2027 COLA Calculator: What Your Social Security Payment Could Become
The 2027 cost-of-living adjustment is announced on 14 October 2026, and it is not decided yet — two of the three months it is calculated from have not been published. So this shows your benefit under two scenarios that other people have published, side by side, rather than pretending there is one number.
Neither figure is a Drawpie forecast. The lower one is the statutory formula run on July's actual CPI-W with the remaining two months held flat; the higher one is The Senior Citizens League's model projection of 3.6%, dated 12 August 2026. The real number will differ from both.
Your benefit now
Starts at $1937.53, the average retirement benefit cited alongside the 3.6% projection. Replace it with your own figure — the one on your my Social Security account is the reliable one.
What that becomes
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The gap between the two lines is the part nobody knows yet: the August and September CPI-W readings, due 11 September and 14 October.
For scale, the last five
| Year | COLA | On $1937.53 |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 5.9% | +$114.31 |
| 2023 | 8.7% | +$168.57 |
| 2024 | 3.2% | +$62.00 |
| 2025 | 2.5% | +$48.44 |
| 2026 | 2.8% | +$54.25 |
Applied to the same starting figure, so the column compares like with like. Actual past increases applied to the average benefit of their own year, which was lower.