Federal Student Aid has announced the initial posting of the 2027–28 FAFSA Specifications Guide.
The FAFSA Specifications Guide is designed to meet the reference needs of financial aid administrators, programmers, data processing staff, and other FSA partners who want to incorporate electronic Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) functionality into their institutional systems and communicate electronically with the FAFSA Processing System. It includes FAFSA-related processing information and guidance in a multi-volume resource.
For the 2027–28 processing cycle, the initial posting of the FAFSA Specifications Guide includes the Microsoft Excel version of the 2027–28 Institutional Student Information Record (ISIR) record layout, the Introduction section, and Volumes 4A, 4B, and 8.
FSA will publish additional volumes in July and August 2026.
FSA will also post revised versions of volumes throughout the processing cycle to implement new requirements or address issues in earlier published drafts. To assist in tracking these changes, FSA includes a “Change History Table” in each volume to outline changes made to the volume over time, after its initial publication.