Police recorded 146,825 hate crimes in England and Wales in the year ending March 2026, a 7% annual increase, according to Home Office figures published on 8 October.
Racial and religious offences rise
- Race: 107,926 offences, up 9%.
- Religion: 11,419 offences, up 13%.
- Disability: 10,140 offences, down 5%.
- Sexual orientation: down 1%.
- Transgender identity: down 4%.
Religious hate crimes targeting Muslims increased by 15% to 5,132. Those targeting Jewish people rose by 10% to 3,162.
Historical comparisons require care
The Home Office excludes Metropolitan Police figures from its longer-term analysis following a recording-system change in February 2024. On that basis, racial and religious hate crimes reached their highest annual totals since these records began in the year ending March 2012.
The headline total and annual increase include Metropolitan Police data. The record-high comparisons use the separate series excluding that force.
What the statistics measure
These figures count police-recorded offences, rather than convictions. Some offences involve more than one hate motivation, so category totals cannot simply be added together.
The publication covers five monitored characteristics: race or ethnicity, religion or beliefs, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. Hate crime recording concerns perceived hostility or prejudice connected to a criminal offence.
Changes in recording and reporting affect the figures, while crimes that go unreported are absent. The Home Office therefore cautions against treating police data as a reliable measure of the underlying prevalence of hate crime.
The increase does not, on its own, establish that a particular government policy, political party or public figure caused it. The scope is England and Wales, rather than the whole United Kingdom.