2025–26 FAFSA Specifications Guide (December 2024 Update)

This section provides an overview of the information in the guide and a schedule of the planned releases for all volumes of the guide.

This volume provides an overview of major processing system changes related to the FAFSA processing cycle. Included are descriptions of enhancements to the online and PDF FAFSA forms, and updates to the FAFSA Partner Portal and the FAFSA Processing System (FPS).

This volume contains important FPS processing deadlines and anticipated document and software release dates, as well as information for getting help, such as contact information for customer service, FPS mailing addresses, and lists of helpful publications and websites you can access for additional assistance.

This volume provides guidance to schools and other entities who want to develop mainframe systems or third-party software to exchange data electronically with Federal Student Aid. It includes an overview of the Electronic Data Exchange (EDE) and our software products, including EDExpress for Windows, EDconnect and TDClient, a description of FPS input data and electronic output data files (including the ISIR), a review of the types of ISIR files available from the ISIR Datamart, and information for making electronic corrections to a student’s FAFSA data.

This volume provides record layouts for schools and organizations that need to design or use software systems to interface with the FPS. It includes the ISIR record layout (including added, deleted, and renamed fields), valid field content updates, and field length, number, and position changes for multiple fields. The ISIR record layout is also provided in Excel format.

This volume provides tables of codes, messages, and data specifications to assist you in defining your institutional system, submitting your data, and correcting errors or FAFSA data. It also includes the Correction Data Entry Specifications.

This volume contains descriptions of data edits for various FAFSA contributors (dependent or independent student, parent, parent spouse or partner, and student’s spouse). It also contains record-level, processing, verifiable, and non-verifiable reject codes, and resolution guidance. The edits are used to prevent illogical and inconsistent data, and are also used to set rejects, comment codes, highlights, and other indicators used to determine federal student aid eligibility.

This volume is designed to assist FAAs with interpreting student information on the ISIR and FAFSA Submission Summary. The ISIR contains information reported on the FAFSA form, key processing results, and National Student Loan Data System (NSLDS^®) information. The term ISIR refers to all processed student information records that are sent electronically to institutions by the FPS.

This volume contains comment code and text information for the FAFSA Submission Summary (electronic and paper) and ISIR, as well as any actions needed to resolve FPS C Flags or rejects associated with the comment.

This volume provides guidance about processed comment codes, status codes, and reject codes from matching agencies such the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and NSLDS.

This volume describes ISIR test data, the Web Demonstration (Demo) System, and the website options available to schools, third-party software vendors, state agencies, and any other FSA partners for a specific cycle. It also provides guidance regarding test ISIR data files provided by FSA for use by the student aid community for 2025–26 and is a resource for financial aid administrators (FAAs) and others who are interested in using the Web Demo system for training purposes.

NOTE: FSA is currently exploring Web Demo options for future processing cycles. There will not be a Web Demo system for 2025–26.