Key Takeaways
- SNAP is funded through December 11, 2026 under a stopgap (H.R. 6500) signed September 2, so October 1 passed with no lapse.
- Congress must pass full-year FY2027 funding or another stopgap by December 11, or a funding gap starts December 12.
- In the October-November 2025 shutdown, a fight over contingency funds left some states paying partial or no November benefits.
- A shutdown doesn't erase your EBT balance; only the timing of new deposits is ever at risk.
If you get SNAP, the date to watch now is December 11, 2026 — not because benefits are scheduled to stop, but because that’s when the stopgap funding bill Congress passed in September runs out. October 1 came and went without a funding lapse.
Here’s what happened the last time this played out badly, how this fall’s deadline got resolved, and what to watch before December 11.
Where Things Stand Right Now
SNAP is funded through December 11, 2026. On September 2, 2026, the president signed H.R. 6500, the Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2027 (Public Law 119-103). It’s a stopgap, or continuing resolution (CR), that keeps federal agencies funded at roughly FY2026 levels from October 1 through December 11, 2026 — and that includes SNAP and WIC.
What Happened Last Time: October–November 2025
The government shutdown that began October 1, 2025 and ran through November 12 was the longest in modern history. Unlike this year, SNAP had no dedicated funding cushion in place when it hit — its FY2026 appropriation hadn’t been enacted yet.
USDA initially said its roughly $5–6 billion contingency reserve could be used to keep November SNAP benefits flowing. It then reversed that position, arguing the reserve wasn’t legally available for regular monthly benefits once the underlying appropriation had lapsed. Multiple federal judges ordered the administration to pay out — first around 65% of normal benefits, then in full — before the Supreme Court paused the full-payment order. The result was genuinely chaotic: some states managed to get full or partial SNAP payments out to recipients, others didn’t, and the dispute wasn’t resolved until Congress passed a bill reopening the government and replenishing SNAP funding.
How the September 30 Deadline Was Resolved
Congress built in a fix after that: SNAP and WIC got their own full-year appropriation through September 30, 2026, insulated from any shutdown fight during that fiscal year. That’s why a brief funding lapse in late January 2026 didn’t touch SNAP payments at all. The open question all summer was what would happen after September 30.
The House moved first. On July 21, 2026, it passed H.R. 9770, a stopgap through December 4, on a 220-205 vote. The Senate wrote its own bipartisan version, led by Appropriations Committee leaders Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), running through December 11. It attached that text to H.R. 6500 and passed it 90-6 on August 8.
The Final Deal: Funding Through December 11
When the House came back from its August recess, it took the Senate’s version. On September 1, 2026, the House voted 370-48 to accept the Senate bill, and the president signed it the next day — almost a month before the deadline. H.R. 9770 never became law. That’s why this October looked nothing like October 2025.
The CR runs for 72 days, roughly the first 10 weeks of the fiscal year. Congress now has to pass full-year FY2027 spending bills, or another stopgap, by December 11. If it doesn’t, a funding gap would begin December 12, 2026, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The next deadline is December 11 — subscribe here and I’ll update this page as Congress acts.
What About WIC’s Fruit and Vegetable Benefit?
WIC’s core funding is secure through December 11. The CR lets USDA spend WIC money at whatever rate is needed to keep current participants on the program. But WIC faces a different kind of risk that has nothing to do with the shutdown timeline above: a proposed cut to the size of one specific benefit in the House’s FY2027 agriculture appropriations bill, which hasn’t been enacted.
That bill would cut WIC’s Cash Value Benefit — the fruit-and-vegetable allowance loaded onto WIC cards each month — from $52 to $13 a month for breastfeeding mothers, and from $26 to $10 a month for young children. The National WIC Association and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimate the change would affect roughly 5.4 million participants nationwide. This is a proposal, not enacted law. It could come back when Congress writes full-year FY2027 spending bills, and it’s about the size of a specific benefit rather than whether WIC gets funded at all.
What Happens If Nothing Passes by December 11
If neither another continuing resolution nor full-year FY2027 appropriations are signed into law by December 11, 2026, SNAP’s funding lapses on December 12, and the program would be back in roughly the same legal gray zone that caused the November 2025 disruption — an argument over whether contingency funds can cover regular benefits, likely to end up in court again rather than resolved cleanly on day one.
That’s meaningfully different from a benefit being permanently cut. A shutdown-driven funding lapse is a temporary, resolvable dispute over which account pays the bill; it isn’t the same as a change to who qualifies or how much SNAP pays, the way SNAP’s other 2026 changes — like new work requirements or state-by-state benefit amounts — actually work. It’s also separate from the shift in how much of SNAP’s administrative costs the federal government versus states cover, which took effect October 1, 2026 and is a permanent funding-formula change unrelated to appropriations lapses.
What to Actually Watch For
Keep an eye on whether Congress passes full-year FY2027 spending bills, or another stopgap, before December 11; that vote matters more than any individual news headline about “government shutdown.” Your EBT card keeps working exactly as long as there’s money loaded on it and SNAP is funded; a lapse doesn’t erase existing balances. If a lapse does happen, expect state agencies and USDA to communicate directly about any payment timing changes, the same way they did in fall 2025.
This whole cycle also intersects with the same congressional brinkmanship driving other fights this year — including the debt ceiling timeline I’ve been tracking separately. Federal employees are affected by these funding fights too, sometimes more directly than benefit recipients — see my federal pay guide for how furloughs and back pay work on that side. And to be clear, there’s still no new federal stimulus check tied to any of this — see my 2026 stimulus check update if you’ve seen rumors conflating the two.
Common Issues to Watch Out For
Assuming any shutdown automatically stops SNAP. It didn’t in January 2026, because SNAP had its own funding. Whether a future shutdown affects SNAP depends entirely on whether SNAP-specific funding is in place at that moment.
Confusing this with SNAP’s other 2026 changes. The administrative cost-share shift, work requirement changes, and state benefit amounts are separate, already-enacted policy changes — not shutdown risks.
Panicking before there’s an actual lapse. SNAP is funded through December 11, 2026, so there’s no lapse to worry about before then.
Not knowing your EBT balance is safe. Money already loaded on your card doesn’t disappear during a shutdown — only the timing of new deposits is ever in question.
Assuming a House or Senate vote means a bill is law. H.R. 9770 passed the House in July but never became law. Only H.R. 6500, which passed both chambers in matching form and was signed on September 2, actually funds SNAP. The same rule applies to whatever bill comes next before December 11.
Believing a cashier who says “EBT isn’t being accepted because of the shutdown.” This comes up in every funding scare, including the brief January 2026 lapse — and it’s almost never actually true. SNAP funding status and an individual store’s EBT terminal are two separate things; a store can have a system outage or an undertrained cashier that has nothing to do with Congress. Check your balance directly through your state’s EBT app or the customer service number on the back of your card before assuming your benefits are gone, and report the store to your state SNAP office if a clerk keeps insisting otherwise — incorrect refusals like this can leave someone without groceries over a mistake that isn’t even about SNAP funding.
Looking Ahead: The December 11 Deadline
The next test is December 11. Congress can pass the 12 full-year FY2027 spending bills, bundle them into one package, or pass another stopgap. If it does any of these in time, SNAP deposits continue as normal. If it doesn’t, expect the same contingency-fund legal fight to resurface almost immediately. I’ll update this page as Congress acts.
