Religion Statistics in UK 2026 | Affiliation, Trends & Key Facts

Religion in the UK 2026: A Nation Being Reshaped

The religious landscape of the United Kingdom has undergone a transformation so rapid and so complete in a single generation that the country many people grew up in — where Christianity was a settled majority and secular identity was the exception — no longer exists in any statistical sense. The 2021 Census for England and Wales, the most authoritative data source available, recorded a historic turning point: for the first time in the history of the census, fewer than half the population identified as Christian, with 46.2% of respondents (27.5 million people) selecting Christianity — down from 59.3% in 2011. Meanwhile, “No Religion” became the second most common response at 37.2% (22.2 million people), up from just 25.2% a decade earlier. Across the border in Scotland, the 2022 Census went further still — 51.1% reported no religion, making the non-religious the outright majority for the first time in that nation’s recorded history.

In 2026, the trends confirmed by the census have continued to deepen. The 2025 British Social Attitudes (BSA) Survey — widely recognised as the gold standard of UK social research due to its rigorous probability-based sampling — has now laid to rest a contested narrative about religious revival among young people. The BSA confirmed that just 5% of all UK adults attend a Christian service on a weekly basis, down from 8% in 2018, and that church attendance among adults aged 18–34 stands at 6% in 2024 — below even the pre-pandemic figure of 8%. At the same time, Humanists UK’s April 2026 analysis of BSA 2024 data found that 61% of adults aged 16 to 34 identify with no religion — making non-religion the settled norm rather than the exception among every age cohort under 35. The United Kingdom is, by every major statistical measure, one of the most rapidly secularising nations in the world.

Key UK Religion Facts in 2026

UK RELIGION — FAST FACTS SNAPSHOT (2026)
=========================================

  Christian (E&W Census 2021)     ████████████████████████      46.2% — 27.5 million
  No Religion (E&W Census 2021)   ████████████████████          37.2% — 22.2 million
  Muslim (E&W Census 2021)        ███                           6.5%  — 3.9 million
  Hindu (E&W Census 2021)         █                             1.7%  — 1.0 million
  Sikh (E&W Census 2021)          █                             0.9%
  Jewish (E&W Census 2021)        ░                             0.5%
  Buddhist (E&W Census 2021)      ░                             0.5%
  Scotland no religion (2022)     █████████████████████████     51.1%
  Weekly Christian service (2025) ██                            5% of all UK adults

  ► 2011 to 2021: Christians fell 5.5 million; No Religion grew 8.1 million

Source: ONS — Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021 (published November 2022); National Records of Scotland — Scotland’s Census 2022 Religion Data; National Secular Society analysis of all four UK censuses (July 2025); Humanists UK — “Non-religion is the new normal” (April 2026, based on BSA 2024); NatCen / National Centre for Social Research — “No revival in sight” (BSA 2025, May 2026); BritClock UK Religion Statistics (April 2026)

The census data represents the official bedrock of understanding UK religion in 2026, and the headline shift from 2011 to 2021 is extraordinary in historical terms. Christianity lost approximately 5.5 million adherents in England and Wales in a single decade — the equivalent of losing the entire population of Scotland from a single religious category in ten years. Over the same period, the non-religious population grew by 8.1 million. This was not a statistical blip driven by survey design or response framing — it was a structural generational transformation, driven primarily by older Christians dying and younger generations not replacing them. The 2021 Census confirmed that the average age of Christians in England and Wales has now exceeded 50 for the first time, while Muslims, Sikhs, and Hindus maintain significantly younger age profiles, reflecting both higher birth rates and the relative youth of many immigrant communities.

The Scotland figure is particularly striking: at 51.1% non-religious in the 2022 Census, Scotland has moved further and faster than England and Wales toward secular identity. In a country where the Church of Scotland holds established national status comparable to the Church of England in England, having a majority non-religious population is a profound institutional and cultural challenge. Northern Ireland remains the most religious part of the UK — with only 17.4% non-religious — but even that figure represents a 77% increase in the non-religious population since 2011, in a society where religious identity has historically been tightly bound to political and community belonging in ways that make secularisation both slower and more complex than elsewhere in the UK.

