an initial consultation, it is free.

Sources

1. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, Visa Bulletin for September 2026, Number 18, Volume XI (primary document; DV-2026 year of entitlement, annual limit and September rank cut-offs).
2. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Consular Affairs, “Diversity Visa Issuance Updated Guidance” (primary document; last updated December 23, 2025).
3. U.S. Department of State, “Update on Diversity Visa (DV) Program 2026” (last updated October 3, 2025).
4. Ivanov et al. v. Trump et al., No. 1:26-cv-00915 (D.D.C.) — docket and filings at CourtListener.
5. Courthouse News Service, “Judge orders feds to process visa applications in limbo.”
6. Law360, “Judge Temporarily Nixes ‘Arbitrary’ Pauses On Diversity Visas” (subscription).
7. Vision Times, “US Visa Pause Raises Stakes for Green Card Lottery Winners Facing Sept. 30 Deadline,” August 28, 2026 (reporting the August 25 ruling and the worldwide appointment interruption).
8. American Immigration Lawyers Association, resources on Gomez v. Trump (DV-2020 litigation history and the 9,095 reserved visas).