How much is a war pension?

The short answer

Three points on the scale show the shape of it. The steps are close to even, so each 10% of assessment is worth roughly £24.81 a week.

These are the Other Ranks weekly figures, effective from the payday in the week of 6 April 2026; officers are paid the equivalent yearly amount. All nine bands from 20% to 100% are on our War Pension rates page, and how the percentage itself is decided is covered on the War Pension Scheme page, which also has the estimator.

Why the real total is usually higher than the table

This is the part that catches people out when they compare what they receive against a published rate. The disablement pension is only the base. A range of supplementary allowances sit on top of it, each with its own qualifying test, and none of them is paid automatically.

Take a veteran assessed at 100%. The base pension is £248.10 a week. Add the War Pensioners' Mobility Supplement at £89.25 and that becomes £337.35. Add Constant Attendance Allowance at the full-day basic rate of £93.60 and it reaches £430.95 a week, which is well over the £248.10 the rate table shows for a 100% assessment.

Other allowances include Unemployability Supplement at £153.25 a week, the Allowance for Lowered Standard of Occupation up to £93.56, Exceptionally Severe Disablement Allowance at £93.60, and an age allowance worth £51.10 a week on a 100% assessment. Two veterans on identical percentages can therefore end up with very different totals, so price the allowances separately rather than treating the headline rate as your answer.

Assessed below 20%: a gratuity instead

If your disablement is assessed at less than 20% you are paid a single tax-free gratuity rather than a weekly pension. The amount depends on the band your assessment falls in: £3,945 for 1 to 5%, £8,770 for 6 to 14%, and £15,339 for 15 to 19%.

A gratuity is not a smaller version of the pension, it is a different award, and it is normally paid for an indefinite period. If your condition later worsens and a review moves you to 20% or above, the weekly pension route opens up instead.

What can change the figure later

An award is not necessarily fixed. An assessment can be made for a set period or for life, and it can be reviewed, so the amount you are paid now is not always the amount you keep. Our guide on whether a War Pension is for life covers when an award becomes permanent.

If your accepted condition gets worse, you can ask for the assessment to be looked at again through a deterioration claim. A higher percentage moves you up the table, and it can also open up allowances that were not payable at the lower assessment.

Separately, every figure on this page is uprated each April in line with the previous September's CPI. That was 3.8% for April 2026, following 1.7% in 2025 and 6.7% in 2024, so the amounts rise over time without you doing anything.

This is not your armed forces pension

A War Pension compensates you for an injury or illness caused by service. Your armed forces pension is the money you earned by serving, and the two are assessed, administered and paid separately. You can receive both at once, which is common after a medical discharge.

If what you actually want to know is what your service pension is worth, the army pension calculator and the medical discharge calculator work on pay and service instead. And if your injury or illness happened on or after 6 April 2005, you are in the AFCS rather than the War Pension Scheme: our AFCS versus War Pension guide sets out that border, which turns entirely on the date.