Public Service Loan Forgiveness still exists in 2026, but the rules around who qualifies got noticeably narrower — mostly because of two separate changes landing in the same year. * The first is a new employer eligibility rule that took effect July 1, 2026. The Department of Education redefined "qualifying employer" to exclude organizations found to have a substantial illegal purpose, including supporting terrorism or aiding illegal immigration. The Department itself estimates this will disqualify fewer than 10 employers a year, so most nonprofit and government workers aren't affected directly — but employer status can now be revisited in a way it wasn't before. * The bigger practical disruption is the end of the SAVE Plan. PSLF requires 120 qualifying monthly payments on an income-driven repayment plan, and with SAVE gone, borrowers pursuing PSLF have to actively switch to a different qualifying plan — like the new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) — to keep their payment count moving. Sitting in a defaulted Standard Plan enrollment after missing your transition window doesn't earn PSLF credit the same way. * Parent PLUS borrowers face a harder cutoff: any Parent PLUS loan first disbursed on or after July 1, 2026 is locked out of income-driven repayment entirely, which locks it out of PSLF too, since PSLF requires an IDR plan. Even older, eligible Parent PLUS loans lose that eligibility if the borrower takes out any new loan after that date. * One deadline already passed but is worth knowing about for anyone catching up late: borrowers needed to consolidate their loans before April 1, 2026 to avoid getting pulled into the more restrictive post-OBBBA consolidation rules.