Texas residents can apply without an application fee to undergraduate programs at Texas public colleges and universities from Oct. 12 through Oct. 18, 2026, if they submit through ApplyTexas by 11:59 p.m. Oct. 18.
Comal County students who meet the Texas residency requirement can avoid application fees for eligible public college applications submitted through ApplyTexas during that window. The waiver applies to applications to public colleges and universities, according to the governor's Oct. 8 announcement; the announcement does not extend it to private schools.
The required route matters: Students must submit through ApplyTexas to receive the waiver. The deadline is 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18. The governor's office says more than 260,000 applications were submitted during last year's Free College Application Week; that is a statewide application count, not a count of students or a measure of local savings.
Before submitting, applicants can use the official announcement to check the eligibility rule and deadline, then confirm their residency status and program choices. The announcement does not give a fee schedule by college, so the amount any one applicant saves depends on the applications they would otherwise have paid to submit.