The Green Card Lottery registration period will continue until November 2, 2013, at which time, the first part of the DV 2015 will end.
The sooner you apply for registration in DV 2015, the sooner you will be able to prepare for the other parts of the Green Card Lottery.
The first big date after the end of the registration period is the day on which the results for the lottery drawing are announced. This is expected to occur on May 1, 2014.
If you filed your application correctly and there were no errors, you would have received a confirmation number at the end of registration.
The confirmation number is a very important part of the entire process as it is the only way for you to find out if you have won the Green Card Lottery. The U.S. State Department will not contact you with the results, rather, you are responsible for checking in May of 2014.
The Visa Bulletin
You can check the status of your application by going to the State Department’s official website for the Diversity Visa Lottery and entering your confirmation number along with some other token information from the registration application.
Once you have entered this information into the online tool, you will receive another number if you have won the Green Card Lottery.
It is important to know that green cards are not automatically granted to winners of the green card lottery. Rather, the green card lottery is a drawing which gives potential immigrants the chance to apply for a green card.
The number that the online application gives to the winner of the Green Card Lottery can be looked at as a kind of place holder. It will contain an abbreviation of their continent followed by a number.
Applicants will then check their number against the Visa Bulletin to see if it is their turn to apply for an immigration visa.