Social Security’s 2026 Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) Could Deal Retirees a Blow No Matter What. Here’s Why.

There are millions of seniors who collect a monthly benefit from Social Security. And if you’re one of them, you may be itching to find out what 2026’s cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) will amount to.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to sit tight a bit longer. The Social Security Administration cannot make its upcoming COLA official until it has inflation data from September. For this reason, an announcement won’t be made until mid-October.

Still, there are some estimates on next year’s Social Security COLA you can turn to for now. The nonpartisan Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group, is projecting that next year’s Social Security COLA will be 2.7% based on the most recent inflation readings to date.

There’s a chance, though, that next year’s COLA could end up being even higher. But that’s not necessarily a good thing for Social Security recipients.

The reason 2026’s Social Security COLA is truly a lose-lose scenario for seniors boils down to the way those raises are calculated and what they’re meant to do. Social Security COLAs are based on year-over-year changes to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). That itself is problematic because the CPI-W is not particularly reflective of the costs seniors face.

Still, the CPI-W measures inflation as a whole. And a 2.7% COLA is an indication that inflation hasn’t risen so substantially.

That’s a good thing in theory, except that a 2.7% raise is an increase many seniors won’t be happy with. A lot of people on Social Security want more out of their COLAs so they’re able to gain buying power. But that’s not what COLAs are meant to do.

The purpose of COLAs isn’t to help seniors on Social Security get ahead financially — it’s to help them keep up. Expecting anything more than that could mean setting yourself up for disappointment.

Of course, that 2.7% projection isn’t set in stone. But even if 2026’s Social Security COLA comes in higher, that, too, will be bad news. The reason? It’ll be an indication that inflation started ticking upward, hurting consumers across the board.