Update, 29 August 2026. We re-checked both places this price can appear. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing's residential aged care funding updates page still records only the increase from $282.44 to $295.64 on 1 October 2025 and says nothing about 1 October 2026, and IHACPA's residential pricing advice page still lists nothing later than its 2025-26 advice. So the position below holds, with the window now down from ten weeks to roughly four. We checked the Department as well as the pricing authority deliberately: IHACPA gives the advice and the government sets the price, so the authority's page alone would not settle it.

What the number is

Under the Australian National Aged Care Classification, each resident is assessed into a class with a weighting (a National Weighted Activity Unit), and the base subsidy a home receives is that weighting multiplied by the national price. The price is recommended each year by the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority, the same body that prices public hospital activity, and the Government then sets the rate. Get the price wrong in either direction and the consequences are sector-wide: it is the lever that decides whether the care-margin squeeze we report separately eases or tightens.

The anatomy of $295.64

IHACPA’s published advice shows its working, which is worth setting out because it explains why the number moves. The authority took the sector’s measured average cost per NWAU in 2022-23 ($221.50, adjusted for the care-minutes responsibility) and indexed it by a total of 32.8 per cent, comprising: 17.2 per cent for the Fair Work Commission’s work value decisions, 1.2 per cent for superannuation guarantee increases, and 11.9 per cent for inflation and general wage growth. It then added $1.59 for outbreak management costs. More than half the uplift, in other words, is the aged care wage case, whose final instalment lands on 1 August; the price is substantially a wages-recovery mechanism.

Step chart of the AN-ACC price per NWAU. $253.82 to 30 September 2024, $280.01 from 1 October 2024, $282.44 from 1 March 2025, $295.64 from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026, then unknown. $253.82 $280.01 $282.44 $295.64 ? to 30 Sep 2024 1 Oct 2024 1 Mar 2025 1 Oct 2025 AN-ACC price per NWAU; the step due 1 October 2026 was still unpublished at 23 August 2026
Four published steps and a blank where the fifth should be. Sources: IHACPA Residential Aged Care Pricing Advice 2025-26; price history as recited in the Government’s Quarterly Financial Snapshot Q1 2025-26.

The same advice contains a number families rarely see quoted: IHACPA’s estimate of the gap between what hotel services (accommodation, catering, cleaning) cost and what they earn: $6.24 per occupied bed day nationally in 2025-26, and $12.48 for homes with no additional-service fee revenue, both excluding maintenance estimated at a further $13 to $14. The daily life of a home runs at a loss before care even starts, which is the context for the accommodation-pricing debates elsewhere in the sector.

What is actually pending, precisely

Re-checked 23 August 2026: the consultation for next year closed while this year is still blank

Five days on from the check below, both pages still say what they said. IHACPA’s residential aged care pricing advice page lists 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 and nothing later, and its news index carries no announcement of a 2026-27 advice. The gap to expiry is now five weeks.

What is new is a date passing. The consultation IHACPA opened on 9 July closed at 5pm AEST Friday 21 August 2026, two days before this check. That consultation feeds the 2027-28 advice, not the number that is missing, and we are not suggesting one has displaced the other. The plain observation is only that the residential pricing cycle has now taken its next scheduled step for the year after next, while the figure for the year starting 1 October remains unpublished.

The first of the two September dates is 20 September, not 30 September. The earlier one is the hotelling supplement indexation, which the department’s own page ties to consideration of IHACPA’s pricing advice, so it depends on the same unpublished document as the price itself. That page is also unchanged: it still carries date last updated: 24 July 2026, now a month old, still records the increase to $295.64 on 1 October 2025, and still contains no mention of October 2026.

Re-checked 18 August 2026: six weeks to run, and this time we checked the decision-maker too

Thirteen days on from the check below, and thirty-one days after this story was published, the blank is still a blank. IHACPA’s residential aged care pricing advice page still lists 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26, and nothing later. The gap to expiry is now six weeks.

The new check is on the other side of the transaction. Every previous check here looked at IHACPA, which gives the advice. It does not set the price: the Minister does. So a fair objection to this story has always been that the decision might have been taken and announced somewhere we were not looking. It has not. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing’s own residential aged care funding updates page, which is where AN-ACC price changes are recorded, still reads The AN-ACC price increased from $282.44 to $295.64 on 1 October 2025 and contains no mention of October 2026 at all. That page carries its own date last updated: 24 July 2026, so it is a maintained page rather than a forgotten one, and three weeks ago it still had nothing to record.

A second September date now hangs on the same unpublished document. The same departmental page states, verbatim: From 2026, the hotelling supplement will be indexed annually on 20 September following consideration of IHACPA’s pricing advice. That supplement rose from $15.60 to $22.15 per resident per day on 20 September 2025. So the first annual indexation under that new arrangement falls on 20 September 2026, ten days before the AN-ACC price expires, and the department has tied it to consideration of the advice that is not public. Two dated events in the same month now depend on one document nobody outside government has seen.

One fairness point this story should keep making. IHACPA provides its advice to the Minister, and providing advice and publishing it are separate acts. The advice may well exist. What is absent is any public figure a provider could budget against, and any published reason for the timing. We assert no cause.

Providers with something to say can still say it about the year after next: the consultation feeding the 2027-28 framework closed at 5pm AEST on Friday 21 August 2026, three days from this update. It is an odd position to be in, shaping the pricing method for 2027-28 while the price for the year starting in six weeks is unknown.

