The 2025–26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form is being released tomorrow for the first phase of beta testing, as described on Aug. 27. A small number of students, recruited by six college access community-based organizations (CBOs), will be able to submit the FAFSA form, and Federal Student Aid (FSA) will begin processing Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) shortly.
Because students participating in the FAFSA beta will be filling out their real FAFSA form, and because they can include up to twenty institutions’ school codes on the form, any institution and any state agency may start receiving a small number of ISIRs via the FTI-Student Aid Internet Gateway beginning this week. There is no need to do anything with these ISIRs right now.
FSA expects that many institutions and state agencies will not download these ISIRs for several weeks—because either their software for viewing ISIRs and packaging aid is not ready yet, they do not have a critical mass of ISIRs, or they do not load ISIRs until later in the admissions/awarding cycle. ISIRs will not be archived from mailboxes, so institutions and agencies can process them on their preferred timeline. However, if your institution or agency would like to download these students’ ISIRs into your systems and use them in a beta test of your software and processes, you are free to do so. For a short guide to steps that you might take to validate ISIRs, see the attached Guide to Validating ISIRs.
To reiterate, these are students’ official 2025-26 ISIRs, which you should use as the basis for packaging aid at the appropriate time in your cycle. (FSA has previously released system-generated test ISIRs that can also be used for system testing; those test ISIRs are available as an attachment to the 2025–26 FAFSA Specifications Guide).
As with any beta test, institutions and agencies that download ISIRs should expect to encounter system issues that may cause challenges or delays. In particular, issues that currently arise in processing 2024–25 FAFSA forms are very likely to appear in 2025–26 FAFSA forms. We will prioritize resolution of issues during each of the beta periods, leading up to the public release of the 2025–26 FAFSA form on or before Dec. 1.
FSA is especially interested in learning about any issues with ISIRs that users encounter. As a best practice, if you encounter an issue, you should report it both to your software vendor (if applicable) and to the FPS Help Desk. This will help determine if the issue is related to your software or to ISIR processing. FSA is committed to sharing information about FAFSA beta broadly with all stakeholders. Visit FSApartners.ed.gov/beta for regular updates.
The number of ISIRs that institutions and agencies receive will grow throughout October and November. We expect hundreds of students to participate in Beta 1 (beginning today), thousands in Beta 2 (beginning mid-October), and tens of thousands in Betas 3 and 4 (early and mid-November).
FSA is grateful to all members of the financial aid community who are willing to work with us during the beta testing period to help ensure a more reliable FAFSA form for the broader community. Thanks to the robust engagement with college counselors, advisors, and other partners from across the nation, the 2024-25 FAFSA completion gap is down to 2%, compared to 40% in March.
In addition, the Department is pleased to announce the release of the important resources to support the financial aid community and students and families in preparing for the 2025-26 FAFSA cycle.
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Revised Federal Student Aid Estimator provides an estimate of the 2025-26 Student Aid Index (SAI) and federal Pell Grant eligibility calculation.
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Updated resources to support creating a studentaid.gov account including a new stand-alone ‘parent wizard’ or contributor tool to help students and families determine who will need to provide contributor information on the 2025-26 FAFSA prior to starting the form.
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An updated 2025–26 FAFSA prototype (Access code: prototype2526) which provides the financial aid community an advance opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the FAFSA user experience ahead of its release.
Contact
Any questions about this announcement should be sent to betainterest@ed.gov.
Attachment
The U.S. Department of Education strives to make all content accessible to everyone. While this document does not currently meet the standards of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, Federal Student Aid is working to create an accessible version. If you need access to this document before the accessible version is available, please contact the Information Technology Accessibility Program Help Desk at ITAPSupport@ed.gov to help facilitate.