The number of hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales rose by seven per cent to 146,825 in the year ending March 2026, new Home Office figures show.
Race-related hate crimes rose by nine per cent, while religious hate offences increased by 13 per cent.
For religion, the total was 11,419 incidents, up from 10,067.
Within that rise, the number of hate crimes directed at Jewish people increased by 10 per cent.
Offences of this character spiked in October 2025, following the Heaton Park Synagogue terror attack, and have been steadily high since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Meanwhile, offences targeting Muslims climbed by 15 per cent,
The latest data showed that peaks in these offences coincided with public disorder in September 2025 and the start of the USA-Iran conflict in February 2026.
Hate crimes against Christians rose a shocking 24 per cent over the same period, increasing from 502 to 624.
The number of hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales has risen by seven per cent to 146,825
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PA
For race-based hate crimes, the number recorded in total for the past year was 107,926, a rise over the previous period’s 90,890.
Where the ethnicity of the victim was known, offences against those identifying as Asian accounted for around a third of race hate crimes or 34 per cent.
White victims made up 29 per cent of recorded offences, while black victims accounted for 24 per cent.
By contrast, the other three monitored categories recorded falls, with hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation down one per cent.
The new Home Office figures cover the year ending March 2026
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GETTY
Disability-related offences decreased by five per cent, and transgender hate crimes fell by four per cent.
The Home Office figures showed that hate crimes accounted for 3 per cent of all notifiable offences recorded by police, excluding fraud.
It cautioned that it excluded data from the Metropolitan Police Service from longer-term trend analysis.
This was because the London force updated its crime recording system in February 2024.
Offences targeting Christians also increased by 24 per cent over the same period
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GETTY
This meant that the Met’s figures for the years ending March 2025 and March 2026 could not be directly compared with data submitted before the change.
Hate crime is defined as any criminal offence perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person’s characteristics.
Police monitor five categories: race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity. Police can record offences under multiple categories, depending on the perceived motivation.
Figures rely on police correctly flagging incidents as hate crimes. College of Policing guidance, updated in October 2020, sets out how forces should identify and respond to such offences.
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