Re-checked 5 August 2026: still no 2026-27 price, with eight weeks to run

Eighteen days after the check below and eighteen days after that check’s own deadline reasoning, nothing has changed. IHACPA’s residential aged care pricing advice page still offers 2025-26 as its most recent document, and the technical specifications published there confirm the current figure: the recommended AN-ACC price for RACPA25 is $295.64 per NWAU from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026. The quick links on that page still read Support at Home Pricing Advice 2026-27 beside Residential Aged Care Pricing Advice 2025-26, which is the contrast this story has made from the start.

The arithmetic has moved even though the documents have not. On 18 July the gap was ten weeks; it is now eight. We will keep re-checking and will report the number the day it lands.

Re-checked 29 July 2026: still no 2026-27 price

Eleven days after we published, the blank is still a blank, and it has now passed the point where last year’s cadence would have filled it. On IHACPA’s own residential aged care pricing advice page, the most recent document offered is still the 2025-26 advice. There is no 2026-27 residential dollar advice, and IHACPA has still announced no date for one.

What has been published in the meantime sharpens the point this story makes rather than softening it. IHACPA has issued its Support at Home Pricing Advice 2026-27, and the residential 2026-27 framework has been out since April. So the method for the residential price exists, and the dollar figure for the other side of the system exists. The residential dollar figure, the one that funds every bed, is the piece still missing, with the current price expiring on 30 September. IHACPA has also now opened consultation on the 2027-28 residential framework, which is the cycle after the one still unpriced.

We will keep checking and will publish the number on the day it lands.

  • The 2026-27 dollar advice. Unpublished. Last year’s equivalent, the 2025-26 advice containing $295.64, is dated July 2025; on that cadence the 2026-27 number is due about now, but IHACPA has announced no date and we will not guess one.
  • The 2026-27 framework (published 13 April 2026) settles the method: it was informed by a 2025 consultation that drew 47 submissions and 45 interviews with First Nations and multi-purpose service providers. Method, not money.
  • The new consultation (opened 9 July 2026, closed 5pm AEST Friday 21 August 2026) feeds the 2027-28 cycle. Its named focus areas are a preview of where the price mechanics go next: respite funding, cost collections, the split of administrative and care costs, and the transition impacts of the new Act. IHACPA chair David Tune: This is an important step in ensuring our pricing and costing advice remains transparent, evidence-based and responsive to the needs of older Australians and the aged care sector.

Meanwhile the in-home half of the system already has its 2026-27 costing: IHACPA published Support at Home pricing advice on 28 May 2026, with the pointed caveat that its recommended prices do not represent a price cap, benchmark or guidance; the Minister holds that pen, and has paused the caps. The residential sector is in the mirror-image position: the mechanism is settled, the number is late.

Why it matters, concretely: StewartBrown’s December 2025 survey shows direct care costs growing at 13.68 per cent against direct care revenue at 7.82 per cent under the current price, and providers face an April 2026-onward funding penalty of up to $33.41 per bed day for missed care-minutes targets calculated at that price. Every one of those numbers re-bases on 1 October. A provider signing enterprise agreements or setting fees for 2026-27 is doing so against a blank, and a family weighing a home’s fee letter should know the subsidy behind it is, for the moment, an unpublished figure. When the number lands we will report it the day it does.

How we worked this out

The current price, its indexation anatomy and the hotel cost gap are transcribed from IHACPA’s Residential Aged Care Pricing Advice 2025-26 (sections 3.2 and 4.2). The price history steps are as recited in that advice and in the Government’s Quarterly Financial Snapshot Q1 2025-26. The statement that no 2026-27 dollar figure exists is a dated observation: it reflects IHACPA’s published documents as checked on 18 July 2026, and will be superseded the day the advice appears. We have not estimated or modelled what the new price might be, deliberately.

Primary sources

  1. IHACPA, Residential Aged Care Pricing Advice 2025-26 (PDF; the $295.64 recommendation and its indexation breakdown).
  2. IHACPA, Pricing Framework for Australian Residential Aged Care Services 2026-27 (PDF, published 13 April 2026).
  3. IHACPA, consultation announcement, 9 July 2026 (closes 21 August 2026; feeds 2027-28).
  4. IHACPA, Support at Home Pricing Advice 2026-27 release, 28 May 2026.
  5. IHACPA, Residential aged care pricing advice (index page, re-checked 18 August 2026): the most recent residential advice listed is still 2025-26, alongside the Support at Home Pricing Advice 2026-27; this is the basis for the re-check note above.
  6. Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Residential aged care funding updates (read 18 August 2026; the page carries its own date last updated of 24 July 2026): that the most recent recorded AN-ACC change is still the increase from $282.44 to $295.64 on 1 October 2025 with no mention of October 2026, the hotelling supplement rise from $15.60 to $22.15 per resident per day on 20 September 2025, and the statement that from 2026 the supplement is indexed annually on 20 September following consideration of IHACPA’s pricing advice.
  7. Quarterly Financial Snapshot of the aged care sector, Q1 2025-26 (price history and funding context).
  8. StewartBrown, December 2025 survey (cost growth versus the current price; the $33.41 care-minutes exposure).

Spotted an error? The correction form is on our tips page; we check every correction against the cited sources and log the outcome here.