Court Orders DV-2027 Visa Lottery Open by Nov 1

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A diversity visa entry is one step in a process that depends on a particular person’s country of eligibility, education or work history, family members and immigration record — and an experienced Texas immigration attorney can read those facts and explain what this schedule means for that file. Call or text 24/7. Get connected with an experienced immigration lawyer near you. Our referral service is free for the people we serve.

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What Changed, and When

On October 14, 2026, Judge Jinsook Ohta of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California granted a motion for preliminary injunction in Red Eagle Law, L.C. v. Rubio, No. 3:26-cv-04738-JO-VET. The suit was brought against the Secretary of State in his official capacity by a California immigration law firm after the registration period for the fiscal year 2027 Diversity Visa program was not opened on the Department’s usual autumn schedule.

The order as signed directed the Department of State to do four things:

Announce the registration period publicly — no later than midnight EST October 15, 2026, on its official website and through its other customary channels, including the Federal Register. The announcement is to identify the opening and closing dates of the registration period, the electronic entry website, and the requirements for participating.
Open registration — by midnight EST October 18, 2026, and keep it open for thirty days, accepting electronic entries under the eligibility, petition and documentation requirements of 8 U.S.C. §§ 1153 and 1154(a)(1)(I), 22 C.F.R. § 42.33 and other applicable provisions.
Notify eligible selectees — by midnight EST November 19, 2026.
Process and award selected applications — under its usual procedures, until the available diversity visa allocation for fiscal year 2027 is exhausted or September 30, 2027, whichever occurs first.

Those dates have since moved. Courthouse News Service reported on October 14 that the firm that brought the case filed a joint motion with the government to push the deadline about two weeks later. Business Standard and the American Bazaar reported on October 16 that the court approved a revised timetable on that joint request: the Department is to announce the registration schedule by October 29, 2026 and to open the application window by November 1, 2026, with the window again expected to run about thirty days. The court retains jurisdiction to enforce or modify the injunction.

One more fact belongs here because it is the question most people actually have. As of October 17, 2026 the Department of State had not yet posted DV-2027 instructions. Its Diversity Visa Instructions page still carried the DV-2026 instructions, and its Diversity Visa Program — Entry page states that the entry website “does not become active for submitting an entry until the date and time specified on the DV Instructions webpage.” The official announcement is the thing to watch, and under the revised schedule it is due by October 29.

Who in Texas This Reaches

The diversity visa program is not a Texas program, but Texas is one of the places where its results land most heavily. Three groups here have a stake in this order.

People abroad with family already in Texas. The lottery is open to nationals of countries with historically low rates of immigration to the United States, and Texas has large communities with origins in several of the regions that produce the most entries — among them West and Central Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and parts of Asia. A great many entries are filed by someone overseas whose brother, daughter or cousin is already a resident of Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso or the Rio Grande Valley, and who is the one watching for the announcement.

People already in Texas who are eligible to enter. Entering the lottery does not require being outside the United States. A person in Texas on a student, work or other temporary status, or in another posture entirely, may be a national of an eligible country. Whether that person may enter, and what entering would and would not mean for their current status, depends on facts that differ from one case to the next — which is precisely the kind of question a lawyer looks at rather than a web page.

Spouses and children. A diversity visa entry can include a spouse and unmarried children under 21, and the rules about who must be listed are strict and have cost people their selections in past years. Families with a mix of statuses — a resident parent, a spouse abroad, children born in different countries — are exactly where this gets complicated.

Coverage of the order describes the program as making available up to 55,000 diversity immigrant visas a year. The court’s own language refers only to “the available Diversity Visa allocation for fiscal year 2027.”

What This Changes Legally

What the order changes is that there is a schedule where there was not one. It does not change who is eligible for a diversity visa, and it does not create any new category or benefit. The eligibility, petition and documentation requirements it points to are the same ones that have always governed the program.

Three limits on the order are worth stating plainly.

A preliminary injunction is not a final judgment. It is relief entered while a case is pending, and it can be modified, dissolved or appealed. The court here expressly kept jurisdiction to enforce or modify it. That is a reason to follow the official announcements rather than treating any date as settled.

Selection is not a visa. This is the single most misunderstood feature of the program, in every year it runs. Being selected in the lottery means a case may be processed if visas remain available; the person still has to establish eligibility and admissibility, supply documentation, and complete security screening. Reporting on this order also noted the compressed calendar it leaves: selectees would have less than a year before the fiscal year 2027 allocation closes on September 30, 2027.

The entry itself is submitted to the government, free, on an official site. The Department of State’s program pages state that entries are submitted electronically through its official entry website during the published registration period, and that there is no charge to submit an entry. Paid services that offer to file an entry are not the government and are not part of the process; the Department publishes its own fraud-warning material on this, and a lawyer can tell a family what is actually required of them and what is not.

What Kind of Option Might Apply

Experienced immigration attorneys tend to describe the work in this window as preparation and sequencing rather than filing — there is nothing to submit until the Department opens registration. The questions they raise with a family usually include these:

Which country of eligibility applies? Country of eligibility is not always the country of birth; in some circumstances a spouse’s or parent’s country of birth can be used. Whether an alternative basis is available to a particular person is a question for a lawyer looking at the family’s actual records.
Does the education or work history meet the requirement? The program has an education-or-experience requirement, and whether a foreign credential or a work record satisfies it is a judgment made on documents.
Who must be listed on the entry? Omitting a qualifying spouse or child has disqualified selectees in past years. Counsel can review who belongs on an entry and what documentation will be needed later.
How would this interact with a case already pending? For someone in Texas with a pending application, a prior denial, a removal history or a period out of status, an entry is not a standalone decision. A lawyer can explain how it sits alongside what is already on file.
What happens if selected? The processing path, the fiscal-year cutoff and the documents to begin gathering are worth understanding before a selection notice arrives rather than after.

No one reading this page can be told from here whether they are eligible, and nothing in this order makes any particular person eligible. What a lawyer can do is read one family’s facts and say what options actually exist.

Why Acting Quickly Can Matter

The useful dates here are short and public. Under the revised schedule the Department of State is to publish the registration dates by October 29, 2026 and to begin accepting entries by November 1, 2026, and the registration period is to stay open for about thirty days. A thirty-day window is a real constraint for a family that needs a passport number, a photograph that meets the Department’s specifications, or a document from another country before it can complete an entry, and those are the items that take time to obtain rather than time to fill in.

There is a second reason timing has weight in this particular year. The order requires processing of selected applications to be completed by September 30, 2027 at the latest, which is the end of the fiscal year, and that is a shorter runway than a normal diversity visa cycle provides. A family whose documents are already in order sits in a different position from one that starts gathering them after a selection notice.

None of that is a countdown, and it is not a reason to rush an entry that has a problem in it. It is a reason that a conversation with a lawyer now — while there is still time to order a civil document from abroad or sort out which country of eligibility applies — is more useful than the same conversation in December.