Swiss pension figures for 2027: what changes on 1 January

Every autumn a committee in Bern puts two numbers side by side: what wages did this year, and what prices did. This October the answer came out at 1.59 percent, and on 2 October the Federal Council made it official.

That sounds like the dullest sentence in Swiss public life. It is also the reason you may put 115 francs more into your retirement savings next year, and the reason someone already retired will find about 40 francs more in their account each month.

Here is what moves, and what it means for you.

Which number is yours in 2027?

• Employed, with a pension fund: 7'373 francs into a 3a.
• Without a pension fund: 20 percent of net earned income, up to 36'864 francs.
• Several small part-time jobs: insured from 23'040 francs with one employer.
• Already drawing an AHV pension: nothing to do.

Everything that changes, on one page

• Voluntary AHV/IV for Swiss and EU/EFTA nationals resident outside Switzerland, the EU and EFTA: 1'010 francs in 2026, 1'030 francs in 2027.

Why one small percentage moves so much

Start with the state pension, the one everybody who works here pays into through the deduction on their payslip. In Switzerland it is called the AHV. Its amount is reviewed against that mix of wages and prices, and this year the review raised it by 1.59 percent.

Then the chain. Several other limits are not written in the law as franc amounts at all. They are written as a fraction of the highest state pension. So the day that pension moves, they move with it, automatically, without anyone deciding anything further.

That is how a decision about pensioners reaches a thirty-year-old paying into a savings account they will not touch for decades.

What it means for your 3a

Say you pay 600 francs a month by standing order into a 3a, the private retirement account you open yourself and deduct from your taxable income. Over twelve months that is 7'200, comfortably under this year's ceiling.

Next year the ceiling is 115 francs higher. The temptation is to raise the standing order now. Do not: what counts is the year the money lands in the account, not the year you set the instruction up. Anything arriving before 31 December belongs to 2026 and meets a ceiling of 7'258. Anything arriving from 1 January meets 7'373.

The two years do not add up either. 7'373 is next year's ceiling, not this year's plus the difference, and a year you do not use is gone. There is one narrow route to make up a missed year, with its own conditions and its own guide.

And a ceiling is only a ceiling. Any amount counts, and the limit says nothing about what is sensible for your year.

If you work part time, read this one

Two thresholds move inside your workplace pension, and the first matters far more than its size suggests.

The entry threshold is what a single job has to pay before your employer is obliged to put you in a pension fund at all. In 2027 it is 23'040 francs with one employer, up from 22'680.

Picture someone with three small jobs: a shop on Saturdays, a few evenings teaching, some freelance hours. Together they earn a decent living. Separately, each job may sit under the threshold, and if all three do, nobody is building a workplace pension for them at all. They will not be told. It is worth asking each employer directly rather than assuming.

The coordination deduction is the slice of your salary the pension fund leaves out, because the state pension is already covering that part. It rises to 26'880 francs from 26'460. A bigger slice left out of the same salary means slightly less of it is insured, and that bites hardest at lower pay.

Two more figures follow from the formulas but are not in the Federal Council's release, so treat them as our arithmetic rather than published values: the upper limit in the pension fund law becomes 92'160 francs in 2027, three times the highest state pension of 30'720, and the largest salary a fund has to insure becomes 65'280, that upper limit less the coordination deduction.

For a married couple the two pensions together are capped at 150 percent of the highest single one. On the 2027 figure that is 3'840 francs a month, again our arithmetic rather than a published number.

What is not changing on 1 January 2027

Four things people reasonably expect to move, and do not.

1. The conversion rate. The rate a pension fund must use to turn the mandatory part of your savings into a yearly pension stays at 6.8 percent.
2. Taking AHV early, or later. Drawing your AHV pension before the reference age still reduces it by 6.8 percent for each year early, so 13.6 percent two years early. That is the same number as the conversion rate above and has nothing to do with it: the conversion rate belongs to your pension fund, this reduction to the AHV. Women born between 1961 and 1969 have their own lower rates and can start from 62, and putting it off still raises it by between 5.2 and 31.5 percent depending on how long you wait. The 2021 reform allows for new rates no earlier than 2027, and none had been set when this was written, so today's rates are the ones to plan with.
3. The minimum interest your pension fund credits. The rate written in law today is 1.25 percent. The rate for 2027 is a Federal Council decision taken in November 2026, and it was not set when this was written, so no 2027 figure is stated here.
4. How a lump sum is taxed. Nothing in the list above changes the way a payout from a pension fund or a 3a account is taxed. That is set by federal and cantonal tax law, not by these figures.

What to do before 31 December 2026

1. If you pay into a 3a by standing order, the amount that fits 2026 is 7'258 francs in total. Raise the order in January, not now, so the higher amount lands in the 2027 year.
2. Money intended for 2026 has to be in the 3a account before the year ends. The transfer date is what counts, not the instruction date.
3. If you have several part-time jobs and each salary is under 23'040 francs, ask each employer whether you are insured in their pension fund in 2027.
4. If you pay your own AHV contribution, the minimum bill is 11 francs higher in 2027 than in 2026.
5. If you already draw an AHV pension, you do not need to do anything. The office that pays it applies the new amount.

Where this fits

Nobody adds AHV, your pension fund and your 3a together for you, and each of them sends you a different letter in a different format. That is the job SORVA does: you enter what you have once, and it shows you year by year what the three become and when you could stop working. We take no commissions and sell no financial products.

SORVA runs on the 2026 figures, the ones in force until 31 December 2026. Free during the public beta at sorva.ch.

Common questions

Do I have to do anything to get the higher AHV pension?

No. If you already draw one, the compensation office that pays it, the Ausgleichskasse, recalculates it. The payment you receive in January 2027 is at the 2027 amount.

Can I pay 7'373 francs into my 3a for 2026?

No. For 2026 the ceiling is 7'258 francs. The 7'373 applies to money that reaches the account from 1 January 2027 onwards.

Why does the 3a maximum rise when the AHV pension rises?

Because the law sets the 3a limit as 8 percent of an upper limit in the pension fund law, and that upper limit is three times the highest AHV pension. Our own arithmetic on the 2027 pension gives 8 percent of 92'160, which is 7'372.80 and rounds to the published 7'373.

Is early retirement getting cheaper in 2027?

Not as things stand. The reduction for drawing AHV early and the supplement for deferring it are unchanged, and no new rates had been set when this was written.

Does my pension fund have to pay 1.25 percent interest in 2027?

1.25 percent is the minimum written in law today. The rate for 2027 is decided by the Federal Council in November 2026, so the honest answer in October is that it is not yet known.

Is anything else changing for 2027?

This page covers the figures the Federal Council set on 2 October 2026. Other things are being discussed politically and are not settled, so they are not here. We update this page each autumn when the next decision lands.

Educational information, not financial advice. The 2027 figures apply from 1 January 2027; until then the 2026 figures apply. What any of this means for your own money depends on your situation; ask your compensation office, your pension fund or a qualified professional.