Christian Affiliation and Church Attendance Trends in the UK 2026

CHRISTIANITY IN THE UK — DECLINE INDICATORS (2026 DATA)
========================================================

  Christian ID England/Wales 2001    ████████████████████████████████  71.7%
  Christian ID England/Wales 2011    ████████████████████████████      59.3%
  Christian ID England/Wales 2021    ████████████████████████          46.2%
  Projected Christian ID by 2031     ████████████████████              <30% (current trend)
  Weekly church attendance (2025)    ██                                5% of all adults
  Weekly attendance (2018)           ████                              8% of all adults
  Church of England monthly attend.  ███                               ~1 million/month
  CoE avg Sunday attendance (2024)   ██                                581,000
  CoE avg Sunday attendance (2002)   ████                              1,005,000

  ► CoE Sunday attendance halved from 2002 to 2024

Source: ONS Census 2021; NatCen — “No revival in sight: Church attendance in Britain remains below pre-pandemic levels” (BSA 2025, published May 2026); Humanists UK — BSA 2024 analysis (April 2026); Humanists UK — census and national data (updated May 2026); BritClock UK Religion Statistics (April 2026); NatCen — “Is there a religious revival in Britain?” (2025)

The data on Church of England attendance tells a story of long, structural decline that occasional post-pandemic rebounds have done nothing to reverse. A 581,000 average Sunday attendance in 2024 — exactly half what it was in 2002 and a third of the 1968 figure — means the Church of England is managing a congregation that has contracted by half within living memory. That 48% of Church of England churches shrank between 2019 and 2024 while only 12% grew is consistent with a national organisation in long-term institutional contraction, not one experiencing any broad-based renewal. The post-pandemic bounce of 4.5% and 1.5% in successive years is real — but it leaves CoE attendance still 19% below its own 2019 levels, let alone the pre-millennium baselines. A narrow recovery from an extraordinary disruption is not the same as a reversal of long-term decline.

The formal retraction of the Bible Society’s “Quiet Revival” report on 26 March 2026 — the most-discussed claim of religious resurgence in Britain in recent years — removed what had been the most-cited counterargument to the secularisation narrative. YouGov acknowledged fraudulent responses in the survey panel, rendering the claim that weekly church attendance had risen from 8% to 12% between 2018 and 2024 statistically invalid. The BSA — using rigorous probability-based random sampling rather than an opt-in panel — showed the opposite pattern: monthly Christian churchgoing fell from 12.2% to 9.3% of all adults between 2018 and 2023. As NatCen’s own May 2026 briefing concluded, “no revival in sight” is the accurate characterisation of UK Christian practice in 2026.

Islam and Growing Minority Faiths in the UK 2026

UK MINORITY RELIGIONS — POPULATION DATA (2021 CENSUS + TRENDS)
===============================================================

  Muslim (E&W 2021)       ███                   6.5%   3.9 million
  Muslim (E&W 2011)       ██                    4.9%   2.7 million
  Hindu (E&W 2021)        █                     1.7%   1.0 million
  Sikh (E&W 2021)         █                     0.9%   ~500,000
  Jewish (E&W 2021)       ░                     0.5%   ~280,000–390,000
  Buddhist (E&W 2021)     ░                     0.5%
  Projected Muslim share  ████                  ~11% by 2050s (BRIN / Voas)
  Muslims >10% under 18   ████                  Muslims >10% of every age up to 18

  ► 56% of UK Muslim population was born abroad (ONS 2021)
  ► 23% of 2023 BSA Muslim respondents are second generation

Source: ONS — Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021; Muslim Council of Britain — Census Report Summary 2025 (MCB, March 2025); David Voas / BRIN — “A Less Christian Future for England and Wales”; BritClock (April 2026); WorldMetrics Religion in the UK (verified May 2026)

Islam’s trajectory in the United Kingdom is one of the most demographically significant religious stories of the 21st century. The Muslim population of England and Wales more than doubled as a share of the total population between 2001 and 2021 — from 3.0% to 6.5% — and the age structure of that community ensures the trend will continue. With Muslims comprising more than 10% of every age cohort under 18 in England and Wales, Islam is structurally positioned to grow as a share of the UK’s adult population for decades, regardless of future migration levels. David Voas’s analysis for the British Religion in Numbers project projects that at least 1 in 6 people in England and Wales will belong to a non-Christian religion by the 2050s, with Muslims at approximately 11%. These are not speculative projections — they flow directly from age distributions already recorded in census data.

