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Open Enrollment Dates for 2027 Coverage, State by State

SmartHealthMatch team · Reviewed by a licensed health insurance advisor · Updated September 2026

In short: Open enrollment for 2027 coverage runs Nov 1, 2026 to Jan 15, 2027 on HealthCare.gov. Every state's dates and deadlines, plus your options if you miss it.

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For most of the country, open enrollment for 2027 health coverage opens November 1, 2026 and closes January 15, 2027, with December 15, 2026 as the cutoff for coverage that starts January 1. Those three dates cover roughly two-thirds of the states. The complication this year is that eight state-run marketplaces are on a different calendar, three of them open before November, and a federal court case left several closing dates genuinely unsettled as of mid-September. This page lays out what is confirmed, what is not, and what the deadlines actually buy you.

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The three dates that matter on HealthCare.gov

CMS put the federal window in writing on July 31, 2026, and HealthCare.gov's own dates page (checked September 14, 2026) lists the same three milestones:

Source: CMS/CCIIO statement re City of Columbus v. Kennedy, July 31, 2026 (primary), and HealthCare.gov "Dates & deadlines," checked September 14, 2026.

Two details people get wrong. First, marketplace coverage always begins on the first of a month — there is no mid-month start, so a December 20 application does not produce December coverage or a January 5 start date. Second, January 15 is not a grace period for January coverage: enroll in that final month and you are looking at a February 1 effective date, which means you carry January uninsured unless something else covers you.

Why some closing dates are still unsettled

This is the part no calendar app will tell you, and it explains why two reputable sources can give you different end dates for the same state.

A 2025 federal rule — the Marketplace Integrity and Affordability final rule, published June 25, 2025 — would have shortened open enrollment starting with plan year 2027. It set the federal window at November 1 to December 15 and required state-run marketplaces to close no later than December 31 and to run no more than nine calendar weeks. On June 12, 2026, a federal district court in Maryland vacated eight provisions of that rule, including the one standardizing and shortening open enrollment. HHS appealed to the Fourth Circuit on July 16, 2026, and oral argument is set for October 30, 2026.

The practical upshot: because the shortening provision is vacated, the longer pre-existing window applies, which is why CMS confirmed November 1 through January 15 for this cycle. That is settled for the window opening November 1, 2026. What is not settled is later years — if the appeal succeeds, a shortened calendar could return from fall 2027 onward. And several state marketplaces simply have not published a plan-year-2027 closing date on their own websites yet; their dates circulating online come from secondary trackers, some written before the June vacatur. Those are marked below.

States using HealthCare.gov for 2027 coverage

Twenty-nine states run their 2027 enrollment through HealthCare.gov and follow the November 1 / December 15 / January 15 schedule above:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

A few of these operate as state-based marketplaces that lease the federal platform, which changes who answers the phone but not the dates. Delaware's insurance department confirmed the November 1, 2026 start in its own September 4, 2026 rate announcement, which is a useful sign that the federal window is being treated as firm.

State-run marketplaces: dates for 2027 coverage

Twenty-two jurisdictions run their own marketplace and set their own calendar. The "Confirmed?" column is the honest part — it says whether the marketplace itself published the date or whether it comes from a secondary tracker.

Compiled from each marketplace's own website where reachable, plus CMS and healthinsurance.org's consolidated open-enrollment tracker for the rest. Exchange sites checked September 14, 2026. Nine jurisdictions were confirmed on the marketplace's own site; the rest are marked. Dates published as recurring windows without a plan year are noted as such.

The four states worth a second look

Idaho is the outlier that catches people every year. Your Health Idaho runs October 15 to December 15 — a window that opens two weeks before everyone else's and closes a full month earlier. If you live in Idaho and wait for the November headlines, you have already burned a third of your enrollment period, and there is no January window to fall back on.

Connecticut and Massachusetts open October 23, 2026. Access Health CT flags these as new dates on its own site. The earlier start is not a trap by itself, but Massachusetts pairs it with a December 23 cutoff for January 1 coverage, which is an unusual date to have in your head during a holiday week.

Vermont is the one to actually verify. Vermont Health Connect's information site has described a November 1 to December 28 window, one state summary says November 1 to December 15, and an August 2026 tracker says January 15. Those are three materially different deadlines. Call the marketplace rather than trusting any single page, including this one.

More broadly: if the "Confirmed?" column above says anything other than yes, check the marketplace's own site in late October, when the 2027 pages go live. A closing date wrong by two weeks is the kind of error that costs a year of coverage.

What the December deadline is really about: money, not paperwork

The reason December 15 matters more than it used to is that the subsidy rules changed underneath it. The enhanced premium tax credits created in 2021 expired on December 31, 2025, and Congress has not extended them — the House passed a three-year extension 230–196 in January 2026, the Senate did not advance its version, and nothing has been enacted since. New Mexico is the only state that fully replaced them with a state-funded subsidy.

