The 2025–26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid is on track to launch ahead of its Dec. 1 deadline, Education Department officials announced on a press call Thursday afternoon, likely around Nov. 22—though the officials said they couldn’t confirm an exact date.
The department released this year’s FAFSA in phases to test the form for bugs and user compatibility issues. Officials said the rollout entered its fourth and final testing phase Wednesday, after initial testing received cautiously positive feedback from families and college access groups.
“Once we’re satisfied that the entire system and support systems are operating smoothly with high volumes of users, we will exit testing and announce the official release of the 2025–26 FAFSA,” Under Secretary James Kvaal said on the call.
So far, more than 14,000 students have completed the FAFSA and 1,850 colleges have received about 81,000 student forms. Kvaal said that if trends hold, about 3.5 percent more students are on track to receive financial aid than last year, even before the official launch.
All eyes are on the FAFSA after last year’s overhaul and bungled rollout of the application led to months of delays and a significant decline in completion rates, dampening first-year enrollment this fall. Last year, the form launched at the end of December, with a slew of technical errors and glitches that flummoxed students and stymied financial aid offices.
This year the form will launch over a month earlier—and officials say it will be fully functional from the jump.
“We are in a radically different and better place than last cycle,” said Jeremy Singer, the former College Board president who was brought in to lead this cycle’s FAFSA launch. “Our systems have been fully tested and are ready to go.”
Singer added that the department has prepared its support services for the launch as well, by preparing detailed guidance for counselors and hiring hundreds of new staffers to staff call centers. In September, a Government Accountability Office report found that the department had woefully understaffed its helpline in 2023–24, leading to long hold times. About three-quarters of all calls went unanswered at the peak of public frustration with the form.
Singer added that his team has worked with vendors who provide student aid form processing software, like Ellucian, to ensure colleges have the capacity to begin processing forms and packaging aid offers as soon as the 2025–26 FAFSA is launched. In the last cycle, processing didn’t start until more than three months after the initial launch.
