Update: Apple has switched the promotion on. It went live in eight Asian countries first, and the US, Canada and Europe are still waiting. The full terms, the free gifts and the exclusion list are in our follow-up.
Apple runs a Back to School promotion every summer, dangling an extra reason for students to pick up a Mac or iPad before term starts. The reward shifts from year to year. Some years it has been a set of free AirPods, other years a $100 to $150 Apple gift card bundled with the purchase. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman now reckons the 2026 version is finally about to go live.
We covered the hold-up last week, when the deal was running conspicuously late and the recent price hikes looked like the obvious culprit. Now there is a firmer sense of when it actually arrives.
When It Lands
According to Gurman, the wait is nearly over. Apple is said to be shipping promotional materials to its retail stores around the middle of this week, which usually signals that the offer is ready to switch on across the education store. By this point in the calendar the promo would normally be up and running already, so a mid-week debut still counts as late by Apple’s own standards.
The delay looks tied to Apple’s recent price increases, which the company pushed through after memory costs jumped. That price shift appears to have pushed the whole promotion back by a couple of weeks.
Will the Incentive Be Bigger This Year
That part is still unknown. There is a reasonable case for Apple going bigger than usual in 2026. Macs and iPads cost noticeably more than they did a few months ago, and a fatter gift card or a chunkier accessory bundle would take some of the sting out of those new prices for anyone shopping on a student budget.
Whether Apple actually sweetens the terms or simply reruns the standard offer at higher hardware prices is the open question. A like-for-like deal would effectively be worth less this year, given how far Mac and iPad pricing has moved.
One Change to the Rules
Eligibility has tightened. Apple recently wired UNiDAYS verification into its US education store, so you now have to prove you are a genuine student before you can claim any of these deals. The old approach of simply clicking through to education pricing no longer works, and that applies to the Back to School promo as much as the year-round student discount.
We will update this post once Apple flips the switch and the terms are public. If the incentive is generous enough, it could still move plenty of hardware despite the higher sticker prices.
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