The CY2027 Medicare Advantage and Part D operating calendar

CMS publishes the CY2027 Medicare Parts C and D Annual Calendar in February, then sets the actual hours and minutes through weekly HPMS memos. Those memos land as untitled ZIP files on a listing page that shows a report date and nothing else. You cannot tell from the page whether this week's packet holds a formulary deadline or a PACE notice. You download it and open every file.

That gap is why this page exists. As of August 4, 2026, the February calendar is imprecise or silent on six near-term deadlines: rebate reallocation, the voluntary de minimis intent window, the summer formulary update window, the PA/ST criteria change request file, the final actuarial certification, and the plan correction request window. Two of the six, the PA/ST file and the final actuarial certification, do not appear on the annual calendar at all. On the certification, CMS is blunt: if it is not submitted, "the bid(s) will not be considered for CMS review or approval."

So this calendar sits on top of both sources, and adds one thing neither of them has. The official CMS annual calendar gives the year its shape. The July 2026 HPMS packets set the real deadlines on the near-term rows. And every row carries an owner and a consequence, because CMS tags its rows by plan type and nobody tags them by who on your team gets paged.

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Open now, week of August 3, 2026

Status as of August 4, 2026

August 5, 5:00 p.m. ET

PA/ST Criteria Change Request File due in HPMS, for step therapy wording changes made necessary by an allowable formulary change.

Part D and Pharmacy

August 5 to 11

CY2027 drug pricing and plan benefit Preview 1 in HPMS. Opens 6:00 a.m. ET on August 5, closes 11:59 p.m. ET on August 11.

Part D and Pharmacy

August 6, 11:59 p.m. PDT

CY2027 rebate reallocation closes. The window opened July 28 after CMS released the de minimis amount and the Part D bid amounts.

Bid and Actuarial

August 6 to 10, 6:00 p.m. EDT

"Medicare & You" handbook plan data preview. The same data feeds LIS member letters and other Medicare materials.

Member Materials

August 7

Plan connectivity data due in HPMS so CY2027 contracts can be approved on time.

Enrollment and Ops

August 11, 11:59 p.m. PDT

Deadline to tell CMS you intend to participate in the voluntary de minimis program for CY2027. That window has been open since August 7.

Bid and Actuarial

August 12, 11:59 p.m. PDT

CY2027 final actuarial certification, for every BPT uploaded to HPMS. Bids resubmitted for rebate reallocation must wait for HPMS to process the resubmission first.

Bid and Actuarial

August 6, 12:00 a.m. to August 10, 5:00 p.m. EDT

CY2027 summer formulary update window. New protected class drugs on the updated FRF have to be added here.

Part D and Pharmacy

What the February calendar says, and what the July memos say

This comparison is the argument for the page. Every row below is a real CY2027 deadline. The middle column is what CMS published on February 17, 2026. The right column is what the HPMS memos from the weeks of July 20 and July 27 actually set.

Two of the nine match. Six got sharper once the memos landed, and one is still an open range six weeks before it has to be over.

How to read the tables

Owners are the team that gets paged, not the plan type. CMS already tags rows Part C, Part D, Cost and MMP in its own calendar, and that tagging is worth keeping for MMP and cost plans, but it does not tell a Stars director whether a row is hers. The source column says where the date came from, which matters because a memo date beats a February date every time.

Still open from late July 2026

Four things landed in HPMS in the last two weeks of July and are sitting there now. None of them has a deadline attached, which is exactly why they get skipped.

August 2026

September 2026

October 2026

November 2026

December 2026

January 2027

The rest of the cycle

These rows have already passed for CY2027, and they are the reason to keep this page open in February. Every one of them comes back for CY2028 on roughly the same date, and the three review windows in the Quality swimlane are the ones teams find out about after they close.

Two sequencing traps

Both of these sit across two memos that do not reference each other, which is how they get missed.

