Life in the UK Test pass rate: 75.9% in the year to June 2026

People often say there is no official pass rate for the Life in the UK Test. There is one, and the Home Office updates it every quarter. In the year to June 2026 there were 425,612 sittings and 322,949 passes, a pass rate of 75.9%. About one sitting in four fails. The test is also busier than it has ever been, and settlement candidates are now pulling well ahead of citizenship candidates.

This article covers the numbers only. For the format, the fee and the booking rules, see our guide to the Life in the UK Test.

Where the official figure is published

The figure appears in table LUK_01, "Tests taken in relation to Applications". LUK_01 is part of the Home Office's Visas, status and immigration data, one of the quarterly spreadsheets in its migration transparency data. The latest edition was published on 27 August 2026 and runs from April–June 2010 to April–June 2026. When a peer asked for the pass rate in December 2022, the government quoted 68.5% and pointed to this table (HL4284). The Migration Observatory's citizenship briefing cites the same table.

There are three things to know before you use it:

• It counts sittings, not people. Someone who fails twice and then passes counts as three sittings and one pass.
• It splits sittings by purpose. The columns are settlement (indefinite leave to remain), citizenship, and "other". The Home Office's notes define "other" as tests taken for research, journalistic and academic purposes. It is a few hundred sittings a quarter.
• The Home Office does not check it in detail. The notes state that the data are "based on defined reports supplied and reconciled by PSI Services and are not subject to detailed checking by the Home Office".

The latest six quarters

Source: Home Office, LUK_01, published 27 August 2026. We calculated each pass rate from the counts.

One correction matters here. For January–March 2026 the spreadsheet prints a total pass rate of 70.1%. Its own counts give 76.1% (96,482 ÷ 126,822). The settlement and citizenship rates printed for that quarter agree with the counts; only the total cell is wrong. A "70%" figure for early 2026 comes from that cell, not from the data.

In the year to June 2026, 102,663 sittings failed. At the £50 fee on GOV.UK, that is about £5.1 million paid for failed attempts in twelve months.

Twenty years of results

The Home Office released monthly national totals from October 2005 to October 2013 under FOI (release 29445). We combined those with LUK_01 to build a calendar-year series:

2006–2012: FOI 29445. 2013 onwards: LUK_01.

Three points stand out:

• The pass rate is not stable. It has ranged from 60.9% (2014 and 2015) to 85.2% (2012). If you see one "typical" figure quoted, check which year it comes from.
• The biggest single drop came in 2013. The current test, based on the third edition of the handbook, went live on 25 March 2013. In the monthly figures, the pass rate fell from 85.8% in March 2013 to 70.1% in April. It then fell further, to about 60% in 2014 and 2015.
• Volumes are at a record. 2007 was the busiest year until 2024 overtook it. 2025 has the most sittings of any calendar year in the series, and January–March 2026 (126,822) is the busiest quarter in LUK_01.

Settlement candidates pass more often

Sittings linked to settlement had a higher pass rate than sittings linked to citizenship in 62 of the 65 quarters published. The exceptions are July–September 2016, January–March 2017 and October–December 2020. In 2026 the gap is the widest in the series: 14.4 points in January–March and 14.3 points in April–June. In the year to June 2026 the settlement rate was 81.9% and the citizenship rate 68.9%.

The table does not say why. One structural point helps explain who is in the citizenship column. GOV.UK says you do not take the test again if you already passed it for settlement, so a citizenship-stage sitting is taken by someone who had not already passed it. For example, the EU Settlement Scheme pages do not mention the test. The citizenship requirements do. Whatever the mix, about one citizenship-stage sitting in three failed in the first half of 2026.

The surge comes from the settlement column

Sittings linked to settlement nearly doubled in nine months, from 35,036 in April–June 2025 to 68,720 in January–March 2026. Over the same period, applications for indefinite leave on the Hong Kong BN(O) route went from fewer than 250 a quarter to 15,637:

Sources: LUK_01 and VSI_01a (applications received), same Home Office release.

