FAFSA Articles

"Under the Hood" is a series highlighting behind-the-scenes technical work that's improving the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) experience.

The FAFSA team's goal is to ensure students and contributors can complete the FAFSA form and get accurate determinations of student aid. Large-scale testing across the systems that power the FAFSA form and process applicants' data is a key strategy for achieving that goal.

Until this year, we relied primarily on manual testing to catch and fix bugs before releases. Since the FAFSA experience is made up of many systems, setting up manual test data took weeks, and full manual testing required a month or more. The effort required to run comprehensive end-to-end testing—from account creation to Institutional Student Information Record, or ISIR, generation—meant that this testing occurred once annually.

FSA began building its capacity for automated testing in July 2024. Along with manual testing, it helps development teams catch and fix bugs quickly. As a result, they can launch software reliably and release new features frequently. In the case of the FAFSA form, this also results in more accurate ISIR data, leading to faster aid determinations.

Over the past year, a team dedicated to automated testing has been expanding and strengthening our use of this tool. Thanks to their work:

• Tests cover the flow of data across all systems, rather than only within individual systems;
• Setting up test data now takes only seconds;
• Tests run in minutes;
• Tests run daily on all code changes;
• Tests run on code not covered by manual testing; and
• Vendor teams also write automated tests for every new feature.

One highlight is the new ISIR Validator. This robust internal tool checks FAFSA data against required specifications and business rules. By comparing the Validator's results with ISIRs generated by our FAFSA processing system during testing, we catch errors daily and prevent bugs from reaching users. This more robust and extensive testing practice means:

• Fewer bugs reaching production;
• Faster detection of bugs and bug fixes;
• More reliable fixes to bugs;
• Increased confidence that new features will work as expected; and
• Better and more repeatable documentation of test cases.

In the coming year, you should see continued fruits of this labor in a steadily improving FAFSA experience.

The first step to finishing a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form is creating a StudentAid.gov account, which is often a student or contributor’s first online interaction with Federal Student Aid (FSA). But until recently, this process wasn’t so simple. For most of the 2025–26 award year, users creating a new account faced eight pages and 23 required fields. The process took nearly 11 minutes to finish. About 37% of users who started the process didn’t complete it.

During last year's FAFSA cycle, FSA’s Account Team researched ways to improve the user flow. They reviewed analytics and watched many people navigate the account creation process. Today, we are pleased to release several improvements that address pain points identified by this research.

The new process has fewer steps and is designed to take half the time it used to. Now users move seamlessly from account creation to other tasks, like completing their FAFSA form. Together, these updates simplify the experience of creating an account. Some highlights:

• Users face only six pages and 12 required fields. Challenge questions, backup code copy confirmation, and duplicate fields have been removed.
• Users choose their preferred language at the first step. Previously, they picked a language at step four and had to restart the flow.
• Users can copy and paste data from a password manager. No more risk of entering incorrect data by hand!
• Users can claim mobile phone numbers by verifying the number through multifactor authentication. This prevents the need to call the help desk if their number had already been linked to a different account.
• All users must now provide an address when creating an account. This simplifies the log-in process.

These updates follow recently released improvements to the account recovery process. A redesigned username lookup tool and straightforward error messages make it easier to find an existing account. If a user already has a StudentAid.gov account, a two-step recovery process tells them instantly.

We celebrate these improvements and are hopeful they will positively impact users’ StudentAid.gov experience. We’ll report back on outcomes over the next few months.

Today we are pleased to announce that we have officially hit 2 million FAFSA submissions, just one month after we launched the 2026-27 form to the public. This is the earliest in the award cycle that we have hit this milestone in recent years, setting students and families up for early success in their financial aid journey.

Of these 2 million submissions:

• 23,000 submitted by students from the foster care system
• 15,000 submitted by active-duty military and 36,000 from veterans
• 21,000 submitted by students with children of their own
• 124,000 users have successfully submitted a correction

Additionally, user feedback remains positive: 96% of applicants were satisfied or highly satisfied with their experience, and 91% reported it took a reasonable amount of time to complete.

We continue to serve our partners, who are critical in helping to process and administer financial aid for students. As of today, we have delivered over 10 million Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) to over 5,300 institutions and all 50 state agencies plus Washington, D.C.

As always, we are grateful for the many community organizations, schools, institutions, counselors, and advisors who support students every day and make these achievements possible.

Finally, as we celebrate these milestones, we continue to work to make the FAFSA form and its processing smoother for all our users. Visit our Product Log page to learn more about recent improvements to the FAFSA form, StudentAid.gov account, and FAFSA processing experiences.

We are excited to announce that the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form is now live and available to the public at fafsa.gov.

The early launch of the FAFSA form is a major milestone in our collective effort to ensure that students have timely access to financial aid. We are grateful to all community organizations, school districts, institutions, students, and families who supported beta testing. During this year’s beta testing period —where more than 40,000 students and families participated—we gathered valuable feedback to strengthen the FAFSA experience ahead of the public launch. We look forward to continuing to improve the FAFSA form and processing experience throughout the year.

As always, we appreciate the community's efforts to encourage as many students as possible to submit the FAFSA form. Please use the ready-to-use email and social media language below to help with outreach efforts.

Sample Email to Students & Families

Subject: The 2026–27 FAFSA Form is Live – Don’t Miss Out on Aid!

Dear Students and Families, We’re excited to share that the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form is now open at fafsa.gov.

Completing the FAFSA form is a key to accessing federal, state, and institutional financial aid that can help cover the cost of college or career training. We strongly encourage all students to complete the form as soon as possible.

