Which Form I-9 Edition Should You Use in 2026? Three Versions Are Valid — and Only One Expires July 31

Key takeaways

• What expires on July 31, 2026 is a version of the form — not the form. USCIS currently lists three versions as usable, and only one of them carries that date.
• The latest Form I-9 for 2026 is the 01/20/25 edition, and it shows an expiration date of 05/31/2027. That's what sits on the USCIS form page, last reviewed 06/03/2026.
• Two of the three usable versions share the same edition date — 08/01/23 — with two different expiration dates (05/31/2027 and 07/31/2026). Which is why the standard advice, check the edition date, cannot answer the question by itself.
• The date that answers it is the expiration date. On the PDF USCIS publishes today, the expiration is printed at the top of the page and the edition date at the bottom.
• Every statement of a July 31 obligation names the same group — employers running an electronic system: "Employers using an electronic version of Form I-9 must update their systems with the version that has the expiration date of 05/31/2027 by 07/31/2026." The date was set in August 2024, before the current edition existed, so it was never a deadline to adopt a new edition.
• The sentence aimed at everyone else is different: "Either form may be used until its respective expiration date."
• One thing this deadline doesn't close: E-Verify and the form can use different words for the same checkbox, and E-Verify ties that difference to "the form edition being used" — not to a date.
• Haven't hired anyone in the US yet? Then this is a bookmark, not a task. The trap doesn't expire with the form; it will be sitting there at your first hire.

The short answer: the latest Form I-9 for 2026 is the 01/20/25 edition — and two older versions are still valid

If you're trying to work out which Form I-9 edition you should be using before July 31, here is the whole answer in three lines.

The current edition is 01/20/25, and the copy USCIS publishes today shows an expiration date of 05/31/2027. Two earlier versions are also listed as usable — both carry the edition date 08/01/23, one expiring 05/31/2027 and one expiring 07/31/2026. The version that runs out next week is that last one.

So "the I-9 expires July 31" is a sentence about paper and PDFs, not about the requirement. If the blank form in your onboarding folder shows 07/31/2026 at the top, that copy is at the end of the window USCIS gave it. If it shows 05/31/2027, it isn't — whichever of the two edition dates is printed at the bottom.

If you haven't hired anyone in the United States yet, this is a two-minute bookmark rather than a task — nothing in this brief is something a company with no employees has to do this week. The reason to spend the two minutes is that the confusion doesn't get resolved on August 1. It gets narrower and stranger, and it will be waiting the first time you hand someone a form.

What actually changes on July 31, 2026

USCIS's own form page — last reviewed 06/03/2026 — sets out the current edition and then names what else you may use:

"Employers may also use the following previous editions: • Form I-9 with an 08/01/23 edition date, valid until its expiration date of 05/31/2027; and • Form I-9 with an 08/01/23 edition date, valid until its expiration date of 07/31/2026."

Read that twice, because it's the sentence the whole story hangs on: the same edition date appears twice, with two different expiration dates.

How the two-dates-one-edition situation happened

The order matters, and it's the part that gets flattened:

• August 2, 2024 — a USCIS I-9 Central news page headed "USCIS Extends Form I-9 Expiration Date" told employers to use the 08/01/23 edition, "which may have an expiration date of either 07/31/2026 or 05/31/2027," and then added the line that still governs the paper in your drawer: "Either form may be used until its respective expiration date." That extension is where two live expiration dates under one edition date come from.
• April 2, 2025 — E-Verify published "Minor Changes to Form I-9 and E-Verify Updates", announcing that "the revised Form I-9 with an edition date 01/20/25 and an expiration date 05/31/2027 is now available for download, while multiple previous editions remain valid until their respective expiration dates."
• Today — the USCIS form page lists the 01/20/25 edition as current and names those two previous editions.

Now notice what that sequence does to the 2024 page. Every sentence on it was accurate when it was written, and it's still one of the first things you'll land on — including an instruction, still sitting there in the present tense, that employers "must use the Form I-9 with the edition date of 08/1/23." That was last reviewed in August 2024, before an edition dated 01/20/25 existed. Read it on its own and you'll walk away believing the newest Form I-9 is the 08/01/23 edition, because when that page was written, it was.

