The 2027 Social Security COLA isn’t official yet
Headlines this summer have already put a number on next year’s raise. Social Security hasn’t announced one — and won’t until mid-October, once data that doesn’t exist yet is finished.
By late summer, several independent trackers had already put a number on the 2027 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment — and some coverage repeated those numbers as if the decision had been made. It hasn’t. The Social Security Administration has not announced a 2027 COLA, and structurally cannot, until data that doesn’t exist yet has been collected. Two of the three months that decide it are now known; the last one lands 14 October.
| 2.8% | The official, already-locked-in 2026 COLA, announced in October 2025 and in effect since January 2026. |
|---|---|
| 3.5% – 3.6% | The range of independent 2027 estimates as of 21 September 2026, from three separate trackers — not from Social Security. |
| 2 of 3 | How many of the three CPI-W months that decide the COLA have actually been published. July and August are both out; September — the last one needed — arrives 14 October. |
| 11 September 2026 | When the August CPI-W landed and every tracker below last updated its estimate. Unless September’s data moves sharply, this is close to the final range. |
| 14 October 2026 | The date the Social Security Administration is expected to announce the official 2027 COLA, after the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases September inflation data. |
| $0 | How much of the estimate range above is a government figure, until that date. |
Where the estimates come from
Three groups have published 2027 COLA forecasts, and all three moved when the August CPI-W landed on 11 September. The Senior Citizens League had estimated 3.6% in August; its own site now calls 3.5% its final prediction ahead of the official number. Independent analyst Mary Johnson had dropped to 3.4% in August and revised back up to 3.5%. AARP had projected 3.5% in August and raised that to 3.6%. Reading superseded numbers as current is exactly the mistake this article exists to head off — only the figures above, dated to the 11 September update, reflect where each tracker actually stands. All three are running the same public CPI-W formula the government itself will eventually use — they are not guessing randomly. But as of this writing, only two of the three months that decide the COLA have actually been published: July’s and August’s. September’s — the month that actually closes the calculation — doesn’t land until October 14. One-third of the real data is still ahead of every estimate above, which is why the range has narrowed to a single point of spread rather than closing entirely.
Also on The Second Half Guide Your beneficiary form may outrank your will A will is the document everyone has heard of. For a lot of households, it isn’t the one that decides where the largest accounts go. Read it →None of these figures are Social Security’s number. They are outside groups running the government’s own formula on data that isn’t finished yet.
Why three trackers publish three different numbers
All three groups are running the same public formula on the same underlying government data, so the spread between 3.5% and 3.6% isn’t disagreement about the rule — it’s a difference in timing and rounding as each one updated its own estimate through the summer and into September. A forecast published right after July’s CPI-W release reflected one month of real data and two months of assumption. The same tracker’s estimate after August’s release, the one quoted above, is built on two-thirds real data instead of one-third — and estimates published this way generally narrow, rather than widen, as more of the actual quarter comes in. That narrowing stops entirely once September’s figure lands and the government runs the calculation itself.
The formula, briefly
The COLA is not a policy choice or a negotiation. It comes from the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers — CPI-W — averaged across July, August and September, and compared to the same three-month average from the prior year the formula last used. The percentage change, rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent, becomes the COLA. It is the identical process that produced 2.8% for 2026, run again on next year’s data.
If the range holds, a COLA in the mid-3s would be the largest increase since 2023 — but “if it holds” is doing real work in that sentence. September data hasn’t been counted yet, and the whole point of the formula is that nobody, including the trackers publishing estimates, gets to shortcut that.
To put the range in dollars rather than percent: on today’s average retired-worker benefit of about $2,086 a month (the July 2026 figure), a 3.5% adjustment works out to roughly $73 a month, and 3.6% to roughly $75. That arithmetic is simple and it is also entirely provisional — it applies whichever estimate turns out closest, and none of them is the number Social Security will actually use. A smaller benefit sees a smaller dollar increase at the same percentage, and a larger one sees more — the COLA is a percentage of what you already receive, not a flat amount added to every check alike.
The raise and the deposit are not the same number
Whatever the 2027 COLA turns out to be, it will not be the amount that shows up in the monthly deposit. That happened with 2026’s already-official 2.8%: it added about $56 to the average benefit, but the Medicare Part B premium rose from $185.00 to $202.90 over the same period — an increase of $17.90, deducted automatically before the payment arrives. Net effect: about $38 of the announced $56 actually landed. A hold-harmless provision limits how much the Part B increase can eat into the COLA for most people who have Part B premiums withheld directly from Social Security — it does not cover everyone. Newly-enrolled Medicare beneficiaries, higher earners paying the IRMAA surcharge, and people whose Part B premium is paid by Medicaid are among those it doesn’t protect. For everyone, protected or not, the amount that actually lands routinely arrives smaller than the headline percentage implies, and 2027’s Part B premium hasn’t been announced yet either.
What’s worth doing while you wait
- Treat every number published before 14 October 2026 as an estimate, however confidently it’s stated — including the ones in this article.
- The real number, when it lands, comes directly from the Social Security Administration, not from a tracker or a news estimate.
- A COLA percentage is not the same as what actually lands in your account. Part B premiums for 2027 are announced separately, and typically absorb part of any increase before it arrives — see the mechanics on the COLA page for how that worked in 2026.
- The three months that decide it — July, August, September — are the only ones that matter. Inflation news from earlier in the year, however dramatic, already happened before the clock started.
- All three independent trackers updated their 2027 estimates after August’s CPI-W landed on 11 September, converging to roughly 3.5%–3.6% — a range that only closes entirely once September’s figure is in.
The estimate season exists because people want to plan, and there is nothing wrong with knowing the range. The distinction worth holding onto is which number is a forecast and which one is Social Security’s — and until mid-October, there is only one of those. When the real figure arrives, it will come from the Social Security Administration directly, not from any of the trackers quoted above, however close their guess turns out to be.
This is general information, not personal financial, tax or legal advice. We report the rules, the numbers and the deadlines as clearly as we can. Your income, filing status, state and account types can all change how a rule applies to you, so treat this as a good place to find the right questions, not a substitute for a tax or financial professional looking at your actual return.
Where these facts come from
Checked on 21 September 2026 against the sources listed below. Dollar limits and program rules change — if you're reading this well after that date, verify the numbers at the links below.
- Congressional Research Service — Social Security: Cost-of-Living Adjustments — https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/94-803
- Bureau of Labor Statistics — The use of the CPI in Social Security COLAs — https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/archive/the-use-of-the-cpi-in-social-security-cost-of-living-adjustments-colas.pdf
- CNBC — Social Security COLA for 2027 may be 3.5% to 3.6%, new estimates show — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/11/social-security-cola-2027-estimate.html
- The Senior Citizens League — COLA Watch — https://seniorsleague.org/cola-watch/
- AARP — Social Security COLA Preview: Will 2027 Benefits Go Up? — https://www.aarp.org/social-security/cola-2027-increase-estimate/
Edward Silva
Edward spent more than forty years as a computer professional — long enough to pick up one useful occupational habit: when somebody hands you a summary, go and read the actual documentation. He started The Second Half Guide after noticing that most writing aimed at people his age was either talking down to him or quietly selling him something, and that the plain facts — the dates, the thresholds, the dollar figures — were somehow the hardest part to find.
He's married, with two grown sons, both married themselves. He is not a financial adviser, an attorney or an insurance agent, and this site doesn't tell you what to do with your money. It tells you what the rules actually say, and links to where he checked.