✅ Start your FAFSA form now: FAFSA.gov

📅 The earlier you apply, the better your chances of maximizing aid. If you need help or have questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to your school counselor or college advisor.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]

📱 Sample Social Media Posts

Facebook / Instagram / LinkedIn:

🎓 Big news! The 2026–27 FAFSA® form is now live! Apply now at FAFSA.gov to access grants, loans, and work-study that can help you pay for college or career training. The earlier you apply, the more opportunities you may unlock. Don’t wait — apply today! #FAFSA #CollegeAccess #FinancialAid

X (formerly Twitter):

🚨 The 2026–27 #FAFSA form is live! Apply at FAFSA.gov to access grants, loans, and work-study. Don’t miss out — file early! 💸 #FinancialAid #CollegeBound

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) is pleased to announce the launch of Open Beta, which makes online beta testing of the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form available to all users. During the Open Beta period, any user can immediately start and submit a 2026–27 FAFSA form at StudentAid.gov/joinbeta. Users will no longer have to request access and wait to be admitted to participate in the beta.

Additionally, any user who previously requested access to the beta and has not yet been admitted will be admitted today and notified by email soon. All users can start the 2026-27 FAFSA beta form at StudentAid.gov/joinbeta. During this beta period, ED will continue to monitor the form’s performance under increased volumes. Just like other beta periods, ED will process FAFSA forms and send them to institutions of higher education and states.

Help us spread the word about Open Beta to students and families! Below, find updated email, newsletter, and social media language to promote to students and families.

Email/Newsletter Blurb #1

The U.S. Department of Education has opened online beta testing the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form to all students and families. Now, you can start and submit a 2026–27 FAFSA beta form immediately. This is an excellent opportunity for you to complete your FAFSA form ahead of schedule and move one step closer to accessing federal student aid. Get started today at StudentAid.gov/joinbeta.

Email/Newsletter Blurb #2

✨ Be one of the first to submit the 2026–-27 FAFSA® form! ✨

The U.S. Department of Education has opened online beta testing of the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form to everyone!

By joining beta testing, you can do the following:

• Submit your 2026–27 FAFSA form early
• Get a head start on the financial aid process
• Be part of shaping the future of the FAFSA experience

📲 Sign up: StudentAid.gov/joinbeta

Sample social media language

• Want to help improve the FAFSA form? The 2026–27 FAFSA beta is now open to everyone. When you sign up, you’ll be able to complete, sign, and submit your 2026–27 FAFSA form early. Get started today: StudentAid.gov/joinbeta
• Did you know? The U.S. Department of Education has made the 2026–27 FAFSA form available to everyone for beta testing! Get started today: StudentAid.gov/joinbeta

We also encourage partners to follow and repost beta content from the Office of Federal Student Aid social media channels:

• X (Formerly Twitter)
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

On Aug. 29 the Department unintentionally introduced an error that caused approximately 10,000 students who qualified for minimum Pell to have the Pell flag improperly set to null on the 2025-26 Individual Student Institutional Record (ISIR) when the students were in fact eligible. The minimum Pell flag was set properly but the overall Pell Eligibility flag was not for impacted students.

The Department corrected this bug in a release on the morning of Sept. 9. The 10,000 impacted records will be reprocessed with a reprocessing code of 01 the afternoon of Sept. 9 and schools will receive updated ISIRs.

We apologize for this error and for the resulting confusion and stress during a busy time. We greatly appreciate the collaboration and support of the schools that helped us work through this issue. We are in the process of conducting a thorough review of this incident and identifying ways to improve our technology development processes, including in the area of automated testing. This is a top priority for the Department, and while we continue to make progress, we still are not where we need to be. Thank you for your patience, and please continue to send feedback.

Over 7,000 students have already requested access to Beta 2! We invite all partners to encourage students and families to sign up at www.StudentAid.gov/joinbeta. Please use this ready-to-use email, newsletter, and social media language to help spread the word.

Email/Newsletter Blurb #1

The U.S. Department of Education is beta testing the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form before it goes live to the public by Oct. 1. Through September, any student can request to participate online. Students who are invited to participate will receive an email notification and can complete and submit the 2026–27 FAFSA form. This is an excellent opportunity for students and families to complete their FAFSA form ahead of schedule and move one step closer to accessing federal student aid.

Request access at StudentAid.gov/joinbeta.

Email/Newsletter Blurb #2

✨ Be one of the first to submit the 2026-27 FAFSA® form! ✨

The U.S. Department of Education is looking for students to help test the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form before it’s released to by Oct. 1.

By joining beta testing, students can:

• Submit your 2026–27 FAFSA form early
• Get a head start on the financial aid process
• Be part of shaping the future of the FAFSA experience

📲 Sign up: StudentAid.gov/joinbeta

Sample social media language

• Want to help improve the FAFSA form? You can now request access to join the 2026–27 FAFSA beta. If you’re selected, you’ll be able to complete, sign, and submit your 2026–27 FAFSA form early. Request access here: StudentAid.gov/joinbeta
• Did you know? The U.S. Department of Education has made the 2026–27 FAFSA form available early for beta testing! Request to join the FAFSA beta today at StudentAid.gov/joinbeta

We also encourage partners to follow and repost beta content from the Office of Federal Student Aid social media channels: 

•  X (Formerly Twitter) 
• Facebook 
• Instagram 
• LinkedIn 

We are pleased to announce the launch of Beta 2! This week, we admitted the first 1,000 students from the waitlist. Any student or contributor can now request to participate in the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) beta.

Beta 1 Recap

Last week, we capped off our Beta 1 events. 13 organizations in Arizona, California, Florida, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C. hosted in-person and virtual beta testing events. We sent more than 20 FAFSA team members across the country to engage with students, families, and partners; monitor submissions; and gather feedback. We closed out a busy two weeks by welcoming U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to join over 1,200 students and families at an event in Ft. Lauderdale hosted by Broward Bridge 2 Life. During Beta 1, over 1,000 students and families successfully submitted their 2026–27 FAFSA forms, with another 1,000+ in progress. Beta events went smoothly with no major blockers or critical issues found. The following improvements have been or will be made before Oct. 1 in response to feedback gathered during the events.

1. Updated a confusing error message for users who reentered an incorrect Social Security number during account creation.

2. Fixed a bug causing users’ accounts to be put back into a “pending” status after editing certain fields in their account settings.