Search the July 31 date and, in what we found, most of the write-ups compress all of this into a single sentence: USCIS extended the expiration date from July 31, 2026 to May 31, 2027. That sentence is true. It's also, for a lot of readers, the only sentence that survives — and it leaves out the thing that decides whether the specific file on your laptop still works.

Why "check the edition date" doesn't work here — and the 30-second check that does

The standard instruction for I-9 hygiene is to confirm the edition date, and USCIS tells you exactly where to find it: "You can find the edition date at the bottom of the page on the form and instructions."

The trouble is that on this particular deadline, the edition date is the one piece of information that can't resolve it. Two of the three usable versions are both stamped 08/01/23. One of them runs out on July 31 and one of them keeps going until May 2027. An employer who dutifully checks the bottom of the page, sees 08/01/23, and concludes "that's the old one, replace it" is half right — and an employer who sees 08/01/23 and concludes "that's the one USCIS told us to use" is half right too, because in August 2024 that was exactly the instruction.

There are two dates on the form, and only one of them answers the question. On the current PDF, the top of the page reads "Expires 05/31/2027" and the bottom reads "Form I-9 Edition 01/20/25." So:

1. Open the blank form you're actually about to use — the PDF on your drive, the printed stack in the drawer, or the template your onboarding tool renders.
2. Find the expiration date, and treat that as the verdict. 07/31/2026 means you're holding the version that runs out; 05/31/2027 means you're not.
3. Read the edition date at the bottom as a separate fact. It tells you which revision you have (01/20/25 or 08/01/23), which matters for the wording question below — but it isn't what decides whether the copy is still inside its window.
4. When in doubt, download a fresh copy from uscis.gov/i-9. The version published there today shows 05/31/2027, and re-downloading costs you nothing. Editions and expiration dates move; the page is the thing that stays current, not our summary of it.

If you complete I-9s in an electronic system, this deadline is explicitly yours

Everything above is about which copy is valid. Now the obligation — and here is the pattern worth noticing: every place these pages state a July 31 requirement, it arrives with the same kind of subject attached. An employer running an electronic system. Three statements, three sources, one subject.

From the USCIS form page:

"Employers using an electronic version of Form I-9 must update their systems with the version that has the expiration date of 05/31/2027 by 07/31/2026."

From the 2024 I-9 Central page — the oldest of the three, and the one that explains where the date itself came from:

"Employers are encouraged to update their electronic Forms I-9 systems to use the 05/31/2027, expiration date as soon as possible and must do so no later than July 31, 2026, the expiration date on the previously-issued Form I-9."

Read that last clause. July 31 isn't a deadline to adopt a new edition — it was set in August 2024, months before an edition dated 01/20/25 existed. It is simply the day the old printing runs out, converted into a systems requirement.

E-Verify attaches the same date to a different subject, and the difference is instructive. Its version is a parenthetical hanging off the expiring version itself: "Form I-9 (08/01/23 edition) that is valid until 07/31/2026 (Employers using this form must update their electronic systems with the 05/31/2027 expiration date by July 31, 2026.)" So USCIS scopes the deadline by how you produce the form — any electronic version — while E-Verify scopes it by which version you're producing. The two sets overlap heavily but aren't identical: an employer whose HR platform already renders 05/31/2027 sits inside the USCIS sentence and outside the E-Verify one.

Read the subject of those sentences, because a lot of the summary versions drop it. The instruction is addressed to employers running an electronic version of the form — the I-9 module in an HR platform, an onboarding tool, an e-signature workflow, a payroll suite that generates the form for new hires. If that's you, the practical translation is short: the thing that has to change by July 31 is your vendor's template — though the sentence is addressed to you, not to them. The action is a question to your provider — which expiration date does your I-9 render today? — asked before July 31 rather than after.

And if you're not in that group, the sentence that governs you is the other one, from the same government pages: "Either form may be used until its respective expiration date." Paper stack in the drawer, PDF you filled in by hand — each copy is good until the date printed on it. That is a narrower statement than a blanket instruction to adopt the new form by July 31, and the difference is worth holding onto, because it tells you what to do with a half-used box of forms: check the top of the page, and if it says 07/31/2026, retire it before August rather than assuming a general amnesty.

