2026 State of the Military Family® Summit

Same Problems. Harder Settings.

NMFA’s mission is to identify and solve the unique challenges of military life — with the military families who live them. But what if some of the most difficult challenges military families face aren’t unique at all?

Child care is hard for every American family. Building a career while changing jobs every few years is hard for every American worker. Making ends meet when life doesn’t go as planned is hard for every American household.

Military life doesn’t create these problems. It amplifies them — through frequent moves, long separations, remote duty stations, government shutdowns, and a system that wasn’t built with spouses’ careers or families’ stability in mind. Military families navigate universal challenges at the highest intensity, with fewer safety nets and less room for error.

That makes them something remarkable: a stress test for the systems every American depends on. And it makes solving these problems for military families one of the most important things we can do — for them, and for all of us.

Join us at the 2026 State of the Military Family® Summit to examine what military life reveals about childcare, workforce opportunity, economic security, and building career pathways while also building families — and what fixing it could mean for our community and the country.