The UK State Pension

Which State Pension you get is decided by one date. Reach State Pension age on or after 6 April 2016 and you are on the new State Pension, whose full rate is £241.30 a week for 2026/27. Reach it before that and you are on the basic State Pension, which pays £184.90 a week at the full Category A or B rate, with any Additional State Pension paid on top.

Neither is historical. Both are in payment today and both were uprated by the same order in April, so a person who reached State Pension age on 5 April 2016 and their neighbour who reached it a day later are paid under different Acts for the rest of their lives.

The new State Pension does not look at what you earned. It counts qualifying years on your National Insurance record: 35 of them for the full rate, 10 to get anything at all, and a straight proportion of the full rate in between. A qualifying year can come from contributions, from National Insurance credits, or from voluntary contributions.

Full rate

£241.30 a week (2026/27)

Years for the full rate

35 qualifying years

Minimum

10 qualifying years — below that, nothing is payable

One qualifying year is worth

about £6.89 a week

Entitlement requires that you have reached State Pension age. The Pensions Act 2014 provides no reduced pension before that date and no way to buy one, which is why this site has no early-retirement page: a workplace or personal pension can often be taken earlier, but that is a different pension under a different regime.

Deferral runs the other way. Not claiming increases the rate by 1% for every 9 whole weeks you put it off.

• State Pension age — the legislated timetable, block by block, and the boundary that catches people out.
• State Pension calculator — what a given number of qualifying years produces, and what the arithmetic ignores.
• Check your forecast — the only figure that reads your own record, plus gaps, cost and deferral.