What July 31 doesn't fix: the form and E-Verify use different words

Here's the part that outlasts the deadline, and it's the reason this brief is worth reading even if you're months away from your first hire.

The 01/20/25 revision was small by design. E-Verify described it as "minor changes to Form I-9 … to align with statutory language," and listed what moved:

"Key updates include: • Renaming the fourth checkbox in Section 1 to 'An alien authorized to work' • Revising the descriptions of two List B documents in the Lists of Acceptable Documents • Adding appropriate statutory language and a revised DHS Privacy Notice to the instructions"

That first bullet is a wording change to the box an employee checks when they attest to work authorization. In the current PDF, that box reads "An alien authorized to work until ___ (exp. date, if any)."

Here's the detail that decides how you should handle this, and it's the reason "just match the words" is bad advice. E-Verify writes that employees and employers "may continue to see 'A noncitizen authorized to work' on Form I-9" — but that string is E-Verify's own dropdown label, not form text. E-Verify says as much when it describes its own change: "The selection 'A noncitizen authorized to work' will be updated to 'An alien authorized to work.'" On an archived copy of the 08/01/23 edition, the fourth checkbox actually reads "A noncitizen (other than Item Numbers 2. and 3. above) authorized to work." So there are three phrasings in play — the old form's, the new form's, and E-Verify's shorthand — and no two of them are identical.

Which is exactly why E-Verify spells out what to do rather than leaving employers to pattern-match:

"If an employee attests on Form I-9 as 'A noncitizen authorized to work,' the employer must select 'An alien authorized to work' in E-Verify."

"E-Verify cases will display 'An alien authorized to work,' while employees and employers may continue to see 'A noncitizen authorized to work' on Form I-9, depending on the form edition being used."

Now put two of the government's own statements side by side — this next step is our reading, not a sentence either agency wrote. E-Verify pins the old wording to "the form edition being used," not to a calendar date. And USCIS's list keeps an 08/01/23-edition form usable until 05/31/2027. Those two facts together mean the mismatch isn't a July 31 problem that resolves next week: it has a horizon out to May 2027, for as long as older-edition forms stay in circulation.

The practical consequence is one sentence long, and it's the single most useful thing to carry out of this brief: if the form in front of you says the employee is a noncitizen authorized to work, select "An alien authorized to work" in E-Verify — same status, different vintage of wording, and E-Verify has said so in writing. Nobody needs to memorize an edition history for that. They just need to have been told once that the mismatch is expected, so they don't stop and assume something is broken.

What this means if you're about to make your first US hire

Strip away the version numbers and the founder version of this is short.

The risk isn't the rule — it's the file. Most first-time hiring runs on something that was saved months earlier: a PDF a lawyer sent, a form pulled from a search result, a template inside whatever tool you bought for payroll. A deadline doesn't reach into those copies and update them for you. Pull the form fresh at the moment you need it, and the whole problem disappears.

Ask the vendor, not the internet. If a platform generates the form for you, the July 31 obligation quoted above is pointed squarely at that setup. It's a one-line support ticket.

Expect words that don't line up, and don't improvise. The checkbox wording is a known, documented gap with instructions attached. The failure mode isn't picking the wrong box — it's a founder seeing two phrasings, assuming something is broken, and inventing a workaround.

And keep this separate from the other paperwork question. Bringing on your first person also raises a set of tax-form questions that run on entirely different rules — who gets which form, at what dollar figure, on what clock. We untangled the two that founders mix up most in the 1099-K threshold for 2026 versus the new 1099-NEC $2,000 figure. Different axis, different agency, same week of your life.

The address angle: hiring adds correspondents, and most of them still write letters

One structural note if you're running a US company from outside the US.

Employing someone turns a one-person entity into an organization with correspondents — agencies, insurers, payroll and benefits providers, registrations you didn't have before. The I-9 itself is a good illustration of the shape this takes. USCIS's instructions to employers are not only to complete the form but to "Retain and store Form I-9 for three years after the date of hire, or for one year after employment is terminated, whichever is later" and to "Make their forms available for inspection if requested by authorized U.S. government officials from the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Labor, or Department of Justice."

