2026 COLA Forecast: How Much Social Security Benefits May Rise

Once more, the Senior Citizens League has made a 2026 COLA Projection. Once the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics released the figure for the Consumer Price Index for February, the SCT worked out the possible increase in 2026. Bear in mind that the Cost-of-Living Adjustment increase helps Americans on Social Security and SSI maintain their purchasing power.

Thanks to this annual increase, seniors and people with disability can have extra money to be able to buy food and services as prices soar. The thing is COLA increases do not seem to be very accurate, so they still lose buying power and their Social Security payments seem to be smaller because they can buy fewer things.

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2026 COLA Projection

As of March 2025, the Senior Citizens League believes that there would be a COLA increase of just 2.2%. However, this is just a prediction and there are many months ahead before an accurate figure can be provided.

Still, the COLA projections for Social Security that the Senior Citizens League makes have always been very precise in the last years. For your information, the latest projections were very similar.

The first Cost-of-Living projection in 2025 was just 2.2. This figure was calculated on January 15, 2025. As of February 12, the projection was slightly higher, about 2.3%.

2026 COLA Projection is slightly lower

As a matter of fact, retirees would receive less money if this were the 2026 COLA figure. Bear in mind that all the projections in 2025 are lower than the 2.5% increase for 2025.

The good thing is that this may mean that prices are not going up much. However, even if they have not gone up recently, prices are still too high for many Social Security and SSI recipients. Here are the possible amounts after a hypothetical 2.2% COLA increase in 2026.

Social Security or SSI payment amount before and after the possible boost