Ak-uniform hypergraphH= (V, E) is called ℓ-orientable if there is an assignment of each edgee∈Eto one of its verticesv∈esuch that no vertex is assigned more than ℓ edges. LetHn,m,kbe a hypergraph, drawn uniformly at random from the set of allk-uniform hypergraphs withnvertices andmedges. In this paper we establish the threshold for the ℓ-orientability ofHn,m,kfor allk⩾ 3 and ℓ ⩾ 2, that is, we determine a critical quantityc*k,ℓsuch that with probability 1 −o(1) the graphHn,cn,khas an ℓ-orientation ifc<c*k,ℓ, but fails to do so ifc>c*k,ℓ.Our result has various applications, including sharp load thresholds for cuckoo hashing, load balancing with guaranteed maximum load, and massive parallel access to hard disk arrays.