The 2027–28 FAFSA opens on or about October 1, 2026. Families who gather their documents and set up their accounts beforehand finish the form in a single sitting. Families who open the form first spend three weeks chasing paperwork and logging in and out.
This is what to have ready before you start. Work through it in order. For the wider sequence this sits inside, see our guide to paying for college.
Before anything else: create the accounts
This is the step that derails the most families, and it has nothing to do with money.
Every contributor on the FAFSA needs their own StudentAid.gov account. A contributor is anyone required to provide information on the form — the student, the student’s spouse, a biological or adoptive parent, or a parent’s spouse.
Your student must create their own account. You cannot create it for them, and you cannot share yours. The account username and password function as a legal electronic signature, and sharing them invalidates that signature.
Create accounts now, not on filing day. As of the 2026–27 cycle the identity-verification wait has been eliminated, so accounts are usable immediately — but a mismatch between the name on the account and the name on the form still causes rejections that take days to unwind.
How many parents need an account?
- Married and filed taxes jointly — only one parent is a contributor. You will still need your spouse’s date of birth.
- Married and filed taxes separately — both parents are contributors. Each needs an account.
- Divorced or separated — the required parent is the one who provided the most financial support, which is not necessarily the one the student lives with. Use the federal Who’s My FAFSA Parent? wizard to confirm before you start. It takes under five minutes and does not require an account.
What documents do you need for the FAFSA?
For the 2027–28 FAFSA you will report 2025 tax information. Not 2026. The form uses what the federal government calls prior-prior year data, which is why it can be filed in October rather than after next April’s tax deadline.
Gather these
- Your student’s Social Security number, exactly as issued
- Your 2025 federal tax return, W-2s, and records of any money earned from work
- Your spouse’s date of birth and email address, if married
- Records of child support received
- Current balances of cash, checking, and savings accounts
- Net worth of investments, including real estate that is not your primary home
- Net worth of any business or income-producing farm your family owns
What you do not report
Parents routinely over-report assets and cost themselves aid. These are excluded entirely:
- Retirement accounts — 401(k), 403(b), IRA, Roth IRA, and pensions
- The primary home you live in
- Cash value of life insurance policies and annuities
- ABLE accounts
One change catches families off guard. The small business exclusion was eliminated. As of the 2024–25 form, the net worth of every family-owned business and family farm is reportable regardless of size or number of employees. The family’s primary dwelling on a farm is still excluded. If you own a farm or a small business, this is the line item to prepare for.
Build your deadline list
Three deadlines apply and only one of them is forgiving.
- The federal deadline — June 30, 2028 for the 2027–28 year. Effectively irrelevant. By the time it arrives, the money is gone.
- Your state’s deadline — often between February and April, and in several states aid is awarded first-come, first-served until the fund is empty.
- Each college’s deadline — set individually, frequently in January or February, and often earlier for priority consideration.
Write down every college on your student’s list with its financial aid deadline. Your real deadline is the earliest one. Work to that date and the other two take care of themselves.
Know the consent requirement before you sit down
Every contributor must provide consent and approval for their federal tax information to transfer directly from the IRS into the form. This is not optional and there is no workaround inside the online form. Our step-by-step FAFSA walkthrough shows exactly where this appears in the form.
Without consent from every contributor, the student is ineligible for federal student aid. Not reduced aid — none.
Consent is frequently misunderstood, so state it plainly to anyone who needs to give it: providing consent does not make you financially responsible for your student’s education. Financial responsibility begins only if you choose to take out a Parent PLUS Loan and sign a Master Promissory Note. Those are separate decisions, made later.
When should you file the FAFSA?
A persistent myth says you should wait until your taxes are done. You should not. The 2027–28 form uses 2025 returns, which you filed more than a year ago. There is nothing to wait for.
Filing early matters because a meaningful share of aid is finite. State grant programs in several states operate first-come, first-served until the appropriation is exhausted, and many colleges award institutional aid on a priority deadline that closes months before the federal one. A family filing in April is competing for what is left.
The practical target: file within the first two weeks the form is open.
Special situations worth sorting out early
Divorced or separated parents
The parent who provided the most financial support in the last 12 months is the required contributor — not necessarily the parent the student lives with, and not necessarily the one who claims the student on taxes. If that parent has remarried, the stepparent’s information is also required.
A parent without a Social Security number
A parent without an SSN can still be a contributor, create a StudentAid.gov account, and complete their sections. Their immigration status does not affect the student’s eligibility for federal aid. Families in this situation frequently do not file at all, and it costs them.
A deceased parent
If one parent has died, report only the surviving parent’s information. If the surviving parent has remarried, the stepparent is included.
File even if you think you will not qualify
This is the most expensive assumption families make. The FAFSA is not only a means test for need-based grants. It is the gateway to unsubsidized federal loans, which are not income-restricted, to federal work-study, and to a large share of institutional and state aid — including merit awards that many colleges will not consider a student for without a FAFSA on file.
Some colleges also require it for scholarships that have nothing to do with demonstrated need. Filing costs you an evening. Not filing can cost your student an award nobody told you existed.
What mistakes cost families money?
- Names that do not match. No nicknames, no suffixes. If the Social Security card says John Paul, the form says John Paul — not Johnny, not Jr., not III.
- Reporting the wrong tax year. The 2027–28 form uses 2025 returns.
- Marital status confusion. Report your status as of the day you file the form, even when it differs from your tax filing status.
- Forgetting the student’s half. A form the parent completes alone is not submitted. The student must enter their own sections, give consent, and sign.
- Assuming the federal deadline is the deadline.
Your next step
Download the Parent FAFSA Prep Toolkit. It contains the full document roundup, the account setup sequence, a deadline tracker to fill in with your student’s college list, and the contributor map for separated and remarried families.
Complete the roundup before October 1. When the form opens, you will be filing rather than searching. Once your form is processed, read what the Student Aid Index actually means before you interpret the number.
