Average price of a pint in the UK in 2026, and where the money actually goes

The average pint in a UK pub costs £5.34 in 2026, up 17p on last year. In London it's £6.55. In my part of the world, the North East, it's £4.90, the cheapest region in the country. Those are The Morning Advertiser's survey figures, and further down I'll do the bit the price surveys never do: break a £5.34 pint apart and show you where every penny goes, from the pub side of the bar.

I'm a licensee in Washington, Tyne and Wear. I set pint prices for a living, I pay the duty and the VAT that sit inside them, and I count what's left. So this page has two halves: the prices, properly sourced, and the anatomy.

The 2026 pint prices

Average UK pint prices by beer style, 2026 vs 2025. The Morning Advertiser survey of pub operators nationwide, published May 2026, covering 30+ brands.

Beer style	2026 average	2025 average	Change
All beer	£5.34	£5.17	+17p (3.3%)
Standard lager	£4.89	£4.70	+19p
Premium lager	£5.94	£5.65	+29p
Cask ale	£4.91	£4.74	+17p (3.6%)
Stout	£5.74	£5.56	+18p
Low & no alcohol	£5.11	—	—

The spread between brands is wider than the averages suggest. The dearest pint in the survey was Asahi at £6.89. The cheapest was Greene King IPA at £4.26. That's £2.63 of difference on two products that come out of taps a few inches apart.

Regionally, London tops the table at £6.55 and the North East props it up at £4.90. Within London the survey found Beavertown Neck Oil at £7.63 at the top end. For the long view, The Morning Advertiser's own decade comparison has the average pint at £2.99 ten years ago. It has passed £5 and it is not coming back. If cask is your thing, I went deeper on those prices in what pubs actually charge for cask ale in 2026.

Where a £5.34 pint actually goes

Here's the arithmetic from my side of the bar, using the average pint and a typical 4.5% draught beer.

Anatomy of a £5.34 pint of 4.5% draught beer, 2026. Duty is paid inside the supplier price; VAT is collected on top of the net price. GP shown at a 55% wet GP, a common wet-led target.

Slice	Amount	Who gets it
VAT at 20%	89p	HMRC
Beer duty (4.5% draught, £19.45 per litre of alcohol)	~50p	HMRC, via the brewer's price
Rest of the beer cost	~£1.50	Brewer and wholesaler
Gross profit	~£2.45	The pub, before any costs

Walk through it. Knock the VAT off £5.34 and the pub keeps £4.45. At a 55% GP, which is a normal target for a wet-led pub, the beer itself cost about £2.00, and roughly 50p of that £2.00 is duty the brewer already paid HMRC on my behalf. So call it £1.39 of the average pint gone in tax before the pub touches it.

The £2.45 that's left isn't profit. It's the fund that pays the bar staff at £12.71 an hour minimum, the 15% employer National Insurance on their wages, the electric on the cellar cooling, the rates, the licence, the line cleaning, and the glass washer that picks its moments. What survives all of that is the pub's actual margin, and on most pints it's pennies, not pounds. I've written up what good GP looks like across categories in the pub GP% benchmarks guide, and if you've never separated VAT from your stock figures properly, start with ex-VAT versus inc-VAT stock values, because it's the mistake I see most.

Why the price went up 17p, not down

Nothing about 2026 made a pint cheaper to sell. Duty went up 3.66% on 1 February. The National Living Wage went up 4.1% in April. Employer NI runs at 15% from a £5,000 threshold, so it bites on nearly every hour worked. A 17p rise on the average pint is pubs passing on part of that, not all of it. Plenty of licensees, me included, absorbed some rather than test what their regulars would stand.

And that's the uncomfortable licensee's footnote to every "price of a pint" headline: when your selling price is public news and your costs rise by law, the only number you fully control is how much of each pint you lose between the cellar and the till. On a £4.90 North East pint the margin for error is thinner than in London by definition. A pint given away, spilt, or short-delivered costs me the same as one sold, minus the revenue. That's why I count weekly. If you want to see what your own losses are worth in pounds, the GP profit leak calculator is free and takes a minute.

Quick answers

What does a pint cost in the UK in 2026?

£5.34 on average across all beer styles. Standard lager £4.89, premium lager £5.94, cask £4.91, stout £5.74.

Where is beer cheapest and dearest?

Cheapest region surveyed: the North East at £4.90. Dearest: London at £6.55, with individual pints there past £7.60.

How much of a pint is tax?

About £1.39 of the £5.34 average: 89p VAT plus roughly 50p of beer duty hidden in the supplier price on a typical 4.5% draught beer.

How much does the pub make on a pint?

Around £2.45 gross on the average pint at a 55% GP, before wages, energy, rates and everything else. The net figure after those is usually pennies. The pub is the smallest shareholder in its own pint.