3. Students who incorrectly entered their personal information three times and did not pass real-time identity validation were locked out for 24 hours before they could try again. We will decrease this lockout period to 30 minutes and increase the number of attempts required to trigger the lockout period.

4. We will clarify the user experience on the contributor invite page so that students are prompted to successfully send the invitation before continuing to the next page.

Thank you to our partners for their time and dedication to hosting students and families:

• Arizona Board of Regents and Corona Del Sol High School (Tempe, AZ)
• Broward Bridge 2 Life and University of Miami (Broward County, FL)
• KIPP DC Public Charter Schools (Washington, D.C.)
• College Track D.C. - MD (Washington, D.C. and Prince George's County, MD)
• Friendship Public Charter School (Washington, D.C.)
• Educational Opportunity Center (Washington, D.C.)
• Get 2 College (Jackson, Mississippi)
• Santa Barbara Foundation and Santa Maria High School[SA1]  (Santa Maria, CA)
• Opportunity Resource Services (Dallas, TX)
• Goucher College (Goucher, MD)

Finally, thank you to the University of Miami, Arizona State University, Trinity Washington University, and East Central Community College for helping us to validate FAFSA submission data.

Today marks the launch of Beta 1 for the 2026–27 FAFSA® form! Over the next two weeks, more than 20 community organizations, institutions, and school districts across four cities will host events where students and their families can complete a beta version of the 2026–27 FAFSA form. Submissions will include the real FAFSA form and students will not need to resubmit later.

Federal Student Aid staff and our contractors will be on-site to support our partners, troubleshoot any issues that may impact completion, and gather valuable feedback to help improve the experience. We’re also working closely with institutions to validate that submissions are delivered successfully and accurately.

What’s Next
By early September, Beta 2 will expand access online to a broader audience. Anyone will be able to sign up, and we’ll admit groups of users to complete a 2026–27 Beta FAFSA form throughout the month. We’ll share details and the launch date for Beta 2 later this month.

More information about 2026–27 Beta testing, including considerations for institutions and state agencies, can be found in Electronic Announcement APP-25-18.

In the meantime, we’ll be sharing regular updates and event recaps from Beta 1. Stay tuned this week for updates!
 

The Nov. 21 announcement of the general availability of the 2025–26 FAFSA form marked the end of the beta testing period. The Department is grateful for the support of all participants, with a special note of thanks to the community-based organizations and institutions of higher education that recruited beta participants and guided them along the financial aid process. We learned significant lessons from the beta testing process about the 2025–26 FAFSA form and incorporated what we learned into software updates. We also learned a great deal about how to run a beta test at this scale. The FAFSA team is gathering this week to share what we learned, collect best practices, and plan for future improvements. Although there is significant work still ahead to ensure all students can access the aid they need to get a higher education, we are pleased by the successful launch of the 2025–26 FAFSA form.

This website, Beta Central, will remain available as an archive. We will no longer add new posts or data on this page. Data about 2025–26 form submissions will continue to be updated and posted elsewhere.

Thank you for following the beta process and for your support during the development, testing, and release of the 2025–26 FAFSA form.

The Department today officially released the 2025–26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®), 10 days before our Dec. 1 goal. The online FAFSA form and additional resources are available to all students and families at fafsa.gov, and the Department is processing submissions and sending them to schools. The paper form is also now available for students to complete and submit.

The Department also announced increased call center support, which include access to FAFSA-only hours on evenings and weekends.

We will post more information here soon about the future of Beta Central. In the meantime, thank you for following and supporting our journey to a successful launch of the 2025–26 FAFSA form.

As of 10:30 a.m. ET, more than 50,000 2025–26 FAFSA forms have been successfully submitted since the opening of Expanded Beta 4 yesterday.

The Department is seeing significant traffic from students and families now that the online 2025–26 FAFSA form is available to all users through Expanded Beta 4. On Nov. 18 alone, approximately 98,000 FAFSA forms were started and approximately 42,000 forms were submitted. The number of in-progress forms is normal for the first day of wide availability and we expect will come down as contributors accept invitations and complete their portion of the form.

Call center hold times were under one minute for the entire day. No calls were throttled, and the abandonment rate was under 0.1%.

The Department surveys users when they complete the form. One question asks for user satisfaction, giving the option of one to five stars. The vast majority of users, 96%, chose four or five stars, with 80% rating their experience with the 2025–26 FAFSA form five out of five stars.

We remain on track to end the beta testing and announce the official release of the 2025–26 FAFSA form in the coming days.

The Department has entered Expanded Beta 4, which means the online 2025–26 FAFSA form is now available to all students and families. Interested students and contributors can now fill out and submit the online 2025–26 FAFSA form. Students and their contributors should sign up now for a StudentAid.gov account if they do not already have one but otherwise do not need to register in advance to participate. Consistent with widespread software best practices, the FAFSA form will remain in beta while the Department monitors its performance under the increased test load. Just like other beta periods, the Department will process FAFSA forms and send them to institutions of higher education and states. Students who submit a FAFSA form during any beta period, including Beta 4 and Expanded Beta 4, will be able to make any needed corrections to the form and will not need to submit a subsequent 2025–26 FAFSA form.

Students and families interested in completing the online 2025–26 FAFSA form can do so at fafsa.gov.

The Department will make the decision to end the beta testing and announce the official release of the 2025–26 FAFSA form based on platform stability, customer satisfaction, and contact center capacity, no later than Dec. 1.

Building on the successful results from the first three beta periods, Beta 4 opened yesterday. Since Oct. 1, more than 14,000 students have successfully submitted their 2025–26 FAFSA forms. The Department has successfully processed the forms and sent records to schools and states, and we have found no critical bugs during the beta testing period. As Beta 4 begins, the FAFSA system is working end-to-end.

Before the end of the month, the Department will expand Beta 4 to all interested students and families, consistent with industry best practices. Beta 4 will have two phases: Beta 4 and Expanded Beta 4.

