Police recorded 146,825 hate crimes in the year ending March 2026, a rise of 7% compared with the previous year, the Home Office said. The figures exclude data from the Metropolitan police because of a change in their crime recording system.
Religious hate crime offences recorded in England and Wales in the 12 months to March — excluding the Met — were at their highest annual total since records began in 2012, reaching 8,214.
Offences targeting Muslims increased the most, up 15% from 4,479 to 5,132. Antisemitic hate crimes rose by 10%, from 2,874 to 3,162. Anti-Muslim hate crimes reached a record 3,660 offences, the highest annual total since this data was first collected in 2018.
The Home Office reported sharp increases in anti-Muslim offences in September 2025, coinciding with protests and public disorder, and again in March after the outbreak of war between the US and Iran.
The British Muslim Trust (BMT), appointed by the government in July 2025 to monitor anti-Muslim hostility, recorded 78 incidents involving 64 mosques across the UK and the Channel Islands between 21 July 2025 and 30 July 2026 — roughly equivalent to an incident every five days.
A report published on Thursday by BMT, titled A Year of Division, said: “There has been an unprecedented level of anti-Muslim hate during the last year … The momentum of growing anti-Muslim hostility is driving the attacks against mosques … The defining shift across this reporting period is a movement from hate aimed at the mosque itself to hate targeting Muslims inside it.”