The summer formulary window does not help your OOPC

After rebate reallocation, CMS calculates out-of-pocket cost using the first-approved plan formulary, or the most recently submitted formulary if none is approved yet. The July 31 memo states that CMS does not consider formulary updates made during the CY2027 summer limited update window. So a plan can add drugs and cut tiers between August 6 and August 10 and see zero OOPC or TBC benefit from it. Make the formulary changes because they are right for members, not because you expect them to move the cost comparison.

Final certification has to wait for rebate reallocation

For bids being resubmitted for rebate reallocation, the certifying actuary has to wait until HPMS processes the resubmission before submitting the final certification. Rebate reallocation closes at 11:59 p.m. PDT on August 6 and final certification is due at 11:59 p.m. PDT on August 12. That is a strict order of operations inside a six-day window, and it applies per bid. For bids not being resubmitted, such as most PDPs, CMS asks for the final certification as soon as possible rather than on the last day.

Where CMS is deliberately vague, and why the memos matter

Two dates on this page are ranges because CMS published them as ranges. The Part C and D Star Ratings plan preview periods are listed only as August to September 2026, and neither July packet dated them. The 2027 Star Ratings go live on medicare.gov in early to mid October 2026. Both come from the annual calendar, so watch HPMS for each one and do not plan either to the day.

CMS puts this disclaimer on every page of the annual calendar, and it is the honest reason a page like this has to be maintained rather than published once:

The contents of this document do not have the force and effect of law and are not meant to bind the public in any way, unless specifically incorporated into a contract.

The weekly HPMS memos are the operative source. If a date here conflicts with a memo in your HPMS inbox, the memo wins.

How Pelica helps when the deadline lands on a quality team

Half of these rows are review windows. CMS puts data in HPMS, gives you a few weeks to find what is wrong with it, and closes the window. The other half are outcome deadlines, where the date is the easy part and closing the gaps before it is the work.

Pelica is the execution layer for the second kind. Most platforms show you the gap list. Pelica's Quality and Stars copilot works it: voice AI and computer-use agents call members, pharmacies and prescribers, work the payer portals, follow up until the gap is closed, and escalate to a person only when one is genuinely needed. Customers close about 90% of BCS and KED gaps in-year, 70% or more of transitions-of-care gaps within 30 days, and run 96% to 98% medication adherence on the triple-weighted measures. Teams report about 10 hours back per user per week, which is roughly the time this calendar's review windows ask for.

Update log

Maintained by Pelica. Last verified August 4, 2026.

• August 4, 2026. Page published. Every row inside the next 60 days was checked against the HPMS packets for the weeks of July 20 to 24 and July 27 to 31, 2026, downloaded and read in full. Confirmed: the summer formulary window and PA/ST file dates, rebate reallocation and de minimis intent, the final actuarial certification deadline and its quoted consequence, both MPF preview windows and the September 4 to 24 correction window, the handbook preview close time, the September 15 compliance call, and the September 22 MTF comment close. The Star Ratings plan preview period remains undated by CMS.

Next planned checks: after the August 12 certification deadline, after the September 24 correction window closes, at Plan Finder go-live on October 1, at AEP open on October 15 and close on December 7, and a full re-baseline in February 2027 when CMS publishes the CY2028 annual calendar. The CY2028 edition will get its own URL so this one stays intact as the CY2027 record.

Sources

• CMS: CY2027 Medicare Parts C and D Annual Calendar (15 pages, February 17, 2026), distributed to plans through HPMS
• CMS HPMS memos, week of July 20 to 24, 2026: updated 2026 Star Ratings data, CY2027 information release date, CY2027 plan benefit and drug pricing previews, summer formulary update window, HPMS disenrollment data, MTF information collection request
• CMS HPMS memos, week of July 27 to 31, 2026: HOS reports and data, CY2027 out-of-pocket costs and premium information for rebate reallocation, CY2027 final actuarial certification deadline, "Medicare & You" handbook data preview, bid submission feedback, September 2026 quarterly compliance officer call
• NCQA: HEDIS MY2027 public comment
• 42 CFR 422.152, quality improvement program and CCIP attestations

Related reading on this site: the 2027 QBP ratings recalculation, the 2027 Star Ratings changes, the 2026 cut points explainer, and the printable 2026 cut points cheat sheet.