England and Wales Record Sharp Rise in Race Hate Crime 2026

Key Points

• Police counted 146,825 hate crimes in England and Wales in the year up to March 2026, which was an increase of 7% compared to the previous year.
• Racially motivated hate crimes grew by 9%, with 107,926 offences being committed – making up 74% of all hate crimes.
• Religious hate crimes were up 13% at 11,419 offences.
• Offences involving discrimination against Muslims were up 15%, rising from 4,479 to 5,132.
• Hate crimes against Jews increased by 10% from 2,874 to 3,162.
• Omitting Metropolitan Police data, race and religious hate crimes saw their highest levels in any year since records began in 2012.
• Sexual orientation, disability and transgender-related hate crimes went down in the same period.
• Public order offences and violence against the person made up 93% of all hate crimes.
• According to the Home Office, police-recorded figures fail to capture the full extent of hate crime because not all crimes are reported.
• Activists noted the figures highlighted the necessity for more robust investigations, community protection measures, and incitement prevention.

Wales (Wales Times) October 08, 2026 – The Home Office published the figures on showing that hate crime in England and Wales reached 146,825 offences in the year ending March 2026. The total was 7% higher than the 137,560 offences recorded during the previous year.

The figures were published in the Home Office statistical bulletin, Hate Crime, England and Wales, Year Ending March 2026. They include offences recorded by police forces in England and Wales where the victim or another person perceived that hostility or prejudice had played a role.

The Home Office monitors five main strands: race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity.

The latest increase was concentrated in race and religious hate crime. Race-related offences increased by 9%, while religious hate crimes rose by 13%. By contrast, offences connected with sexual orientation declined by 1%, disability-related hate crime fell by 5%, and transgender hate crime decreased by 4%.

The Home Office said the figures should be interpreted carefully. Improvements in police crime recording, greater awareness of hate crime and changes in the way offences are identified have influenced long-term trends.

The department also said police-recorded figures are not a complete measure of how much hate crime occurs because some victims do not report incidents.

Why have race hate crimes increased?

Race hate crimes remained the largest category recorded by police. There were 107,926 such offences in the year ending March 2026, compared with 98,890 in the previous year. That represents a 9% increase and means race-related offences accounted for 74% of all hate crimes recorded during the period.

When Metropolitan Police Service data is excluded, the Home Office recorded 90,378 race hate crimes. The department said this was the highest annual total since the collection of comparable data began in the year ending March 2012.

The increase was largely linked to public order offences and assault without injury. Public order offences rose by 10%, an increase of 5,490 offences, while assault without injury increased by 10%, or 1,460 offences.

More than half of all hate crimes across the monitored categories involved public order offences.

The Home Office said race hate crime can include offences containing a xenophobic element, such as abuse or criminal damage directed at people because of their nationality, perceived nationality or migrant status.

The recorded figures therefore cover a broad range of incidents, from harassment and threatening behaviour to assault and criminal damage.

How much did religious hate crime rise?

Religious hate crime increased from 10,067 offences in the year ending March 2025 to 11,419 in the latest reporting year. The rise of 13% took religious hate crime to a record level when Metropolitan Police data is excluded from the longer-term comparison.

Excluding the Metropolitan Police Service, 8,214 religious hate crimes were recorded. The Home Office said this was the highest annual total since records began in the year ending March 2012.

The figures include offences against people based on their actual or perceived religion. They can also cover incidents where a place of worship or other property is targeted because the offender believes it is connected with a particular religious group.

The Home Office recorded 11,142 offences where information about the targeted religion was available. In 12% of religious hate crime cases, the targeted religion was recorded as unknown.

Because offences can involve more than one motivating factor, the total number of targeted religions does not always correspond exactly with the total number of offences.

How did offences targeting Muslims and Jews change?

Hate crimes targeting Muslims increased by 15%, from 4,479 offences to 5,132. Muslims were the most frequently targeted religious group in the Home Office figures, accounting for 46% of religious hate crimes where the targeted religion was recorded.

The Home Office identified several periods when offences targeting Muslims rose sharply. In September 2025, the increase coincided with protests and incidents of public disorder.

A further rise was recorded in March 2026 following the beginning of the United States-Iran conflict on 28 February.

When Metropolitan Police data was excluded, 3,660 offences targeting Muslims were recorded. The Home Office described this as the highest annual level since data collection for the group began in the year ending March 2018.