That is a records obligation with an inspection trigger attached — the kind of thing that reaches you where your filings say you are, on someone else's schedule rather than yours.

If that address is currently a friend's apartment, a first-year coworking desk, or a place you no longer visit, the first hire is a good moment to fix it — rather than the moment you find out. For the US side of that, our partner save office handles addresses and mail — Auteur doesn't operate the US service directly — and there's an overview on our US virtual office page.

FAQ

What is the latest Form I-9 for 2026? The 01/20/25 edition, which shows an expiration date of 05/31/2027. That's the edition listed on the USCIS form page (last reviewed 06/03/2026), and it's what you get by downloading the form from uscis.gov/i-9 today. Two earlier versions are also listed as usable, both with an 08/01/23 edition date: one valid until 05/31/2027, one valid until 07/31/2026. USCIS introduces those with the line "Employers may also use the following previous editions." Editions change, so confirm on that page rather than on any summary of it, including this one.

Which Form I-9 edition should I use if the copy I have expires 07/31/2026? Replace it before August, and get the replacement from the USCIS form page. The 08/01/23-edition form carrying a 07/31/2026 expiration is the one version whose stated window closes on that date — USCIS's rule is that "Either form may be used until its respective expiration date," and that one's date is July 31. Note what this doesn't mean: it isn't the end of every 08/01/23 form. The other 08/01/23 variant carries 05/31/2027 and remains on the list of previous editions employers may use. Check the expiration date on the copy in front of you, not the edition date.

Do I need to redo I-9 forms that are already completed after July 31, 2026? That's a different question from the one these pages answer, and we're not going to stretch them into it. The USCIS and E-Verify materials behind this brief address which blank versions of the form employers may use, and by when — plus a specific instruction for employers running an electronic version. They aren't a statement about files you've already completed and stored. If you need a position on existing records, take it to immigration counsel or to USCIS's I-9 Central rather than inferring one from a form-availability notice.

Are I-9 forms still required? Yes. USCIS's form page states it directly: "All U.S. employers must properly complete Form I-9 for every individual they hire for employment in the United States. This includes citizens and aliens." Nothing in the July 31 date touches that — the July 31 material is about which version employers may use, and USCIS publishes a current edition expiring in 2027, a list of previous editions employers may also use, and an instruction to employers with electronic systems. How the requirement applies to a specific hire — timing, exceptions, remote completion — is a legal question worth taking to counsel, but the requirement itself isn't in doubt.

Why do two different forms have the same edition date? Because the extension recorded on the USCIS I-9 Central page (last reviewed 08/02/2024) moved the expiration date without issuing a new edition. That page told employers to use the 08/01/23 edition, "which may have an expiration date of either 07/31/2026 or 05/31/2027." So the edition date stayed put on both, and the expiration date became the only thing separating them. The 01/20/25 edition arrived afterward, announced on April 2, 2025 — which is why a page that predates it can be entirely accurate and still leave you one version behind.

Bottom line

Three versions of Form I-9 are usable right now. One of them stops on July 31, 2026, and it is identified by its expiration date, not by its edition date — because two of the three share the edition date 08/01/23. The current edition is 01/20/25, expiring 05/31/2027, and downloading it fresh resolves the entire question in the time it takes to click.

The one hard obligation attached to July 31 is written to employers using an electronic version of the form, whose systems must carry the 05/31/2027 version by that date. For everyone else, the operative sentence is the older, quieter one: each form may be used until its own expiration date.

And the thing that doesn't end next week: while older-edition forms remain in circulation — one of them usable until May 2027 — the checkbox an employee ticks on paper and the option an employer picks in E-Verify are worded differently, and neither matches the other exactly. E-Verify has already published which option to select. Knowing that in advance is worth more than beating a deadline.

This is general information about federal employment eligibility verification forms, not legal advice. Form editions, expiration dates, and agency instructions change — confirm the current version on the USCIS form page, and take questions about your own hiring or completed records to a qualified professional.