The 2025-26 FAFSA faces its first test

On Oct. 1, the Department of Education released the 2025-26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for the first of four testing phases, which officials hope will allow the department to identify problems, incorporate user feedback, and avoid many of the technical glitches and bureaucratic delays that plagued the rollout of 2024-25 FAFSA earlier this year, The Washington Post reports. This first testing phase includes around 1,000 high school seniors supported by six community-based organizations (CBOs), according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. This phase will be followed by three more rounds of testing in the fall, which will include tens of thousands of applicants, 20 CBOs, 10 schools or school districts, and 48 colleges from across the country. The Department of Education will make the FAFSA available to all students on or before Dec. 1, the department announced in August. 

Related: Delays, glitches in the new FAFSA frustrate families >

Hoping for improvements

The FAFSA changes deployed for 2024-25 were initially mandated by Congress in 2020 through the FAFSA Simplification Act, which called for an updated, simpler, more streamlined form with fewer questions and a new formula for calculating aid. Experts initially hoped it would be easier to complete and provide more aid to students demonstrating financial need. However, the updated FAFSA’s frequent delays and technical glitches left students and their families struggling to complete the form, especially for students from families with mixed immigration status. College financial aid officers also experienced difficulties submitting financial aid packages throughout late spring and summer, which forced some students to change their college plans. 

Related: The students without financial aid offers >

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released two reports finding that the Department of Education had not thoroughly tested the FAFSA last year before its release, and the Office of Federal Financial Aid underestimated how many families would seek help with the application. For the first five months of 2024, 4 million of the 5.4 million calls to the department went unanswered, according to the Post.

Congressional lawmakers say they will be keeping an eye out for any difficulties students and their families experience filling out the new FAFSA. Colleges also hope the Department of Education will be more transparent about difficulties students might have in completing the FAFSA so college financial aid officers are not left scrambling to send financial aid packages.

“We’re going to be watching to see if [Department of Education officials] carry out their commitment to this notion of working in public and informing the community of how the testing is going, what bugs they’re finding,” ​​Beth Maglione, interim president and chief executive of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, told the Chronicle. “That’s new and different, and we are really hopeful that that will keep our members in the know as we move forward.”

For its part, the Department of Education says it is still having problems with the paper version of the application, which continues to prevent some students from finalizing their funding for the current semester. There are also still more than 20 unresolved issues from the 2024-25 FAFSA, but officials say there are workarounds for the application’s lingering problems. The Department of Education last week also released a 10-page report showing the steps measures that it has been taking to improve the FAFSA experience and address critical issues.