Beta 4: Throughout the beta testing period, the Department has worked with members of the college access and financial aid community—community-based organizations, high schools, institutions of higher education, and others—to test the 2025–26 FAFSA form prior to its official release. Starting yesterday, thousands of additional students recruited by selected organizations and institutions have been able to complete and submit a 2025–26 FAFSA form as part of the Beta 4 testing period. Beta 4 builds on and expands the work done in Beta 3 with a new group of students and contributors and through the same invite-only process the Department followed in the first three beta testing periods.

Expanded Beta 4: Before the end of the month, the Department will open Beta 4 to any interested student or family. This means that any individual who wants to access the online form as part of the Beta 4 testing period will be able to do so on the FAFSA website. During that time, we will continue to carefully monitor the FAFSA form, overall system performance, and support operations such as our contact center, and adjust operations as needed. This will allow the Department to test the FAFSA system with higher volumes of users, while giving students an opportunity to submit 2025–26 FAFSA forms before Dec. 1. The Department will continue to provide regular updates to users and stakeholders on this page.

Once the Department has determined that the FAFSA system is operating smoothly with high volumes of users, we will exit beta testing and announce the official release of the 2025–26 FAFSA form. As we have announced previously, this will happen by Dec. 1.

In the process of adding Beta 4 participants Tuesday, an issue was introduced that blocked access to the 2025–26 FAFSA form for all beta users. This issue was resolved Wednesday morning and all users invited to participate in the beta testing process can now access the form.

This issue was specific to the mechanism for granting beta access and had no impact on the FAFSA form itself. As the access controls required for the beta process will not be used once the form is generally available to the public, the Department is not concerned about this issue reappearing. Furthermore, the Department does not intend to make any additional changes to the FAFSA codebase before the general availability of the 2025–26 form to all students and families.

Department staff were onsite to support seven Beta 3 events this week, including events hosted by community-based organizations, institutions of higher education, and a school district. These events were the first opportunity Department staff had to observe FAFSA completion since the release of a set of bug fixes on Oct. 27. More information about those fixes is available on this page.

The changes deployed on Oct. 27 represent improvements across the FAFSA experience, but software updates can introduce new issues–a dynamic referred to as “regression” in software development. At one Beta 3 event this week, Department staff noticed that some students that attended foreign high schools were experiencing challenges proceeding through their form.

Onsite Department staff worked with team members at the control room to put in place an immediate update that allows these students to proceed. While this regression did not fully block students, the scale of the impact made solving it important, as 2% of 2024–25 FAFSA filers attended a foreign high school and the issue would have made filling out the form much harder for them.

The Department continues to be grateful to the organizations and students who are participating in the 2025–26 FAFSA beta.

Beta 3 expanded access to the 2025–26 FAFSA form to more than 25,000 students on Nov. 1. The Department is working with 49 organizations to reach students, including community-based organizations, state and local agencies, high schools, school districts, and institutions of higher education.

While many of the organizations are hosting their own events to support FAFSA completion, participants can complete the form without attending an event. The largest single date of FAFSA submission was Nov. 1 when Beta 3 students first gained access. Across the beta testing process more than 10,000 2025–26 FAFSA forms have been submitted, with more than 45,000 Institutional Student Information Records generated for schools.

The Department remains committed to ensuring the FAFSA form works for everyone. Among the many populations that the Department is tracking, there have been FAFSA forms submitted by a variety of students and families, including but not limited to approximately

• 300 students experiencing homelessness;
• 80 students actively serving in the military;
• 500 married students;
• 560 students who have a contributor without a Social Security number;
• 70 students with parents who are unmarried and live together; and
• 65 students with dependent children.

The Department continues to track zero critical bugs discovered during the beta testing process.

Backend bugs are generally not listed on the FAFSA Issue Alerts page or in the Technical Frequently Asked Questions and Known Issues guide because they often do not have a noticeable impact visible to users. These issues are still important to resolve, and the Department retired a series of them with the Oct. 27 software release.

A common theme of these issues is the complicated integration among systems at the Department and with outside agencies. These integrations allow for a faster and more efficient FAFSA experience when they work well, but also create additional points of failure when issues arise. On Oct. 27, the Department fixed the following issues:

• In rare circumstances a request to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for information about an applicant’s status would fail. This was caused by a user typing blank spaces at the end of their name. The Department would manually remove spaces and resubmit later, but this led to delays in some cases.
• When a parent with the “Other Parent” role signed a paper application, the internal record of the signature source was left blank. This had no impact on the student or parent, but created inaccurate data for internal tracking systems, making it harder to understand user behavior.
• Data files that sync user information across different Department systems were not being automatically transmitted for contributors without Social Security numbers who were in pending status for identity verification. This could lead to a delay in being able to complete their portion of the FAFSA form while the system caught up.

Additionally, the Department made a series of standard security upgrades, including implementing standard upgrade patches to systems.

During the Oct. 27 software release, the Department resolved a series of issues that impacted institutions of higher education (IHEs).

On Oct. 27 the Department fixed an issue

• that sent Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) to the wrong financial aid office within an IHE due to a confusing student experience (for instance, a law school office instead of the undergraduate office);
• where ISIRs in rejected status would occasionally be missing the proper umbrella comment code, which made the rejection determination difficult for IHEs; and
• that caused dependent students who express interest in unsubsidized loans to have an incorrect reject code indicating that parental information is missing, potentially leading IHE staff to collect unnecessary information.

We are grateful to our IHE partners who continue to make their voices heard about the improvements to the FAFSA process that will help them better support their students.

Issues that impacted families were posted on this page yesterday and issues that impacted backend systems will be posted tomorrow.

On Oct. 27, the Department released changes to the software code that fixed a series of bugs. Many of these issues were minor and impacted only a small number of users, but some have been noted for several months. We will continue to list issues and provide status updates on the FAFSA Issue Alerts page and in the Technical Frequently Asked Questions and Known Issues guide and bug fixes will be reflected in these resources.

