What is your State Pension age, and when can you start claiming?
State Pension age is 66 for anyone reaching it now, is rising to 67 in stages between April 2026 and April 2028, and is legislated to reach 68 between 2044 and 2046. It is set by date of birth, it is the same for men and women, and it is the one retirement date in the UK system you cannot move.
- Today: 66 for everyone who reached State Pension age before 6 April 2026.
- The 67 rise: being phased in between April 2026 and April 2028 for people born 6 April 1960 to 5 April 1977.
- The 68 rise: legislated for 2044-2046; a review could bring it forward, never back.
- The consequence: nothing accrues before that date, and the State Pension is not paid automatically — you claim it.
01 The date is set by your birthday, not your retirement
Your State Pension age is a function of your date of birth and nothing else — not your job, your health, your National Insurance record, or the day you stop working. It was 66 for everyone who reached it before 6 April 2026, and the staged rise to 67 began on that date. For people born between 6 April 1960 and 5 April 1977 it rises to 67 in monthly steps across April 2026 to April 2028, a transition now under way, so two people born four months apart can have State Pension ages five months apart. It is 68 for anyone born after 5 April 1977, under the timetable legislated for 2044 to 2046.
The equalisation that took women's State Pension age from 60 to 66 finished in 2020. There is now one age for everyone, and the transitional cases that generated so much correspondence are behind us. What remains is the staged 67 rise now in progress, which is where most of the confusion sits, because the shorthand "67 from 2028" is true only for the last cohort in the transition.
The date matters beyond the pension itself. It is when you stop paying National Insurance on earnings, when Universal Credit gives way to Pension Credit, and when several means-tested benefits change their rules. Planning that treats it as the day you retire, rather than the day a specific set of rules switches over, gets all three wrong.
Source: Check your State Pension age
02 What the date does and does not do
Reaching State Pension age starts your entitlement; it does not start your payment. The State Pension is claimed, not granted — you should get an invitation letter about two months before, and if it does not arrive you claim it yourself. Anything unclaimed is not lost, but it is treated as deferral, which is a different decision with different arithmetic.
The date also has nothing to do with your private pensions. Those are governed by the normal minimum pension age, which is 55 today and rises to 57 on 6 April 2028. A plan that assumes both dates move together will be wrong by up to a decade — most people can reach a SIPP or workplace pot years before the State Pension starts, and that gap is what a bridge strategy exists to fund.
One thing the date does immediately: from State Pension age you stop paying Class 1 and Class 4 National Insurance on earnings, even if you keep working. Income Tax continues. On a salary at the higher-rate threshold that is a pay rise of several hundred pounds a year for doing nothing differently.
Source: The new State Pension
03 Planning around a date that can move
Treat the legislated date as a ceiling on certainty rather than a promise. State Pension age is reviewed at least every six years, and every review so far has considered bringing increases forward, never pushing them back. The 68 rise currently sits at 2044-2046; a previous government proposed 2037-2039 and did not legislate it. Anyone under about 50 should plan on 68 and treat anything earlier as upside.
The practical response is to know the size of the gap rather than the date. If your target retirement age is 60 and your State Pension age is 67, seven years of income has to come from somewhere else, and that number does not change if the State Pension age moves by a year — the bridge just gets longer. Sizing the bridge is what makes the plan robust to a review you cannot predict.
Shows: how many years of income you need to fund yourself between stopping work and your State Pension starting, and what that costs at your target spending. Ignores: tax on the withdrawals, investment growth, any private pension already in payment, and the possibility that State Pension age moves again.
On the defaults above, the worked example shows £196,000. 7 years of bridge, at £28,000 a year, before the State Pension starts contributing anything.
Source: Check your State Pension age
The number I ask people for first is not their pot, it is the gap between the age they want to stop and the age the State Pension starts. Everyone knows the second number vaguely and almost nobody has multiplied it out. Seven years at £28,000 is £196,000 that has to exist before the state contributes a penny, and it is the single largest line in most early-retirement plans. If you are under fifty, run it at 68 rather than 67. Every review of this age has moved in one direction, and building the plan on the more demanding number costs you nothing if you turn out to be wrong.
FAQ
Can I take my State Pension early if I stop working?
No. Unlike a private pension, the State Pension has no early-access route at any reduction — not for ill health, not for redundancy, not at a discount. The date set by your birthday is the earliest it can be paid, and the only flexibility runs the other way, through deferral.
Does my State Pension age change if I keep working?
No. Working past it changes two things only: you stop paying National Insurance on your earnings, and you can choose to defer the pension in exchange for a higher rate later. The age itself is fixed by your date of birth.
How do I find my exact date rather than the year?
Use the State Pension age checker on GOV.UK with your date of birth. It returns the precise date, which matters during the 2026-2028 transition to 67 — the rise is staged by month of birth, so "67 from 2028" is only accurate for the final cohort.
Sources
Regulator references
- Check your State Pension age · GOV.UK · 2025The statutory timetable that fixes the date State Pension becomes payable.Last verified: 2026-09-07
- The new State Pension · GOV.UK · 2025Sets the qualifying-year rules and the full new State Pension rate this post works from.Last verified: 2026-09-07
Calculator unit tests · the assertions this page's worked example is checked against, and their last result
Changelog
- 2026-09-07 — initial publish (new format)
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Jordan Reeves
Founder of Talk Through Wealth. A software engineer for over a decade before turning to retirement planning, Jordan built the projection engine after watching family members get fragmented, country-by-country advice that never reconciled. He writes about retirement the way the engine computes it: month-by-month, lifetime-long, and skeptical of any rule of thumb that hasn't been run through the math.