The other minority faiths — Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism, and Buddhism — are each smaller but growing and deeply embedded in specific communities and geographies. The Sikh community’s weekly langar, providing free food to approximately 1 million people per month through gurdwaras, has become one of the most visible expressions of faith-driven community service in modern Britain — and a model that other communities have explicitly emulated. The Jewish community continues to show the highest rate of religious hate crime victimisation of any faith group in the UK in per-capita terms, a reality that makes the demographic size of the community deeply disproportionate to the volume of attention — and government funding — directed at its protection.

No Religion and Secularisation in the UK 2026

SECULARISATION IN THE UK — KEY DATA POINTS (2026)
==================================================

  No Religion E&W 2001      ████████████                14.8%
  No Religion E&W 2011      ████████████████████        25.2%
  No Religion E&W 2021      █████████████████████████   37.2%
  No Religion Scotland 2022 ████████████████████████████ 51.1%
  Adults 16–34 no religion  ████████████████████████████ 61% (BSA 2024)
  18–24 no religion (Census) ████████████████████████   49.1%
  Adults 65+ no religion    ████████                    ~20%
  Raised no religion, stayed ████████████████████████   ~95% retention

  ► 27-year-olds: 53% reported no religion — highest of any single age (Census 2021)

Source: ONS Census 2021; National Records of Scotland Census 2022; Humanists UK — “Non-religion is the new normal” (April 2026, BSA 2024); ONS — Religion by age and sex, Census 2021; BSA 2023 data; YouGov 2025 surveys; BritClock (April 2026)

The secularisation of Britain is not a process evenly distributed across the population — it is profoundly age-stratified, and the age data makes the direction of travel unmistakable. With 61% of adults aged 16 to 34 having no religion, 49.1% of 18 to 24-year-olds selecting no religion in the census, and 27-year-olds representing the peak non-religious cohort at 53%, Britain’s younger generations have made a decisive break with the institutional religious identity of their grandparents’ generation. The retention rate among those raised with no religion is also remarkably high — approximately 95% remain non-religious — meaning the non-religious population is not merely a transitional phase that people pass through before returning to faith. It is a stable secular identity adopted by birth cohort after birth cohort and retained into adulthood.

The attitudinal data confirms that secularisation runs deeper than formal affiliation. 58% of British adults told YouGov in 2025 that they believe religion has a negative influence on the world — against just 19% who said positive. The Church of England, the country’s established national church, has a favourable rating of just 25% and an unfavourable rating of 49% — putting it in net negative territory among the general public. The BSA’s finding that only 19% of Britons now say being Christian is important to being “truly British” — down from 32% in 1995 — captures how thoroughly the assumed connection between Britishness and Christianity has dissolved over the span of a single generation.

Religion by Nation, Age and Region in the UK 2026

UK RELIGION — GEOGRAPHIC AND DEMOGRAPHIC VARIATION (2026)
==========================================================

  Northern Ireland (Christian)   ████████████████████████████████  ~83%
  England (Christian, 2021)      ████████████████████████          46.2%
  Wales (no religion, 2021)      ████████████████████████          46.5%
  Scotland (no religion, 2022)   ████████████████████████████      51.1%
  London (religiously diverse)   ████████████████████████████████  Most diverse city
  Adults 65+ (Christian)         ████████████████████████████      ~70%+
  Adults 16–34 (no religion)     ████████████████████████████      61%
  Muslims >10% in all under-18s  ████████████████████              Confirmed

  ► Northern Ireland: 47.2% Catholic, 36.8% Protestant, 17.4% no religion

Source: ONS Census 2021; National Records of Scotland Census 2022; NISRA Census 2021 Northern Ireland; BritClock UK Religion Statistics (April 2026); David Voas / BRIN — “A Less Christian Future for England and Wales”; WorldMetrics Religion UK (May 2026)

The four nations of the United Kingdom present four distinct religious landscapes that are all moving in the same general direction — toward less Christianity and more non-religion — but at very different speeds and from very different starting points. Northern Ireland is the stark outlier: with approximately 83% Christian identification, it remains as religious as England and Wales were in the early 1990s. But even Northern Ireland saw a 77% increase in its non-religious population between 2011 and 2021, suggesting that secularisation is not bypassing the north of Ireland — it is merely delayed. Scotland has moved fastest, and its 51.1% non-religious majority reflects a generational break with Kirk culture that has been building for decades.