The issues resolved on Oct. 27 can be classified into three groups: family-facing, school-facing, and backend. The following four are family-facing issues that are significant for either impacting a large number of users or, without workarounds, blocking completion for any number of users:

The Department fixed an issue

• where an applicant or contributor would be required to re-provide their signature because any other applicant or contributor updated their data;
• where applicants with specific parameters were incorrectly asked to provide assets, which can sometimes require reprocessing of the form;
• that was preventing successful submission of the FAFSA form for users who have a military Army Post Office (APO) or Fleet Post Office (FPO) address; and
• that was preventing applicants from inviting contributors with the last name of "Null", which blocked the submission of applications.

In future posts we will detail the school-facing and backend issues that were resolved. We are grateful to beta participants who helped us better understand many of these bugs through their testing.

The FUTURE Act allows the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to disclose certain federal tax information (FTI) to the Department to populate FAFSA information automatically. This data transfer makes the form easier to fill out and increases the data accuracy.

As part of the beta testing, the Department has been working with the IRS to manually confirm that the FTI is accurate. The first test was in September, before the opening of the beta, with a sample of 2024–25 FAFSA forms to confirm the test itself was set up properly. Since then, the Department and IRS have tested forms submitted during Beta 1 in early October. On Monday—for Beta 2—the Department and IRS analyzed approximately 1,800 Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) and confirmed that the FTI matched the data in IRS systems for each applicant.

ISIRs represent a final product of student and contributor data after those entries make their way through several systems. Confirming their accuracy with original IRS data gives the Department a high degree of confidence that the FAFSA process is working as expected.

The Department also worked with multiple institutions of higher education (IHEs) to manually verify the data in the ISIRs they received. All student data in the ISIRs matched IHE records.

The Department has found zero critical bugs during the beta testing process and is on track for the general availability of the 2025–26 FAFSA form on or before Dec. 1.

The Department continues to hear valuable feedback from participants in the beta testing process about the 2025–26 FAFSA form and is adjusting our approach based on the ideas and suggestions of stakeholders. As one of 16 organizations participating in Beta 2, College Possible Minnesota has recruited students to complete the 2025–26 FAFSA form and supported the students and their families along the way.

BG Tucker, senior director of programs, has been working with students to complete FAFSA forms for over a decade. After hosting in-person events and working with students remotely as part of the beta process, she feels optimistic that this cycle is on track to open to the full public on or before Dec. 1. “It feels like there is a concerted effort to change,” she notes, “Last year, we might only have one completion from an event with 30 families; this year, during the beta we saw significantly more completions. We had over 35 during our after-hours event.”

Isaiah Allen, senior director of external relations, is heartened by the strong interest from students, which “will go a long way to reversing the narrative and reestablishing confidence in the system. What we saw when it came to student completion was really high.”

Still, there is work to be done. Tucker notes that FSA’s communication for the beta could be improved. "A lot of time the language that FSA uses is very practitioner-focused, and not student-focused.” While the primary goal of the beta process is ensuring the FAFSA form is working well without technical blockers, this feedback is valuable for improving how the Department serves families and professionals going forward. The Department is updating the communication for Beta 3 to reflect Tucker’s feedback and incorporate some of the language that she has used.

The Department remains committed to ensuring all students receive the federal aid they need to access higher education.

The data page now includes additional figures about the beta testing process. After a user completes the FAFSA form they are asked to complete a survey about their experience. We report, and will continue to update, two results from this survey. The first is an overall satisfaction measure. Users are asked, “Please rate your overall satisfaction with the FAFSA form” and given 1-5 stars to select (one star being the least satisfied and five stars being the most). The second is a request for a response to the statement, “It took a reasonable amount of time to complete.” Users are then asked to select among five options (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, and strongly agree). Currently 95% of users have indicated satisfaction by selecting 4 or 5 stars, and 90% have selected either “agree” or “strongly agree” to the statement about the form taking a reasonable amount of time to complete.

Two additional outcomes are also now listed on the page: total FAFSA forms submitted and total Institutional Student Information Records – or ISIRs – delivered to states and institutions of higher education. The total forms submitted measure lags the total forms started for both normal lifecycle reasons and for beta-specific reasons. To participate in the beta, both students and contributors need to be granted access permission. Some contributors were not identified by their students in the pre-beta process to ensure access to the FAFSA form. These students will still be able to complete their FAFSA form, but they will need to wait until their contributor is given access to the form in beta or wait until the general availability of the form.

We expect to continue to update data every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday throughout the beta process.

On Tuesday Oct. 15 more than 3,500 additional students gained access to the 2025–26 FAFSA form as Beta 2 participants. Each student designated their contributor(s) in advance so that the contributor(s) could access the 2025–26 form. Through the first two days of Beta 2, more than 700 students have submitted their FAFSA form. In 28 cases the submission was rejected and requires a correction, which some students have already completed. The top reasons for rejections (representing 85% of rejections) are a missing student or missing parent signature. The Department recognizes this is an ongoing issue from the 2024–25 cycle and we continue to explore ways to decrease these rejections, especially with better prompting for student and parent signatures.

Department staff were onsite for FAFSA events hosted by the University of Delaware in Wilmington and College Possible Minnesota in Minneapolis. Additional events were held by participating organizations over the past two days, and more are scheduled throughout the Beta 2 period, running until the end of October.

Since Beta 2 involves families completing the form without direct support from organizations or the Department, on Oct. 15 the Department launched a dedicated beta support phone line. This line has handled approximately 80 calls in the past two days, with an average speed of answer of 17 seconds. The most common inquires include questions about how to access the 2025–26 form.

The Department continues to track zero critical bugs discovered during the beta testing process.

Today marks the start of the 2025–26 FAFSA form second beta phase. Sixteen organizations will participate in Beta 2, with most recruiting 100-500 students. Half of the organizations are institutions of higher education (IHEs), who will ask their current students to complete the FAFSA form as returning students for the 2025–26 cycle. This will mark the first participation by returning students in beta testing. These IHEs will also begin downloading and testing Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) to the extent that their financial aid systems are able to do so.

