The best share: pensions will double in 2026

Starting from February 1 and April 1 next year, pensions will be indexed twice. This was announced in an interview by Sergey Chirkov, Chairman of the Social Fund of the Russian Federation. Izvestia investigated why the increase would be phased in and what the indexing scheme would be in the coming years.

What's the matter

Starting from February 1, the amount of pensions will be indexed according to last year's (i.e. for 2025) inflation. And from April 1— the indicator is still unknown, depending on the income that the Social Fund of Russia will receive. Recall that profitability depends on the income of insurance premiums that employers transfer to the SFR for employees and sole proprietors for themselves.

In both cases, the increase will affect only the pension insurance part. By the end of 2025, insurance pensions will be indexed by 9.5%, social pensions — by 14.75%.

As the press service of the Ministry of Labor informed Izvestia, starting in 2025, insurance pensions will be indexed not only for unemployed, but also for working pensioners. "Starting from 2026, insurance pensions will be increased twice a year, in February and April. The double indexation rule will remain in place in the coming years," the ministry noted.

According to Tatiana Podolskaya, an expert at the Presidential Academy, two-stage pension indexation looks like a fair solution.

"According to forecasts, wages in Russia will grow by about 12% in 2025, and this trend will become a guideline for the April indexation of the insurance part of pensions in 2026," she explains.

A return to best practices

The two-stage indexation of insurance pensions (February 1 and April 1) was applied before the pension reform in 2018, but then it was canceled, recalls Olga Belenkaya, head of the Macroeconomic analysis department at Finam.

— In 2025, the indexation turned out to be actually two-stage, since from January 1, insurance pensions were indexed to the level of projected inflation, but it turned out to be lower than the actual one, and from February 1, an additional indexation was carried out to the level of official inflation. Since 2025, for the first time since 2016, pension indexation for working pensioners has resumed, and from 2026 it is planned to switch to a two-stage indexation of insurance pensions. The April supplement will be formed from insurance premiums depending on the salary level in Russia," she comments.

Olga Belenkaya attributes the transition to a two-stage indexation system for insurance pensions to the fact that in recent years, due to faster wage growth compared with official inflation, the ratio of the average pension to the average salary has decreased from 32-38% in 2022 to 23.5% in 2024.

What will have to be changed

To ensure the proper operation of the pension indexation mechanism next year, legislation will need to be changed. In particular, the Federal Law "On Insurance Pensions," says Ekaterina Kosareva, managing partner of the analytical agency VMT Consult.

— You will also need to make changes to the IT infrastructure of the Social Fund: update. information systems, set up correct calculations, taking into account a flexible system of adjustments, taking into account all coefficients and allowances, especially since we do not know now exactly how much pensions will increase either in February or in April). In addition, the new rules should be communicated to all SFR representative offices in Russia, employees should be adapted, clear response scripts should be written, information on the website should be updated, notifications should be set up, etc., she lists.

Advantages and disadvantages

According to Ekaterina Kosareva, the new system assumes a more realistic scheme of income growth for pensioners, adjusted for inflation.

— The pension increase will directly correlate with economic growth and will become its indicator. The more efficient the economy, the more people are employed in enterprises and the more contributions employers send to the SFR. The amount of the April surcharge directly depends on these receipts," the expert noted.

The growth of pensions corresponds to the course of Russia's social development, the analyst believes.

— Thus, pensions of the military and representatives of law enforcement agencies are also indexed twice a year. In addition, a large number of initiatives are being considered to improve the well-being of pensioners. Thus, lawmakers are discussing reducing the age from 80 to 70 years, upon which a pensioner is entitled to receive additional payments to an insurance pension. For the age groups of 70+, 80+ and 90+ years, these fixed amounts are expected to increase by +100%, +200% and +300%," says Kosareva.

At the same time, Yulia Makarenko, Deputy Director of the Banking Development Institute, considers the high burden on the budget to be the main risk of innovations. According to the Ministry of Finance, the gap between government revenues and expenditures in the first eight months of the year amounted to almost 4.2 trillion rubles.

— Currently, steps are being taken to reduce this amount by weakening the ruble: the Ministry of Finance is increasing the sale of currency and gold, the Bank of Russia is easing monetary policy. This is also facilitated by external factors, in particular the elimination of production limits by OPEC+ countries, which creates an oversupply in the market and contributes to a drop in the national currencies of exporting countries. At the same time, Russian GDP slowed to 1.1%, and by the end of the first seven months of 2025, while real incomes of the population are not growing as actively as in 2023-24," she says.

According to the financier, the real increase to the pension may be lower than expected, and due to double indexing, the dynamics, at least in 2026, will remain at the same level.

— The indexation for the amount of inflation at the same time clearly does not seem sufficient. Obviously, inflation primarily affects essential goods, which can add significantly above the inflationary level during the year, up to 15-30% per year," Makarenko added.

Olga Belenkaya agrees with the mentioned influence of "inflation for the poor" on the growth of pensioners' incomes.

—In fact, the indexation of pensions according to official inflation may not "cover" the decline in the purchasing power of pensioners' incomes. To what extent additional indexing, linked to the income of the Social Fund of Russia, will cope with this task, is still an open question," the expert summarizes.