Hate crime up by 7% in England and Wales, Home Office figures suggest

Hate crimes in England and Wales increased by 7% in the year up to March 2026, rising to nearly 147,000, data released by the Home Office suggested.

Figures supplied to the government by police forces indicated a rise from more than 137,000 offences recorded in the previous year.

The Home Office said the figures "may suggest there has been a genuine increase" in hate crimes, driven by rises in offences linked to race and religion.

The data also suggested recorded hate crimes linked to sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity were unchanged or falling.

Policing Minister Sarah Jones said the rising figures were "a stark warning that hatred continues to blight our communities".

"We are delivering the biggest reforms to policing in over 200 years, alongside record funding to protect Muslim and Jewish people and places of worship," she added.

The Home Office said there were a total of 146,825 hate crimes recorded by police in the two nations in the year to March 2026.

Racially-motivated offences accounted for the majority of all police recorded hate crimes, at around 74%, with about 8% of other hate crimes classified as religious.

The Home Office said the rise in these offences over the last year was due to an increase in public order offences, often taking the form of intimidation and abuse, but crimes involving violence and vandalism were also included in the statistics.

"In the last two years, there has been a rise in hate crime offences that is not seen in the overall violent and public order offences trend," the report said.

"This may suggest there has been a genuine increase in hate crime offences over the last two years."

Where the ethnicity of the victim was known in the race and religion related hate crimes, around one third of victims were identified as Asian and around a quarter as black.

The Home Office said that it was likely that hate crime "offences against white victims will include xenophobic abuse against people not born in the UK".

The figures showed a 13% rise in religious hate crimes recorded by police during the year to March 2026, with 11,419 recorded offences in total.

Of those there was a 15% rise in hate crimes targeting Muslims and 10% increase in those that targeted Jewish people.

The increase in hate crimes targeting Muslims (from 4,479 to 5,132 offences) showed a particular rise in September of last year, which the Home Office said "coincided with a number of protests and incidents of public order".

There were hate crimes targeting both Muslims and Jewish people following the start of the war in Iran launched by the US and Israel in the spring of this year.

Antisemitic hate crimes have been at elevated levels since the beginning of the conflict between Israel and Hamas in 2023, but saw a spike in October 2025 following the fatal attack at the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester.

Other attacks followed in the months after, including in March when four Jewish community ambulances were torched in Golders Green, north London. Prosecutors say the incident was a targeted attack against the Jewish community.

Additional reporting by Robert Cuffe