The resident doctors' pay deal: the exact figures, released here before the government, the BMA and the media

The new salaries

From 2025/26 to the start of April 2027, salaries will increase by between 3.5% and 9.8%, depending on your grade. The pay rises will be made up of 2 components.

1. 1The DDRB award, 3.5%. The DDRB is the Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration, the independent body that looks at the evidence each year and recommends a pay rise for doctors and dentists to the government, which then decides whether to accept it. For 2026/27 it recommended 3.5% and the government accepted it for everyone, backdated to 1 April 2026. That 3.5% has already been reflected in your pay. Because it is the same for everyone, anything above 3.5% in the chart below is nodal point reform.
2. 2Nodal point reform. You know how you don't always receive a higher salary as you progress through training? Going from FY1 to FY2 you do, but going from ST1 to ST2 you don't, and neither do you from ST3 to ST5, or from ST6 to ST8. Nodal point reform changes that, in 2 stages. In the 2026/27 pay scales some grades start to diverge: ST4 separates from ST3, and ST7 from ST6. From April 2027, the start of the 2027/28 tax year, the rest split: ST2 from ST1, ST5 from ST4 and ST8 from ST7. So by the start of April 2027 every grade will have a different starting salary. That is the nodal point reform: we go from 5 different nodal (pay) points to 10.

The other items

Here are the most important other things that were also announced.

• Training posts: a minimum of 4,000 new specialty training posts over 3 years, up to 4,500, with at least 1,000 by August 2027 and 250 starting in February 2027. They will be a mix of new posts and existing locum, agency and locally employed jobs converted, with no LED contract ended early. The offer does not say how many will be genuinely new. A new Training Allocation and Distribution Group, with the BMA on it, decides which specialties and regions get them.
• Exam fees: mandatory Royal College exam fees reimbursed for the first 2 attempts at each exam, for doctors in training and locally employed doctors in England, through your employer, for exams sat from 1 April 2026. Advanced life support courses are funded locally where they are mandatory for your role.
• Membership and portfolio fees: mandatory Royal College and faculty memberships and portfolio fees paid from 1 April 2027, including more than one where dual accreditation needs it.
• Clinical academics: the flexible pay premium rises from £5,600 to £10,000 from 1 April 2027.
• ARCPs and LTFT: ARCPs at 12 months by default for full-time and less-than-full-time doctors, so LTFT doctors get an annual chance to progress, with the full-time-equivalent option kept for those who want it. Pay progression is tied to the competencies signed off at ARCP.
• Locally employed doctors: an enhanced annual appraisal, designed by October 2026, that unlocks the same pay steps from August 2026; the option to move onto the 2016 contract by September 2026; substantive rather than fixed-term contracts from August 2026 unless there is a legitimate reason; a new national LED contract by April 2027; and an early ARCP within 3 months of entering formal training to recognise competencies you already have.
• The 2002 contract: its pay scales are removed from the pay circular in August 2026, with a new pay protection mechanism for anyone moving across to 2016 terms.
• GP registrars: the GP flexible pay premium is renamed the General Practice Registrar Enhancement from August 2026, with every provision kept, including pay protection.
• Exception reporting: a review of the geolocation and corroboration requirements, with alternatives agreed jointly.
• The 10 Point Plan and the training review: the 10 Point Plan on working practices continues and expands, and trusts report against it in their annual accounts. The BMA joins phase 2 of the Medical Education and Training Review.

The BMA will be putting the offer to resident doctors to a vote.

What it doesn't include

It doesn't include the pay rise for 2027/28. There will be one: the DDRB will recommend it next year, and it will be added on top of these salaries from April 2027. If next year's recommendation is insufficient, the BMA has said there could be further strikes.