Within England, London stands apart as the most religiously diverse city in the UK and arguably in Europe — a place where the full spectrum of world religions coexists in concentrated form and where both Christian and Muslim communities maintain higher vitality than in many other English regions. The Black-majority Pentecostal churches of urban England represent one of the few genuinely growing strands of UK Christianity — a phenomenon driven primarily by first-generation African and Caribbean immigrant communities, and one whose continuation depends heavily on whether second-generation members remain engaged. The demographic reality is that older adults aged 65 and over — among whom Christianity retains an approximately 70%+ affiliation rate — are the generation sustaining what remains of the institutional church’s numerical base. As that cohort diminishes, and as the overwhelmingly secular under-35 generation ages into the dominant demographic, the shape of UK religion in 2036 and 2046 is already, in statistical terms, largely determined.

Religious Hate Crimes and Faith Community Issues in the UK 2026

UK RELIGIOUS HATE CRIMES — LATEST DATA (HOME OFFICE / CST / TELL MAMA)
=======================================================================

  Religious hate crime offences (E&W, yr to Mar 2025) ████████████████  10,065
  Offences targeting Muslims (2024/25)                 ████████████████  ~3,199 (excl. Met)
  Rate: hate crimes per 10,000 — Jewish community     ████████████████  106 per 10,000
  Rate: hate crimes per 10,000 — Muslim community     ██                12 per 10,000
  Racist hate crimes (yr to Mar 2025)                 ████████████████  82,490
  Convictions — racially/religiously aggravated (2025) ████████████████  6,163 (8-yr high)
  Govt protective security funding 2026/27             ████████████████  £73.4 million
  Mosque protection scheme 2026/27                     ████████████████  £40 million

  ► Religious hate crime reached its highest recorded level in 2025 (Home Office)

Source: Home Office Hate Crime Statistics England and Wales (October 2025); Community Security Trust (CST) Antisemitic Incidents Report 2025; Tell MAMA annual report 2024/25; UK Government — Strengthening Security for Faith Communities announcement (February 2026); British Brief — Religious Hate Crime Convictions (May 2026); Bloomberg — UK Police See Surge in Religious Hate Crimes (October 2025)

Religious hate crime reaching its highest ever recorded level in 2025 — with 10,065 offences in England and Wales in the year to March 2025 — is one of the most alarming dimensions of UK religious life in 2026. The sheer disproportion of impact is stark: the Jewish community, comprising approximately 0.5% of the population, experiences religious hate at a rate of 106 per 10,000 — roughly nine times the rate experienced by the Muslim community at 12 per 10,000. Both communities are targeted disproportionately relative to their size, and both have seen sustained elevated levels of hate since the escalation of the Israel-Gaza conflict from October 2023 onwards. The 6,163 convictions for racially or religiously aggravated offences in 2025 — an eight-year high — suggest that the criminal justice system is processing a larger volume of cases, but conviction rates still represent only a fraction of recorded offences.

The government’s £73.4 million in protective security funding for faith communities in 2026/27 — the largest such allocation in UK history — is a direct response to this record hate crime environment. The £40 million mosque protection scheme and £28.4 million Jewish community security grant represent the two largest individual allocations, reflecting the communities under greatest threat. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s statement that “nobody should be forced to live a smaller life in this country because of their faith” framed the funding as a matter of principle as much as security — and the scale of the commitment signals that faith community security has moved from the margins of government policy to a recognised and funded public safety responsibility. The remaining £5 million for Christian, Hindu, Sikh and other faith sites — up £1.5 million from the prior year — extends the protection principle across the full breadth of the UK’s religious landscape.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

Email ID:

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Email

Email *

SUBSCRIBE