The US State Department has resumed issuing Diversity Visas (DV-2026) following a federal court order, ending an eight-month suspension that had left thousands of lottery winners worldwide including nearly 3,933 Nepalis unable to complete their green card applications with a hard deadline now bearing down.
The State Department confirmed that visa issuance resumed as of August 28, 2026, in line with a court order in Medani et al. v. Trump et al., a case filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of 664 Diversity Visa selectee families. The ruling followed the government's December 23, 2025 announcement that it was pausing all diversity visa issuances to review the programme's screening and vetting procedures. In a separate case, Ivanov v. Trump, filed in the District of Columbia by 1,622 selectees from 72 countries including Nepal, a federal judge ruled on August 25 that the pause along with a related US Citizenship and Immigration Services processing hold was unlawful, though the relief in that case was limited to the named plaintiffs and their immediate family members.
Why the deadline matters more than the ruling
The Diversity Visa programme operates on a fixed fiscal-year cycle set by federal statute: any DV-2026 visa not issued by midnight on September 30, 2026 is permanently forfeited, with no rollover to next year's lottery and no exceptions for cases still in process. The judge in the Ivanov case reportedly called September 30 an "unforgiving deadline," noting the unusually time-sensitive stakes involved.
That means the court order restarting the programme does not, by itself, guarantee anyone a visa it only reopens a window that closes in roughly three weeks. Nepal's regional cutoff number for September, the threshold below which a selectee's case number must fall to be eligible to proceed, was set at 13,500, according to the State Department's Visa Bulletin, an increase from 13,000 in July. Of the 3,933 Nepali selectees chosen from roughly 129,516 winners drawn globally, only those with case numbers below that threshold and who have completed their DS-260 application, medical exam and consular interview, or the equivalent Adjustment of Status process if already in the US are positioned to actually receive a visa before the deadline.
