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For HR teams and employer of record firms to hand to leaving staff

Leaving the United Kingdom? Your pension in three steps

A person who lives abroad cannot lodge a UK State Pension application until they are inside a 4-month window before their State Pension age; the application is not open before that. Gaps in a UK National Insurance record can only be filled by paying voluntary contributions for the past 6 tax years, and the cut-off falls on 5 April.

  • Source: gov.uk, read
  • Source: gov.uk, read

PensionHunter is independent and not affiliated with the institutions named here.

The official routes come first here. Each line below names its official source and the date we read it. We identify; we do not advise.

1. What to keep before you leave

  • The name of every employer and every workplace or personal pension provider, with the years.Find pension contact details (Pension Tracing Service): Free government service providing contact details for lost workplace and personal pension schemes.Source: gov.uk, read 6 September 2026
  • Your National Insurance number.gov.uk states you need 10 qualifying years on your National Insurance record to get any of it, and 35 qualifying years for the full rate if your record began after April 2016.Source: gov.uk, The new State Pension, read 3 October 2026
  • The countries and years you were insured outside the UK.If you have fewer than 10 UK years, gov.uk states that contributions you made in the EEA, Switzerland or a country with a UK social security agreement can be added to your UK years to carry you past the 10 year threshold, with the amount still based only on your UK years.Source: gov.uk, The new State Pension, read 3 October 2026

2. The official route from abroad

  • gov.uk states you will not get your new State Pension automatically and have to apply for it, and that if you do not apply at State Pension age it defers automatically and you do not have to do anything.Source: gov.uk, read 3 October 2026
  • From abroad there is no online application at all, and the online route in any case needs an invitation code from a letter sent to a UK address.Source: gov.uk, read 3 October 2026
  • Checking what you are owed means signing in and proving your identity against a list built around UK documents and UK bank accounts.Source: gov.uk, read 3 October 2026

Official contacts

3. Clocks that start on leaving

From our deadline register and the official sources it cites.

We write to most pension authorities in the countries we cover, stay in contact with them and update our facts as they answer. Read their written answers.

A full report is available from us at $99 per country, one report covering every country you tick. See pricing

Free to print and hand out. Printed from pensionhunter.ai/leaving/uk. Facts read up to 3 October 2026; each line carries its own read date.

More on this country: your pension after leaving the United Kingdom.