That brings back the hard income cap at 400% of the federal poverty level. Below the line, you get a premium tax credit. One dollar above it, you get nothing. Here is where the line falls for 2026 coverage in the contiguous 48 states and DC:

Source: 2025 HHS poverty guidelines (90 FR 5917, January 17, 2025), which set eligibility for 2026 coverage. Add roughly $22,000 to the 400% column for each person beyond five. Alaska and Hawaii use higher tables. Income means the household's modified adjusted gross income for the coverage year. Checked September 14, 2026.

Under the current rules, a household between 300% and 400% of the poverty level pays up to 9.96% of income for the benchmark silver plan, and the credit covers the rest (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-25, for plan years beginning in 2026). Below 133% of poverty the figure is 2.1%. Above 400%, there is no percentage — you pay the full premium.

A worked example. Take a married couple, both 60, in Michigan. The statewide median benchmark silver premium for a 60-year-old couple in Michigan is about $2,606 a month — roughly $31,300 a year — from the CMS plan-year-2026 landscape file, data current as of August 4, 2026. At a household income of $84,000, just under the $84,600 cliff, their share of the benchmark is capped at 9.96%, or about $697 a month, and the credit covers roughly $1,909 a month. At $85,000 of income, the credit is zero and they owe the full $2,606. A $1,000 difference in income swings the annual cost by roughly $22,900.

That is why the December deadline is a financial deadline. Your income projection for 2027 is something you can still influence in the fall — a deferred distribution, a retirement-account contribution, the timing of a client invoice — and open enrollment is when it gets locked to a plan choice. Our guide to the subsidy cliff walks through the arithmetic, and if your renewal notice landed higher than you expected, why marketplace premiums jumped explains the mechanics.

One honest caveat on the numbers above: they are the 2026 figures, because those are the ones that exist. The poverty guidelines and the applicable-percentage table for 2027 coverage are normally published in the winter, so the exact 2027 cliff and 2027 percentages were not available as of September 2026. Expect the structure to hold and the dollar thresholds to shift up modestly, and confirm your own numbers when you enroll.

Missed the window? Three things still work

Open enrollment is the main door, not the only one.

A qualifying life event opens a special enrollment period. Losing other coverage, moving to a new coverage area, marriage, divorce that ends your coverage, a birth or adoption, gaining lawful presence, or aging off a parent's plan at 26 all count — generally a 60-day window, with full marketplace protections: guaranteed issue, no pre-existing-condition exclusions, and subsidies based on income. Our full list of qualifying life events is the place to check before assuming you are locked out. Deciding you want insurance after all is not on the list.

Private underwritten plans take applications year-round. They sit outside the marketplace and ignore its calendar, and for healthy applicants they can be competitive with broad PPO-style networks. The trade-offs are real and worth stating plainly: they are not guaranteed issue, the carrier reviews your health history and can decline the application, and they may limit or exclude pre-existing conditions. No subsidies apply. If your income puts you under the cliff, a marketplace plan is usually the better structure — and if you have meaningful health history, underwriting will likely work against you. Our explainer on what "underwritten" means covers how carriers actually evaluate an application.

Short-term plans are a bridge, not coverage. The federal rule still in effect caps them at a three-month initial term and four months total including renewals. Federal enforcement of that definition has been de-prioritized since August 2025 pending new rulemaking, but state law governs what can actually be sold, and a number of states restrict or ban these plans outright. They typically exclude pre-existing conditions and may omit maternity, mental health, or prescription coverage. Reasonable for a healthy person bridging a few known months; not a substitute for real insurance. See short-term vs. private PPO vs. ACA for the three structures side by side, and missed open enrollment for the full map of what is left.

A calendar you can actually use

• Now through late October 2026 — confirm your marketplace's dates on its own website, especially in the eight states above where the closing date is unpublished. Idaho residents: your window opens October 15. Connecticut and Massachusetts: October 23.
• Early November 2026 — log in and look at the actual renewal. Plans get discontinued, networks change, and in at least one state insurers are leaving the marketplace for 2027, which means auto-renewal may move you somewhere you did not choose.
• By December 15, 2026 — enroll or switch for a January 1 start on HealthCare.gov. Maryland, Oregon and Washington give you to December 31; Massachusetts, December 23. Check your state's column above.
• December 16, 2026 – January 15, 2027 — still open on HealthCare.gov, but coverage starts February 1. Budget for an uninsured January if you land here.
• After your state closes — special enrollment period, year-round private options, or wait. Changing your mind is not a qualifying event.

If you are already mid-year and unhappy with the plan you have, that is a different question — see switching health insurance mid-year.

Age 65 or older? This guide is about under-65 coverage. Medicare enrollment is at medicare.gov or 1-800-MEDICARE. Medicare's calendar is separate: the Initial Enrollment Period runs seven months, from three months before the month you turn 65 to three months after.

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