SUNY and CUNY tuition won't go up for in-state undergrads in 2026-27

If you live in New York and are working toward a bachelor’s degree at a SUNY state-operated campus or a CUNY senior college, your tuition doesn’t go up for the 2026-27 school year. SUNY’s Board of Trustees also froze the broad-based fees that resident undergraduates pay. You don’t have to apply. The freeze shows up on your bill.

When tuition stays flat, colleges lose the money a tuition increase would have brought in. This time the state covered that cost. The budget gives SUNY $54 million in new state support, mainly to replace what a tuition increase would have raised, so campuses don’t have to cut services to make up the gap. In January, Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed continuing the freeze with $90 million more in operating support for SUNY and CUNY.

Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky, who chairs the Senate Higher Education Committee, said she took the post in 2019 vowing to end the $200 tuition increases students had faced every year. She said the Legislature put the $54 million into this year’s budget. Assemblymember Alicia Hyndman, who chairs the Assembly’s Higher Education Committee, helped secure the money. The budget came in nearly two months late, and Hochul signed it on May 28, 2026.