The Department is excited to share updates regarding the 2026–27 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) form launch and announce the beta testing plan ahead of the public release by Oct. 1, 2025.
The Department has invested in two major improvements that will simplify the FAFSA experience this year for students and families.
Real-time identity verification
Beginning in August, all users who create a StudentAid.gov account with a Social Security number (SSN) will have their accounts verified immediately, instead of the current one-to-three day waiting period. This will allow for the immediate ingestion of tax information from the IRS. Users who do not have a SSN will continue to follow identity validation processes outlined in GEN-23-123.
Simplified Contributor Invite Process
Students completing a 2026–27 FAFSA form will be able to invite a parent or spouse as a contributor simply by entering their email—instead of asking students for a contributor’s personally identifiable information—which will generate a unique, non-case sensitive code. The code will be sent to the parent or spouse by email. The parent or spouse will be directed to accept the invite by entering the code on an “Accept an Invite” page that can be accessed by the email or StudentAid.gov once they are logged in. The Department expects this update to ease the process for users and reduce errors associated with matching contributors to their accounts based on identifying information.
Please note that the simplified contributor invite process will be available to students who invite a contributor, or parents who invite a spouse, to complete a 2026–27 form. If a contributor begins a FAFSA on behalf of a student, they will use the existing process to invite the student to the form. In that case, the student must have a StudentAid.gov account and will be linked immediately to the application upon being invited.
Last FAFSA cycle, the Department conducted extensive beta testing—a best practice in software development and deployment—for the 2025–26 FAFSA form. This process allowed the Department to test the form with approximately 140,000 students, catch critical issues, and deploy technical fixes and user improvements before releasing to the public. The Department also partnered with institutions of higher education and vendors to test Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) delivery and prepare partners for FAFSA processing.
For the 2026–27 cycle, beta testing will begin in August and consist of two rounds:
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Beta 1: Starting Aug. 4, we will test the 2026–27 FAFSA form with a limited group of school districts, community-based organizations, and institutions of higher education through in-person and virtual events. We will also test ISIR processing with a set of local institutions and their vendors.
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Beta 2: Once Beta 1 concludes, we will broaden access to Beta 2 in late August/early September. Any student or parent will be able to request to participate in beta testing on StudentAid.gov, and we will admit groups of users throughout the month. We will continue ISIR testing with additional institutions and vendors. We will post an update to this announcement when this participation request form opens.
Implications for institutions and state agencies
In August, institutions and state agencies may start receiving a small number of ISIRs via the FTI-Student Aid Internet Gateway, since beta participating students will complete a real 2026–27 FAFSA form and can include up to 20 institutions’ school codes on the form. The number of ISIRs that institutions and agencies receive will grow throughout August and September. These are students’ official 2026–27 ISIRs, which institutions should use as the basis for packaging aid at the appropriate time in the school’s cycle.
There is no need for institutions do anything with these ISIRs before the regular award year begins. FSA expects that many institutions and state agencies will wait to download these ISIRs until the normal awarding cycle begins for several reasons, such as because their software for viewing ISIRs and packaging aid is not ready, or they prefer to adhere to their normal admissions/awarding cycle. ISIRs will not be archived from mailboxes, so institutions and agencies can process them on their preferred timeline.
Institutions and agencies are free to download these students’ ISIRs into their systems and use them to test software and processes. FSA will also be releasing system-generated test ISIRs in July that can be used for system testing, which will be available as an attachment to the 2026–27 FAFSA Specifications Guide. For a short guide to steps that you might take to validate ISIRs, see the Guide to Validating ISIRs.
As with any beta test, institutions and agencies that download ISIRs before Oct. 1 may encounter system issues that may cause challenges or delays. The Department 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 an institution’s software or to ISIR processing. The Department will prioritize resolution of issues during this beta period, leading up to the public release of the 2026–27 FAFSA form by Oct. 1.