State Pension Calculator 2026-27

The full new State Pension is £241.30 a week, or £12,547.60 a year, for 2026/27, and it is uprated every April by the triple lock. You need 35 qualifying years of National Insurance contributions to receive the full amount. With fewer than 35 years you get a proportional sum, because each qualifying year adds 1/35th of the total, so 25 years gives 25/35 of £241.30, which is £158.00 a week. Ten qualifying years is the minimum needed to receive anything at all, and below that the record pays nothing.

Qualifying years are built through employed earnings above the lower earnings limit of £6,708 a year for 2026/27, through self-employed Class 4 NI contributions, or through National Insurance credits. Credits arrive automatically for Child Benefit recipients until the youngest child is 12, for Universal Credit claimants, and for people receiving Carer's Allowance or Jobseeker's Allowance. Your own record is the one thing the calculator cannot see for you, so check it at gov.uk/check-state-pension, where the forecast sits next to a year-by-year list showing which years count and where the gaps fall.

Gaps can usually be filled by paying voluntary Class 3 contributions at £18.40 a week for 2026/27, which works out at around £957 for a full year. Each year bought adds roughly £6.89 a week, or £358 a year, to the pension, so the outlay pays for itself within about 2.7 years of drawing it. That is a better return than most people will find anywhere else. You can normally go back six years, and certain historical years can sometimes be filled at lower rates, so it is worth pricing each gap separately rather than assuming they all cost the same.

State Pension age is currently 66 for men and women alike. It rises to 67 between 6 April 2026 and 5 April 2028 depending on date of birth, and a further increase to 68 is scheduled between 2044 and 2046, though there is pressure to bring that forward to 2037-2039. The gov.uk/state-pension-age tool gives your exact date. Reaching that date does not oblige you to claim: deferring adds 1% to the pension for every 9 weeks you wait, which comes to 5.8% for a full year deferred, and there is no upper limit on how long you can leave it.

The triple lock guarantees an April rise equal to the highest of September CPI inflation, average weekly earnings growth, or 2.5%. Earnings growth of 4.8% was the winning measure for 2026/27, taking the new State Pension from £230.25 to £241.30 a week and the annual figure from £11,973 to £12,547.60. The policy has been politically controversial and its long-term sustainability is debated, although several governments have committed to maintaining it.

Anyone whose total income, State Pension included, falls below £238.00 a week as a single person or £363.25 a week as a couple can claim Pension Credit, which tops income up to those figures. Much of its value lies in what comes with it: a free TV licence for the over-75s, Cold Weather Payments, Council Tax Reduction, Housing Benefit, and free dental care, glasses and NHS prescriptions. On the DWP's latest estimate, up to 910,000 entitled families did not claim in 2023/24, missing out on around £2,600 a year each in cash alone. Applications go through gov.uk/pension-credit or 0800 99 1234.