Here's How to Access the New FAFSA Before It's (Officially) Released

The Department of Education is now accepting requests for early access to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

The Education Department expanded beta testing for the 2026-2027 FAFSA by opening it up to more applicants this week. The initial phase of the beta test was closed, available only to a small group of testers. Now, all students and families can apply on the Federal Student Aid website for early access during the expanded testing period.

The FAFSA is typically released on Oct. 1 each year and runs through Jun. 30 of the following year. Nearly 20 million current and incoming college students fill out the FAFSA annually.

Financial aid experts encourage all students regardless of family income to fill out the form each year, even if they don’t require need-based aid. That’s because the application is also used to determine state aid, institutional aid, work-study awards, federal student loans and sometimes merit scholarships.

Getting early access to the FAFSA could help families knock out a dreaded chore on a long college checklist sooner, but the beta version of the upcoming form may include additional kinks applicants should be aware of.

“It's important to keep in mind that not all beta applicants will be selected for participation,” says Stacy MacPhetres, senior director of education finance at College Coach, an admissions consulting firm. “For those who do participate, they may experience some bugs or glitches in the process.”

Here’s what else to know about the beta test and the new FAFSA form.

What’s new with the upcoming FAFSA?

The latest version of the FAFSA is continuing a years-long process of making the form easier for families to fill out.

MacPhetres says that some updates include tweaks to make the form clearer and more accessible as well as a streamlined identity verification process when students create a studentaid.gov account, which is required to fill out the FAFSA and opt in to the beta test.

According to Sarah Austin, a policy analyst at the nonprofit National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, it’s about to get much easier for dependent students to invite parents or guardians to fill out their portion of the FAFSA. She says students will no longer need their parents’ Social Security numbers or dates of birth to grant them access to the form.

All students will need is an email address to send them an invitation to fill out the form, and then the family members can input all required information themselves.

“The contributor invitation process was a major concern, so we are excited to see how this improvement helps with FAFSA completions,” Austin says.

On the policy side, MacPhetres highlights two changes from President Donald Trump’s recent Big Beautiful Bill Act that affect federal aid eligibility:

• Assets for family farms and small businesses are now excluded from FAFSA reporting, she says.

• And foreign income is now automatically included in earnings calculations for the Pell Grant.

Streamlining the FAFSA has been an ongoing effort for the Education Department. The FAFSA Simplification Act, signed into law at the end of President Donald Trump's first term, mandated a simpler and shorter form. The rollout of the simplified form during the past two academic cycles under the Biden administration was marred with delays, glitches and errors.

With this year’s form, financial aid experts are hopeful those issues will be relegated to the past.

“We don’t have any reason to believe we’ll run into the same kinds of issues we saw with the initial rollout of the streamlined FAFSA,” Austin says. “It’s promising that we are already in phase two of beta testing by mid-August, and we remain optimistic that this trend will continue.”

Should you fill out the FAFSA during the beta test?

MacPhetres always encourages families to fill out the FAFSA as early as possible to be sure they meet all priority deadlines set by colleges and because some state- and college-level aid is awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.

But filling it out this early has unique pros and cons.

As for the perks, starting the FAFSA sooner can provide families more time to deal with any potential issues that arise while applying for aid. Austin notes that contacting the Federal Student Aid office will likely be much easier during the beta test, too, given the limited number of applicants.

“FAFSAs completed during beta testing are real FAFSAs,” Austin says. “While institutions are not required to act on this data immediately, it is possible that completing the FAFSA during the beta period will speed up the financial aid awarding process later" for college- or state-level aid.

She adds that for federal aid from the Education Department, officials have made it clear that beta testers won’t get any funding advantages.

On the other hand, glitches are far more likely during the beta testing phase. The entire purpose of the phased rollout it is to find the major issues and iron them out before releasing the official FAFSA this fall.

Another issue that MacPhetres mentions is that beta testers may need to resubmit certain information if any major changes are implemented to the final version of the FAFSA.

During a FAFSA beta test last year, Shannon Vasconcelos — a colleague of MacPhetres’s at College Coach — previously told Money that there’s no real rush to fill out the FAFSA during testing periods.

"I would let the department work out the kinks in the form before I was anxious to hop on there," she said. "Colleges are not going to set any financial aid deadlines so early that you couldn't complete it on the normal timeline."

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