On October 15th, the Social Security Administration (SSA) was meant to officially announce the 2026 COLA. On October 1st, however, the U.S. federal government went into a shutdown and as a result, the release of the data required for the COLA calculation has been delayed, which has now delayed the COLA announcement as well. The COLA, or Cost of Living Adjustment, is an annual increase implemented across all benefits disbursed by the SSA. All benefits undergo this increase as a means of combating the effects of year over year inflation.
As such, the COLA announcement is a highly anticipated one for seniors living on a fixed income, however, due to the announcement delay caused by the shutdown, tens of millions of seniors will have to remain in anticipation for a couple days more. The good news is that the COLA announcement will not be delayed for too long despite the shutdown. According to an SSA spokesperson who spoke with Newsweek, the SSA will now make the official COLA announcement on October 24th.
Here is everything you need to know about the upcoming COLA announcement.
SSA confirms new date for 2026 COLA announcement
The annual COLA increase is determined by measuring the third quarter CPI-W of the current year against the third quarter CPI-W of the previous year. If there is an increase, this becomes the next COLA, and if there is a decrease, benefits remain stagnant. The CPI-W is a subset of the CPI, which is released on a monthly basis by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPI-W for September was previously scheduled to be released on the morning of October 15th, with the SSA making the official COLA announcement later that same day. Due to the current shutdown, however, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has furloughed most of its staff and as a result, the COLA announcement has been pushed back until the data becomes available.
The COLA announcement is widely anticipated by seniors across the country and any delays could be somewhat anxiety-inducing for this cohort. Fortunately for these vulnerable individuals, the SSA has shared confirmation of the new date on which the COLA announcement will be made, as per Newsweek. According to a spokesperson for the SSA who spoke with Newsweek: “The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has announced they will issue the September 2025 Consumer Price Index (CPI) on October 24. The Social Security Administration will use this release to generate and announce the 2026 cost-of-living adjustment on October 24 as well. Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for 75 million Americans will be adjusted per the 2026 COLA, beginning January 1, 2026, without any delay due to the current government lapse in appropriation.”
2026 COLA estimates
Since data for July, and August had already been released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the current estimates for the next COLA could be quite close to the actual figure that will be announced later this month. Drawing from the July, and August CPI-W, The Senior Citizen’s League (TSCL) has projected a COLA of 2.7% for 2026. This would be a COLA higher than that of 2025 (2.5%) but will be an average COLA from a historical standpoint. If the projected COLA 2.7% holds steady following the release of September’s data, a retiree receiving the average benefit amount of around $2,008 will see a $54 bump to their benefits starting in January.
TSCL also noted that, “Inflation is substantially higher than our model predicted at the beginning of the year. In January 2025, our model predicted that inflation would cool, and the COLA would come in at 2.1 percent. Instead, the prediction steadily ticked upward throughout the year as the Trump administration implemented economic policy changes, including aggressive tariff policies that some experts say have the potential to increase inflation.”
“Many seniors believe inflation is much higher than the COLA estimates. For example, TSCL’s estimates that about 80 percent of seniors believed inflation in 2024 was substantially higher than the 2.5 percent COLA implemented to make up for it at the beginning of 2025,” TSCL executive director Shannon Benton noted in the September 11th update.