Hate crimes targeting Jewish people rose by 10%, from 2,874 to 3,162 offences. Jewish people accounted for 28% of religious hate crimes where the targeted religion was known.

The Home Office said offences targeting Jewish people increased in October 2025 following a series of antisemitic crimes after the Heaton Park Synagogue terror attack.

The department also said the level of antisemitic hate crime had remained elevated since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Excluding Metropolitan Police data, 2,003 offences targeting Jewish people were recorded. This was the second-highest annual level in the available series and below the 2,093 offences recorded in the year ending March 2024.

The Independent reported that Ilyas Nagdee, racial justice lead at Amnesty International UK, described the figures as evidence that racism, violence and fear were becoming a daily reality for some communities.

Nagdee called for greater resources for hate crime investigations and faster action against perpetrators.

The Community Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism, said the level of antisemitic hate crime remained unacceptably high and called for further action to reduce incitement linked to overseas conflicts, according to The Independent.

Which types of hate crime fell?

Not every category increased during the year. Police recorded 21,407 sexual-orientation hate crimes, down 1% from 21,527.

Disability hate crime fell by 5% to 10,140 offences, while transgender hate crime declined by 4% to 3,955.

The Home Office said the decline in sexual-orientation hate crime was partly linked to changes to crime-recording rules.

In 2023, the requirement to record two crimes when one was a conduct crime, such as stalking, harassment or coercive and controlling behaviour, was removed.

That change affected offences such as malicious communications, which had often been recorded alongside conduct crimes.

Excluding Metropolitan Police data, disability hate crime fell for the third consecutive year. The number declined from 13,637 offences in the year ending March 2023 to 9,616 offences in the year ending March 2026, a 29% reduction over that period.

Transgender hate crime also declined for the third consecutive year when Metropolitan Police data was excluded. It fell from 4,477 offences in the year ending March 2023 to 3,643 offences in the year ending March 2026, a decrease of 19%.

The Home Office cautioned that changes in police recording practices, reporting patterns and investigative priorities can affect comparisons across years.

A fall in recorded offences does not necessarily prove that the underlying level of hostility has fallen by the same amount.

What types of offences made up most hate crime?

Public order offences were the most common category, representing 53% of all hate crimes recorded by police. Violence against the person offences accounted for a further 40%.

Together, the two categories made up 93% of all recorded hate crime in England and Wales.

Public fear, alarm or distress offences were particularly common among cases targeting Muslims and Jewish people. Other recorded offences included harassment, assault, criminal damage and malicious communications.

The pattern differs from overall police-recorded crime, where theft accounts for a much larger share.

Hate crime is more likely to involve behaviour directed at a person or group because of a protected characteristic, which helps explain the higher proportion of public order and violence offences.

The Home Office also reported that 6% of hate crime offences involved more than one motivating factor.

For example, an offence may be flagged as motivated by hostility towards both a person’s race and religion. As a result, the combined number of motivating factors is higher than the total number of offences.

What does the data show about victims?

Among racially or religiously aggravated offences where the victim’s ethnicity was recorded, Asian or Asian British victims accounted for about 34% of cases.

White victims accounted for 29%, while Black, African, Caribbean or Black British victims represented 24%.

The Home Office said the figures should be treated as indicative because ethnicity information was available for only 47% of the 92,725 racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded.

The data was incomplete in some cases because the police may not have asked for the information, the victim may not have wished to provide it, or the offence may not have involved an identifiable victim.

The Home Office also said offences against White victims can include xenophobic abuse targeting people who were not born in the UK.

This means ethnicity statistics should not be interpreted as a simple measure of hostility between fixed population groups.

Religious hate crime rates also varied by targeted group. The highest recorded rate was for Jewish people, at 117 offences per 10,000 residents, followed by Muslims at 13 per 10,000.

The Home Office noted that these rates are based on population estimates from the 2021 Census.

How did police deal with recorded offences?

The Home Office said 10% of hate crime offences in the available Data Hub analysis had been dealt with by a charge or summons.

The analysis covered 38 of 44 police forces, representing 85% of all police-recorded hate crime in the year ending March 2026.

The proportion was higher than the 8% recorded in the previous year’s analysis, although the Home Office said the figures were not directly comparable because the earlier analysis covered a different number of forces.

For racially or religiously aggravated offences, 90% had been assigned an outcome when the data was extracted in July 2026.

The remaining cases could still have been under investigation or awaiting a final outcome.

