2025–26 FAFSA Updates: Here’s What Students Need To Know About the Phased Rollout
Credit: Tierney L. Cross / Getty Images News / Getty Images- The 2025-26 FAFSA form launched Oct. 1 to a limited number of students.
- Last year’s FAFSA launch was delayed nearly three months to Dec. 30, 2023.
- Some worry the 2025-26 form will encounter obstacles similar to the 2024-25 form.
- The Department of Education used a phased rollout to hopefully overcome potential issues.
All eyes are on the rollout of the 2025-26 FAFSA after a less-than-ideal launch last year of the 2024-25 form.
Federal Student Aid (FSA) made the newest Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) available to select students at the start of October. The complete rollout will take place throughout the last months of 2024, although it remains to be seen if FSA and the Department of Education (ED) can avoid many of the issues that plagued the 2024-25 FAFSA.
Students and families reported numerous roadblocks and technical glitches associated with last year’s FAFSA release.
To avoid many of the same mistakes, FSA announced a phased rollout of the 2025-26 form:
- Phase 1: Oct. 1
- Phase 2: mid-October
- Phase 3: early November
- Phase 4: mid-November
Follow along for updates on the rollout as each phase is delivered, as well as any reported issues with the new form that will allow some 13 million students to access over $120 billion in federal financial aid, including student loans and Pell Grants.
November 2024 — Nationwide Launch Earlier Than Expected
All students and families can now access the 2025-25 FAFSA.
ED announced on Nov. 21 that the form had officially launched. The department previously told students and financial aid administrators that the form would be made available to everyone on Dec. 1, but decided to move up that data after a successful beta period.
As of the launch date, over 223,000 students had participated in the beta.
Now, millions of students will file a FAFSA over the next half-year. The slightly earlier launch could help financial aid offices get student award offers to students faster, which would be a welcome change from last year’s FAFSA rollout.
November 2024 — Batch Corrections Incoming
ED announced that it plans to finally begin issuing batch corrections for FAFSA forms in the first quarter of 2025.
Students occasionally submit a FAFSA form with errors, and they aren’t eligible for aid until ED reprocesses the corrected form. Financial aid offices would typically request batch corrections, but these offices have been forced to manually process corrections as this functionality has not been available.
That’s soon to change.
Jeff Olson, a temporary addition to ED to help launch the 2025-26 form, told financial aid administrators during a Nov. 8 webinar that batch corrections will launch in the first quarter of 2025.
Batch corrections will be available for both the 2024-25 and 2025-26 FAFSA forms. A spokesperson for the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) told BestColleges that backward compatibility will be helpful for the 2024-25 FAFSA as batch corrections are needed throughout the academic year.
However, the sooner batch corrections are available, the more beneficial the process is.
October 2024 — First Batch of Technical Fixes Completed
FSA announced on Oct. 30 that it fixed a handful of technical issues related to both the 2024-25 and 2025-26 FAFSA forms.
This included one issue where students and contributors were prompted to re-sign forms they had already completed. Another issue prevented students from seeing an invitation from a contributor to complete their side of the form, and yet another glitch made it difficult for users with a military address to submit a FAFSA.
“In the weeks leading up to the general availability date, we will continue to prioritize the resolution of issues that block form submission or impact student eligibility for federal student aid programs,” FSA said in a statement.
By the end of the month, the phased rollout seemed to be progressing well.
As of Nov. 1, approximately 93% of those who had completed a form said that they were satisfied with the filing process, and 88% said they completed the form in a “reasonable time.” Just under 2,500 forms were completed by the end of October.
October 2024 — Phase One Ahead of Schedule
The 2025-26 FAFSA launched successfully Oct. 1 to a small number of students, ED stated.
The department said phase one ran from Oct. 1-14. This allowed for two full weeks of students submitting FAFSAs, FSA generating Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) from those applications, and colleges and universities getting information.
“Our goal in this first stage of testing was to submit and process FAFSA forms for 100 students so that we could ensure the process worked as expected,” FAFSA executive advisor Jeremy Singer said in a statement. “Instead, we had more than six times that number of students and we were able to see the forms move from submission to processing — and even corrections — without any major issues.”
FSA originally planned on having 100 applications submitted, but phase one instead included 650 students.
According to the department, FSA sent 6,266 unique ISIRs to nearly 600 colleges and universities as part of the Oct. 1 launch. The form was only available to a limited number of students as part of a partnership between FSA and community-based organizations.
Phase two launched Oct. 15 and is expected to include over 1,000 students and will again be limited to certain institutions, school districts, and community-based organizations.