The Community of Madrid has published the list of school meal grant recipients at the start of the 2026/2027 school year and expanded the programme by 14 per cent. According to the Consejería de Educación, Ciencia y Universidades the grants will benefit 135,600 children and young people this school year, 16,600 more than at the same point in 2025/2026. The decision was announced in the relevant resolution in the Boletín Oficial de la Comunidad de Madrid and families were informed at the start of term.
The grants are available to pupils in Educación Infantil, Primaria and Educación Secundaria Obligatoria at publicly funded schools. In Spain, these include both public schools and privately run schools funded by the state. The main eligibility requirement is an annual household income per person of no more than €8,400. For households recognised as familias numerosas the limit is €10,000 per person. For the second year running, members of the Fuerzas Armadas stationed in the Comunidad de Madrid are also explicitly included.
According to the authorities, just under 40 per cent of the grants go to families whose eligibility was confirmed and renewed after their documents were checked. This renewal reduces the need to provide proof again and speeds up administrative processing. New applicants could submit a simplified application with basic details and explicit consent for the authorities to check registers, with additional evidence required only in certain cases. The Consejería de Educación, Ciencia y Universidades is responsible for administering the scheme, consolidating applications and allocating the grants to schools for their canteen services.
As in the previous two years, the Consejería plans to hold a second application roundin the coming weeks. This follow-up process is intended to reach minors facing financial or social hardship who enrolled only after the start of term, or whose initial application was not accepted because of errors, missing documents or late submission. According to the administration, grants awarded in this round will be paid retrospectively from the start of the school year, so that access to school meals is not affected by when a child enters the system.
The expansion follows earlier decisions for the 2026/2027 school year under which the regional government provided additional funding for becas de comedor. The aim is to make school meals more widely available; however, the adequacy of the income limits and the actual coverage are being discussed politically, independently of today’s administrative decision.
Editor: Phillipe Schmidt-Araguin (Article created with AI assistance).