The U.S. Department of Education (Department) has released its plans for beta testing the 2027–28 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA®) ahead of the public release by Oct. 1, 2026.
Launch of 2027–28 Beta Testing
For the last two FAFSA cycles, the Department has conducted extensive beta testing—a best practice in software development and deployment. This process allows the Department to test the form with hundreds of thousands of students, catch critical issues, and deploy technical fixes and user improvements before releasing to the public. Beta testing is also an important annual opportunity for the FAFSA team to engage directly with community-based organizations, districts, schools, institutions, and students and families across the country.
For the 2027–28 cycle, beta testing will begin in August 2026 and consist of two rounds:
- Beta 1: Starting Aug. 5, the Department will test the 2027–28 FAFSA form with a limited group of school districts, community-based organizations, and institutions of higher education through in-person and virtual events.
- Beta 2: Once Beta 1 concludes, the Department will broaden access to Beta 2 in late August or early September. Any student or parent will be able to request to participate in beta testing on StudentAid.gov, and the Department will admit groups of users throughout the month. An updated announcement will be posted 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 Institutional Student Information Records (ISIRs) via the FTI-Student Aid Internet Gateway (FTI-SAIG). Students participating in beta will complete a real 2027–28 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 2027–28 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 to do anything with these ISIRs before the regular award year begins. The Department expects that many institutions and state agencies will wait to download these ISIRs until the normal awarding cycle begins for several reasons, such as their software for viewing ISIRs and packaging aid not being 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. The Department released test ISIRs in July that can be used for system testing, which will be available in Volume 9 of the 2027–28 FAFSA Specifications Guide. Volumes 4A, 4B, 8, and 5 are currently available. 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 might encounter system issues that cause challenges or delays. The Department is especially interested in learning about any issues with ISIRs that you 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 2027–28 FAFSA form by Oct. 1.