High schools, districts, a state agency, and community-based organizations (CBOs) are all included as participating organizations for Beta 2. All participants gained access to the 2025–26 form today as of 9 a.m. Eastern time. Many organizations will host in-person events to support FAFSA completion. The Department will be onsite at several events this evening to support families and hear feedback about how the FAFSA form can be improved. A dedicated support number has been established for beta participants with staff trained about the specifics of the beta.

We will post an update on this page later this week with initial results from Beta 2, including the number of students who have started a form, completed a form, and any critical bugs discovered.

Regardless of the organization through which students participate in the beta, students will be able to send ISIRs to any IHE. The following organizations are participating in Beta 2.

For the past several months some users have reported receiving “unknown error” messages throughout the StudentAid.gov account creation process and within the FAFSA form itself. The error would appear to the user even when there was no actual issue with their data and progress, which made tracking a root cause challenging since there was no log connected to an issue. Even though the user was generally not blocked from proceeding, the error text told the user to close their window and start over, which caused confusion and frustration.

The beta testing process, as well as dedicated StudentAid.gov account creation events, allowed Department engineers to observe users in person and gather more data about the error.

Based on data from these events, as well as improved error-reporting implemented in the past month, the Department successfully isolated several bugs and is rolling out fixes now. The first went into effect on Tuesday night and resulted in a sharp decline in “unknown error” messages. The Department will confirm that students are no longer receiving these errors while onsite for Beta 2 events.

These updates will also resolve a series of other issues that the Department has been tracking, including some situations where clicking the save button fails to register and reminder information goes missing from the student’s dashboard.

The Department continues to prioritize and invest in fixing issues that impact the FAFSA user experience. As we move closer to the general availability of the 2025–26 form on or by Dec. 1, we will continue to work quickly to resolve issues and report them on this page.

With over 650 students successfully submitting 2025–26 FAFSA forms during Beta 1, the next step is to increase user numbers to test specific circumstances. We will start this work with Beta 2, which will begin on Oct. 15.

Sixteen organizations will participate in Beta 2, with most recruiting 100-500 students. Half of the organizations are institutions of higher education (IHEs), who will ask their current students to complete the FAFSA form as returning students for the 2025–26 cycle. This will be the first participation by returning students in beta testing. These IHEs will also begin downloading and testing Institutional Student Information Records to the extent that their financial aid systems are able to do so.

Beta 2 will include students from many different populations to test diverse FAFSA form use cases. Different student populations can experience unique issues with the form. Beta 2 will include students who are at different points along their education journey; have different family configurations with different income levels; are from different parts of the country; and are from different backgrounds, such as first-generation students, and students from mixed-status families.

The Department has conducted trainings with the organizations participating in Beta 2 and will provide ongoing support. A dedicated support number has been established for beta participants with staff trained on the specifics of the beta.

Following the conclusion of Beta 2, the Department will further expand access to the 2025–26 FAFSA form even further with Beta 3 starting in early November.

We are currently at the halfway point between the launch of Beta 1, which started on Oct. 1, and the start of Beta 2, which will begin on Oct. 15. We will publish more information about Beta 2 on this page this week.

Below is a Beta 1 update.

Data

One of the Department’s Beta 1 goals was to recruit at least 100 students across a diverse set of populations to complete the 2025–26 FAFSA form. As of today, approximately 680 students have successfully submitted 2025–26 FAFSA forms. While 60 of those submissions were initially rejected—with 80% due to a missing student or parent signature—the Department recognizes this is an ongoing issue from 2024–25 and we continue to explore ways to decrease these rejections, especially with better prompting for student and parent signatures. Students are able to fix rejections by correcting and resubmitting the form. Though Beta 1 FAFSA events are now complete, some students and families are still completing the form as they needed additional information from contributors.

Additionally, students have requested that their information—known as Institutional Student Information Records or ISIRs—be sent to 565 unique institutions of higher education (IHEs), generating a total of 5,770 ISIRs.

Up-to-date data about the beta process can be found on the Beta Central data page.

Bugs and Issues

The beta testing process was created to help the Department find FAFSA bugs and issues before they impact a wider population. Beta 1 was designed with in-person events attended by Department staff to ensure any critical blockers would be found and triaged for remediation before the form’s general availability launch on or by Dec. 1. Zero new critical issues were found. There continue to be challenges with the usability of the FAFSA form—a list can be found on the FAFSA Issue Alerts page—and the Department is working through the list to improve the experience of students, families, and financial aid professionals. With no new critical issues, the Department has been moving through the backlog of existing challenges and plans to announce several improvements at the next software release on Oct. 27.

Current Status

Given the lack of critical bugs, the completion of the form by approximately 680 students, and the successful generation of 5,770 ISIRs, the 2025–26 FAFSA form continues to be on track for release to the general public on or by Dec. 1.

A key FAFSA component is the student’s choice about which institutions of higher education (IHEs) receive their data. The IHEs selected – including the participating state education agency (SEA) – receive Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) with information the IHEs and SEA use in their own process for determining financial aid. The work of generating and delivering ISIRs is an important element of the 2025–26 beta testing process.

Yesterday, the first ISIRs were delivered to IHEs and SEAs based on the initial beta submissions. Department staff followed up with one of the main IHE participants in the first beta event and learned that they received the exact number of expected ISIRs (192) and are successfully loading them into their software. We have also confirmed with multiple states that they have started receiving ISIRs.

As the beta continues, all IHEs, SEAs, and third-party servicers should be aware of the potential arrival of 2025–26 ISIRs, which will be delivered through the normal method as they are processed by the Department.

