Key facts
- Police recorded 146,825 hate crimes in England and Wales in the year ending March 2026.
- This marks a 7% increase from the previous year.
- Race hate crimes saw a 9% rise, while religious hate crimes increased by 13%.
- Hate crimes against Muslims increased by 15% and against Jews by 10% in the year ending March 2026.
- In the year ending March 2025, 115,990 hate crimes were recorded (excluding the Metropolitan Police Service).
Police in England and Wales recorded a record high of 146,825 hate crimes in the year ending March 2026, a 7% increase compared to the previous year. The statistics, released by the Home Office, show significant rises in race and religious hate crimes.
Race hate crimes increased by 9%, while religious hate crimes saw a 13% rise. Specifically, religious hate crimes targeted at Muslims increased by 15%, and those targeting Jews rose by 10%. In contrast, hate crimes related to sexual orientation, disability, and transgender identity saw decreases.
In the year ending March 2025, police recorded 115,990 hate crimes, excluding data from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). This figure represented a 2% increase from the prior year, with race hate crimes up 6% and religious hate crimes up 3%. The MPS has since changed its crime recording systems, impacting direct comparability with previous years' data for that force.
The definition of hate crime used by police is any criminal offence perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or transgender identity. Police forces have improved their identification and recording of hate crimes since 2014, but figures are not considered a reliable measure of prevalence as not all hate crimes are reported to the police.