The Home Office said hate crime investigations often took longer than investigations into comparable non-hate crimes.

The median time to assign an outcome was 35 days for hate crime violence against the person offences, compared with 20 days for non-hate crime offences.

For criminal damage and arson, the median was 18 days for hate crimes and six days for non-hate crimes.

Evidential difficulties were the most common outcome for violent hate crime offences. Just over half, or 51%, were dealt with in this way, compared with 61% of non-hate crime flagged violence against the person offences.

What limitations affect the figures?

The Home Office said police-recorded hate crime figures provide a measure of demand on the police rather than a complete measure of the number of incidents experienced by the public.

Some victims may not report an offence, while others may not describe an incident as hate-related when contacting the police.

Police recording standards have also improved considerably.

The Home Office cited figures showing that the proportion of crimes correctly recorded increased from an estimated 80.5% in 2014 to 94.8% in 2023 to 2025.

For violent crime, the comparable figure rose from 66.9% to 93.6%.

Because recording practices have changed, the Home Office said police-recorded hate crime figures do not provide reliable long-term trends from 2014 onwards.

The Metropolitan Police Service also changed its crime-recording system in February 2024, meaning its data for the years ending March 2024, 2025 and 2026 is not directly comparable with earlier figures.

The Home Office said the rise over the past two years appears to be greater than the trend in overall violence and public order offences.

This may suggest that at least part of the recent increase reflects a genuine rise in hate crime, although the published statistics cannot establish the precise share attributable to increased offending, improved recording or greater reporting.

What does the rise mean for affected communities?

The figures indicate that Muslim, Jewish, racial and ethnic minority communities are facing increased pressure from offences recorded by police as hate-related.

The effect is not limited to the number of cases. Hate crime can affect whether people feel safe travelling, attending places of worship, using public spaces or participating in community life.

The British Muslim Trust said it had tracked and verified 78 attacks and incidents at Muslim places of worship in the 12 months to July, including vandalism and intimidation, according to The Independent.

Its chief executive, Akeela Ahmed, said the increase required a response involving wider society rather than relying only on police action.

The figures also show that hate crime can be influenced by events beyond England and Wales.

The Home Office linked increases in offences targeting Muslims and Jewish people to protests, public disorder, international conflicts and major incidents.

That does not establish that those events caused every recorded offence, but it shows how overseas developments and domestic tensions can coincide with changes in reported hostility.

Background: How is hate crime defined?

Hate crime is defined by the Home Office as any criminal offence perceived by the victim or another person to have been motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a personal characteristic.

The five centrally monitored strands are race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity.

A single offence can be recorded against more than one strand. For example, an incident may be motivated by hostility towards both a victim’s race and religion.

Police can flag an offence as hate-related during an investigation, but it may only be prosecuted as a hate crime if sufficient evidence of hostility is included in the case.

Hate crime is different from a non-crime hate incident. A non-crime hate incident may involve hostility or prejudice but does not meet the legal threshold for a criminal offence.

The Home Office does not collect national data on non-crime hate incidents from police forces.

The current framework for recording non-crime hate incidents is due to be replaced by a new system in early 2027 following a joint review by the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council.

The official figures also differ from estimates produced by the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

The survey can capture incidents that were not reported to police, but its sample is not large enough to provide reliable annual estimates for hate crime.

The two sources cover different types of offences and measure different aspects of the problem.

Prediction: How could rising hate crime affect communities?

If race and religious hate crime continue to rise, affected communities may face greater concern about safety in public places, schools, public transport and around places of worship.

Muslim and Jewish communities may be particularly alert to threats because the latest figures show the sharpest increases in offences targeting those groups.

A sustained rise could also increase pressure on police forces to improve recording, investigation times and communication with victims.

The latest data shows that hate crime cases can take longer to resolve than comparable non-hate offences, so additional investigative capacity may become important if reporting continues to grow.

The increase may affect local authorities, schools, community organisations and religious institutions as well as the police.

They may need to strengthen reporting routes, victim support, security planning and community engagement, particularly during periods of protest, public disorder or international conflict.

However, the figures alone cannot predict the future level of hate crime.

Recorded totals can change because of genuine changes in offending, improved police identification, changes in public willingness to report and alterations to recording systems.

The clearest near-term indicator will be whether the rise in race and religious hate crime continues in subsequent Home Office releases after these measurement issues are taken into account.