The final FAFSA events of the first beta occurred yesterday in Texas, Alabama, and California. Education is Freedom hosted five events around Dallas, leading to approximately 110 successful FAFSA submissions. Alabama Possible organized an event at the University of Alabama at Birmingham where approximately 30 students submitted the form. Finally, the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara supported approximately 60 submissions at an event at Santa Maria High School. Department staff attended all the events to provide support to families and gather insights about challenges and opportunities.

Yesterday concludes the in-person support events for the first part of the beta process. There are several hundred additional students who have access to the 2025–26 FAFSA form through the participating community-based organizations but have not yet completed the form. We anticipate many of these students will submit in the coming days and the Department will be closely monitoring their progress.

The Department is pleased to report that this first phase of in-person events has revealed no critical bugs. There are several issues we are tracking, including a set of usability improvements. We will prioritize these issues, as well as their improvements, and update the public as changes are made.

The second phase of the beta begins in two weeks with the availability of the 2025–26 FAFSA form to a wider population of students and families, including returning students already enrolled in institutions of higher education. Organizations and schools participating in the next round of the beta have been selected and received training and support from the Department. We will post additional information and outcomes about the next beta testing as it happens.

The Oct. 1 event in Florida was the first opportunity for beta participants to complete the 2025–26 FAFSA form. Colleen Lockwood, Executive Director of Bridge 2 Life, a local college access network, helped organize the event. Daniel Barkowitz, Assistant Vice President of Financial Assistance and Employment at the University of Miami, helped support students and families. Barkowitz remarked that, “We had families who made huge sacrifices to be there last night, but they value the opportunity for their kids to be enrolled in higher education.” Lockwood agreed, noting, “Speaking with dozens of parents in the lead-up to the event, it was truly inspiring to hear how invested they are in ensuring their children navigate the FAFSA process successfully.”

On the beta testing process more generally, Barkowitz believes that, “The beta is a fantastic approach. We want to identify issues in a much smaller population with a chance to respond quickly. Last night we identified an issue that hadn’t come up. It can be addressed before it gets to a full population of students system-wide. I know the Department is still trying to recover from the issues last year. I’d much rather be involved now than dealing with issues after the fact.”

Finally, both Lockwood and Barkowitz see cause for optimism moving forward. Lockwood’s view is that, “Last year’s 2024–25 FAFSA cycle posed some challenges, leaving us playing catch-up. We saw significant improvement by the end of the summer, with nearly 2,000 additional FAFSA applications submitted.” Barkowitz commented, “Kudos to the Department for running a very clean and communicative process to date. It’s been refreshing and gives me great hope for the coming year.”

Last night, the Department supported FAFSA completion events in Georgia organized by College AIM, and in Virginia organized by The Scholarship Fund of Alexandria. These 2025–26 FAFSA beta testing events saw almost two hundred students successfully complete the FAFSA form.

At Virginia's Alexandra City High School, more than 100 students successfully submitted their FAFSA forms, including information and signatures from their contributors. At Georgia’s McNair High School in Atlanta, approximately 90 students successfully submitted their FAFSA forms.

While a digital survey is sent to beta participants upon completion, Department staff asked students to place a dot on a line based on their experience. A dot on the left would indicate low satisfaction, while a dot on the right would indicate high satisfaction. The response was strong, including one student who placed their dot indicating low satisfaction, but then writing, “Just Kidding” next to the dot. In addition to rating their experience, students left a series of fantastic pieces of feedback for future participants.

Department staff were on hand to track issues that arose and gather feedback about how to improve the form for future students and parents. Department staff tracked four new issues across the two events. None were critical, and upon further investigation some or all may prove to be results of the beta testing itself.

Seeing families successfully fill out the form and learning from their experience is invaluable intel for building a FAFSA form that best serves American families. Thanks to all of the community-based organizations, colleges, and high schools that are supporting the beta testing process. Particular thanks to all of the families who are taking time out of their evenings to help ensure that the 2025–26 FAFSA form works for everyone when it becomes available on or by Dec. 1.

With the launch of the 2025–26 FAFSA beta period, we have begun to update Beta Central’s data page. Data will be updated multiple times a week, allowing the public to track progress and better understand the readiness of the 2025–26 FAFSA form for general availability.

Currently, we will report information about participation as survey and outcomes data reach statistical significance. For instance, as of the afternoon of Oct. 2, there have been 33 responses to the post-form survey for beta participants, which is not a large enough sample to reliably report results. We expect to report about survey and outcomes data in the coming week.

Last night Bridge 2 Life, in partnership with Broward College, Broward County Schools, Florida Atlantic University, and the University of Miami, hosted a FAFSA night at Dillard High School in Ft. Lauderdale. With several staff from the Department on hand to support and learn, Bridge 2 Life led the students and families through completing the 2025–26 FAFSA form as part of the first beta event. As a participant in Beta 1, Bridge 2 Life had committed to recruiting at least 100 students to complete the FAFSA form so that the Department could gather enough data to look for bugs and ensure that the platform is working as intended. In fact, more than 200 students successfully submitted the 2025–26 FAFSA form last night, with no significant bugs discovered.

Students listed 334 distinct institutions of higher education (IHEs) on their FAFSA forms. These schools will receive Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) soon. Several IHEs are participating in the beta testing process and have committed to processing these ISIRs immediately to confirm the validity of the data.

To complete the FAFSA form during this beta period, students needed to register themselves and their contributors in advance to participate. A number of students showed up last night without preregistering and couldn’t participate. We will improve our communication to future event participants to ensure students and families have the proper expectations.

Thank you to all of the partners and families for making Tuesday night a success. We look forward to additional events over the coming days in Alabama, California, Georgia, Texas, and Virginia.

As the 2025–26 FAFSA beta opens today, we have had a successful first day. We’ve had our first 7 submitted forms, even before the start of the first FAFSA event. The first student to login is from Virginia and the first to submit is from Florida. A special thanks to all of our partners who are making this happen.

As expected, we did identify a few bugs in the newly launched software. None of these bugs are critical, and they are exactly the types of issues that are expected and will be prioritized for a solution, with a goal of remediating before the FAFSA form is widely available on or before Dec. 1. Department staff were able to work with affected students to support successful submissions of the FAFSA form.

