The 2026 Social Security COLA
COLA stands for cost-of-living adjustment — the raise Social Security adds to benefits most Januaries so that a fixed income keeps up with prices. It is announced in mid-October 2025, it applies to benefits paid from January 2026, and you do not have to apply for it. It arrives on its own.
The 2026 adjustment
2.8%
Every Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefit rises by this percentage in January 2026. The same percentage applies whether your benefit is large or small, so a bigger benefit gets a bigger raise in dollars.
What the 2026 raise does to your check
Type in what you get now, before anything is deducted. It is the gross amount on your Social Security statement or on your annual benefit letter — not the amount that lands in your bank account, which already has the Medicare premium taken out of it.
Enter your benefit above and the 2026 figure appears here. For example, a benefit of $2,000 a month becomes $2,056.00 — a raise of $56.00 a month.
This arithmetic happens in your browser. Nothing you type is saved, and nothing is sent anywhere.
The part nobody puts in the headline
For most people, the Medicare Part B premium is deducted straight out of the Social Security payment. When that premium goes up in the same January the raise arrives — which it usually does — the deposit in your bank account grows by less than the COLA percentage suggests. In some years, for some people, it barely grows at all.
This is not a trick and nothing has gone wrong. The raise is real; it is applied to your gross benefit, and then the premium is taken out of the same check. To see the whole picture you need both numbers.
How the number is arrived at
The COLA is set by a formula, not by a decision. Social Security takes a third-quarter inflation measure — the average of July, August and September of the CPI-W, the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers — and compares it with the same three months of the last year that produced a raise. The percentage difference is the COLA.
Because the third quarter ends in September and the figures are published in October, the announcement lands in mid-October 2025 every year. Nobody votes on it. If prices did not rise over that stretch, there is no raise that year — which has happened three times since 1975 — but a COLA never reduces a benefit.
Recent years, for context
A single year's raise means more when you can see the run of them.
January 2026
2.8%
January 2025
2.5%
January 2024
3.2%
January 2023
8.7%
January 2022
5.9%
January 2021
1.3%
January 2020
1.6%
January 2019
2.8%
January 2018
2%
January 2017
0.3%
January 2016
No raise
January 2015
1.7%
January 2014
1.5%
January 2013
1.7%
January 2012
3.6%
January 2011
No raise
January 2010
No raise
January 2009
5.8%
January 2008
2.3%
January 2007
3.3%
January 2006
4.1%
January 2005
2.7%
January 2004
2.1%
January 2003
1.4%
January 2002
2.6%
January 2001
3.5%
Verified 2026-08-02 against SSA — Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) Information for 2026 (effective 2026-01-01)
Estimate only — not financial, tax, legal, or insurance advice. Only the Social Security Administration can determine your actual amounts. Your own benefit letter, which arrives in December, is the figure that counts. You can also see it in your account at Social Security Administration.
Common questions
- When is the 2026 Social Security COLA announced?
- In mid-October 2025. Social Security announces the cost-of-living adjustment for the coming year once the September inflation figures are published, and the raise appears in benefits paid from January 2026.
- What is the COLA based on?
- The average of a third-quarter inflation measure — July, August and September of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers, or CPI-W — compared with the same three months of the last year that produced a raise.
- Why is my raise smaller than the announced percentage?
- Because the Medicare Part B premium is deducted from most Social Security checks, and it usually rises in the same January. The raise is applied to your gross benefit; what you notice is the deposit after the premium comes out.
- Does a COLA ever get skipped?
- Yes. When the third-quarter measure does not rise, there is no adjustment for that year. That happened in 2010, 2011 and 2016. Benefits are never reduced by a COLA.
We send four emails a year, and the October COLA announcement is one of them. Join the alert list and you will have the figure the day it is published.