ISA Allowance 2026-27

The overall ISA allowance for 2026-27 is £20,000 — the same as 2025-26. This is the total you can pay into ISAs of all types combined (Cash, Stocks & Shares, Innovative Finance and Lifetime ISA) in one tax year. It resets every 6 April and cannot be carried forward — unused allowance is lost.

You can hold as many ISA accounts as you like across your lifetime, and since 6 April 2024 you can pay into more than one ISA of the SAME type in a single tax year (for example, two different Cash ISAs with different providers) — as long as your total subscriptions across all ISAs stay within the £20,000 overall limit. The exceptions: you can still only pay into one Lifetime ISA per tax year, and one Junior ISA of each type per tax year.

You can pay up to £4,000 per year into a Lifetime ISA — this counts inside your overall £20,000 ISA allowance, not on top of it. The government adds a 25% bonus on top (up to £1,000/year), but withdrawals before age 60 for anything other than a first home (up to £450,000) trigger a 25% charge that claws back the bonus and some of your own money.

The Junior ISA allowance is £9,000 per child for 2026-27 — separate from an adult's own £20,000 allowance. A parent or guardian can open a JISA for a child under 18 living in the UK who doesn't already have a Child Trust Fund; the child gains control of the account at 16 but can't withdraw until 18.

From 6 April 2027, the Cash ISA annual limit falls to £12,000 for savers under 65, while savers aged 65 and over keep the full £20,000. The overall £20,000 ISA allowance is unchanged. Announced at Autumn Budget 2025.

Savers aged 65 and over keep the full £20,000 cash ISA limit from 6 April 2027 — only savers under 65 are restricted to £12,000 in a Cash ISA. The overall £20,000 ISA allowance is unchanged for everyone; under-65s simply need to put the remaining £8,000 into a Stocks & Shares ISA, Innovative Finance ISA, or Lifetime ISA instead of cash.

Yes. Interest, dividends and capital gains earned inside any type of ISA are completely free of Income Tax and Capital Gains Tax, with no limit on how large the pot grows, and none of it needs to be declared on a tax return. Outside an ISA, savings interest and dividends use up separate allowances — see our tax on savings interest page for how those work.