Financial aid professionals can stay current with any changes to the FAFSA form and financial aid processing by reviewing the recent updates to the FAFSA Specifications Guides for the 2026-27 and 2027-28 award years.
The Department of Education recently announced updates to several volumes of the guides.
Updates were made to volumes 1, 4A, 4B, 5, 6, and 7 of the 2027-28 FAFSA Specifications Guide and the Excel version of the ISIR record layout.
The 2026-27 FAFSA Specifications Guide includes updates to volumes 4A, 4B, 5, and 6 and the Excel version of the ISIR record layout.
More information on the updates is included in the Change History Table in each volume.
According to the Department of Education, the FAFSA Specifications Guide is designed to meet the reference needs of financial aid administrators (FAAs), programmers, data processing staff, and other partners of Federal Student Aid.