These bugs, which include an ambiguous error message based on system time out, a broken link in an invite email, and an errant jump of the cursor when using a mobile device, are never welcome by users, but demonstrate the value of a beta testing process. Through this process issues can be identified and remediated before the full population of students interact with the form. We appreciate the patience of the beta testers and their efforts to improve the FAFSA experience for all users.

The first phase of beta testing is underway with support from six community-based organizations (CBOs). These CBOs have recruited students and organized FAFSA nights that support students and families in completing the 2025–26 FAFSA form. Department staff will be at these events and will post updates on this page.

As our first update, we received the first application for the Beta 1 testing period from a student recruited by the Florida CBO, Bridge 2 Life.

The Department operates on a four-week release cycle for updating the software code for the FAFSA form and other websites. While emergency releases are possible, this cycle allows for enough time to package together meaningful changes, while still pushing new features and bug fixes quickly enough to serve users.

Sept. 29 was the most recent software release. The release included:

• The availability of the 2025–26 FAFSA form for beta testers;
• Updates to the Federal Student Aid Estimator tool, reflecting changes for the 2025–26 FAFSA form;
• A new tool to help students understand who counts as a parent for the purposes of completing the FAFSA form;
• A new digital version of the identity validation form, which replaces the need to fill out a PDF for those users who create StudentAid.gov accounts and are unable to automatically confirm their identity.

The next four-week cycle will conclude with a release on Oct. 27. We will post details of that release when it occurs.

As we prepare for the launch of the Beta process on Oct. 1, a series of updates are going live today to prepare systems for the 2025-26 cycle. In response to requests from families and community-based organizations, the Department is releasing a new tool to help students understand who counts as a parent on the FAFSA form. This new tool, which takes functionality that was only available in the form and makes it available to everyone without a login, helps students understand:

1. Whom the student needs to invite to the form;
2. Who needs to create an FSA ID at studentaid.gov;
3. Who needs to provide their financial information as a contributor on the student’s form.

The tool is now live at studentaid.gov/fafsaparent. The logic behind the answers that the tool gives applies to both the 2024-25 FAFSA cycle and future cycles, including the 2025-26 cycle.

The first step in completing a FAFSA form is creating a StudentAid.gov account (username and password). While the 2025-26 FAFSA form will be available on or by Dec. 1, all students and contributors can create StudentAid.gov accounts today. States and districts have been holding StudentAid.gov account creation events to get their students ready. The Department has been attending some of these events and has noticed an “Unknown Error” appearing for a few students towards the end of the process. To help diagnose the root cause of the issue, today, the Department worked with the Maryland State Department of Education to hold a StudentAid.gov account creation event at Baltimore’s Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (Dunbar) with enhanced logging of network traffic. Dunbar’s 192 seniors came through the library in groups of 25 to create their accounts. The “Unknown Error” appeared for a few students during the account creation event. Engineers from the Department were able to pull detailed information to work to understand the issue. Special thanks to student C.S. who encountered an error right at the start of lunch and was willing to stay to allow Department engineers to run a series of tests.

While the team works to fix the error, educators and families can still create a StudentAid.gov account. The user can safely ignore the error message and continue through the process. The Department will work to remove the error message as soon as possible. We encourage states and districts to continue to hold their own StudentAid.gov account creation events. The Department is working with the state FAFSA coordinator group to distribute materials and messaging to support these efforts.

Today marks an exciting milestone with the release by the Department’s technology teams of the code that will power the 2025-26 FAFSA form. As outlined earlier, the first students will complete the 2025-26 FAFSA form on Oct. 1, as part of the beta testing period, with support from a group of community-based organizations that were selected earlier this month. As we confirm the success of these students, we will ramp up access to additional students and families, leading to the general availability of the FAFSA form by Dec. 1.

While students participating in the beta testing period will not start to complete the form until Oct. 1, the code released today has been undergoing extensive testing by employees and contractors of the Department for the past several weeks. The teams have revealed and solved several bugs along the way, including during today’s release.

Six community-based organizations will participate in Beta 1. Each organization will hold one or two FAFSA events during the first week of October where they will gather students to complete the 2025-26 FAFSA form. The organizations are Alabama Possible, Bridge2Life, CollegeAIM, Education is Freedom, the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara, and the Scholarship Fund of Alexandria. More info here

The Department announced the key principles of the beta process, namely to:

• Build confidence through end-to-end testing. To give students, families, institutions, and other stakeholders confidence in the FAFSA process, the Department must test every stage in the process. Each beta test will include students and contributors filling out and submitting the FAFSA form; the Department processing Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) and transmitting them to states and institutions; applicants making corrections to the form; and institutions making individual corrections.
• Build confidence through inclusion. The Department will build confidence in the FAFSA process by including students from many different student populations to test a wide array of FAFSA form use cases. Different student populations can experience unique issues with the form. Each beta test will include students who are at different points along their education journey; have different family configurations with different income levels; are from different parts of the country; and fall into certain cohorts, such as first-generation students, students from mixed-status families, students experiencing homelessness, those who are members of the military, and veterans. Similarly, the Department will include different types of institutions of higher education in the beta tests, such as community colleges, public universities, private colleges, historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal colleges and universities, and additional minority-serving institutions.
• Build confidence through partner and student support. With each beta test, the Department will increase the number of participating students and contributors, starting first with hundreds, then growing to tens of thousands by the final beta test. By starting with only a few hundred participants, the Department and participating CBOs will be able to thoroughly support students and contributors through their entire application process. By the final beta test, the Department will have tested FAFSA processes at institutions and state agencies, as well as readied Department contact centers to provide better support for students and their families, states, and institutions.

Secretary Cardona announced the beta process that will allow the Department to test and resolve FAFSA issues before making the form available to all students and contributors on or before Dec 1. Using this approach, the Department will launch full functionality, including submission and back-end processing at the same time.