The timing matches. The BN(O) route opened on 31 January 2021, and GOV.UK says BN(O) holders can apply to settle after five years and that applicants aged 18 to 64 usually need to pass the test. The Home Office's own settlement commentary reports 199,628 settlement grants in the year to June 2026, up 24%. That is the highest level since 2011, and BN(O) grants rose from 587 to 38,373. LUK_01 cannot link a sitting to a visa route, so this shows that the timing fits, not that BN(O) applicants caused the rise.

Citizenship demand is high as well. There were 205,477 naturalisation applications in 2025, the highest calendar-year figure since the Home Office series began in 2004, and 219,714 in the year to June 2026.

What is not published

A first-attempt pass rate. In a Westminster Hall debate on 22 November 2023, the minister Laura Farris said that since 2013 there had been over 1.7 million attempts, with 1.2 million people, or 70%, "passing it the first time". LUK_01 for April 2013 to September 2023 shows 1,816,983 sittings and 1,288,902 passes, which is 70.9% of all sittings. The minister's 70% matches the all-sittings rate. Because the table counts sittings, it cannot confirm a first-attempt rate, and no first-attempt series has been published.

A breakdown by nationality. The latest one is FOI release 30799, released in March 2014. For the first eleven months of the current test (April 2013 to February 2014), the ten nationalities with the most sittings were:

These figures are twelve years old, and the mix of people sitting the test has changed a lot since then. In January 2023 the government said the pass rate for Hong Kong applicants was "not available in a publishable format" (HL4284).

A breakdown by test centre. The last one was FOI 29392, which stops in October 2013. In November 2022 the Home Office said that the number of centres running tests each month, and the number of tests sat each month, were "not available in a reportable format" (HL2704). Its September 2024 list had 39 centres: 38 in the UK and one at Episkopi in Cyprus (written answer 4869).

Exemptions. The Home Office has said it does "not record data relating to requests for exemption" from the test (written answer 3050).

The series may break again

The test is under review. In July 2026 the government said it would update the test, that the current Life in the UK contract expires in 2027, and that changes would come with transitional arrangements (written answer 15781). It has also said remote testing is not available under the current contract and that the next procurement will "explore alternative delivery models" (written answer 12892). On 29 September 2026 it said the details would be "announced in due course" (HL3544). The 2013 change suggests that new content can move the pass rate by more than ten points within a month. Compare figures from before and after any new version with care.

Methodology

• Pass rates are passes divided by sittings, calculated from the counts in LUK_01 rather than taken from the rounded rate columns. Years are calendar years, made by adding up quarters (months for 2005–2012). "Year to June 2026" means July 2025 to June 2026.
• Data sources, downloaded on 6 October 2026:
  • LUK_01 and VSI_01a: Visas, status and immigration data: April to June 2026, in the migration transparency data, published 27 August 2026.
  • Settlement grants (Se_02) and naturalisation applications (Cit_01): Immigration system statistics, year ending June 2026, in the immigration system statistics data tables.
  • Monthly totals for 2005–2013: FOI 29445. Nationality figures: FOI 30799. We read the nationality figures from the PDF, and their monthly totals match FOI 29445 exactly.
• Errors in the published data:
  • The January–March 2026 total rate is misprinted (see above).
  • In October–December 2020, citizenship sittings are printed as "37.751"; we read this as 37,751.
  • In eight quarters, the settlement, citizenship and "other" columns differ from the published total by 1 to 27.
  • FOI 29445 and LUK_01 disagree for January–March 2011 (by 985 sittings) and January–March 2012 (by 820 sittings). We use FOI 29445 for 2005–2012 and LUK_01 from 2013 onwards.
• Language of the test. It is taken in English. Under Home Office caseworker guidance (version 31.0, December 2025), candidates can take it in Welsh at a centre in Wales or in Scottish Gaelic in Scotland. LUK_01 does not split results by language.

Preparing for the test

A pass rate of about three in four leaves a lot of people paying £50 more than once. Our Life in the UK app is not an official Home Office product. It has 305 questions written from the official handbook, and each one says which handbook chapter it comes from. Questions are in English, as in the real test, with a translation and explanation in any of 14 languages so that you can check what you got wrong. A free practice test runs in the browser with nothing to install.