Lifetime ISA Contribution Limits 2026/27: Can You Pay More Than £4,000?

The £4,000 annual contribution cap in 2026/27

HMRC sets the Lifetime ISA contribution limit at £4,000 per tax year. The 2026/27 tax year runs from 6 April 2026 to 5 April 2027. The cap covers every payment you make into the LISA in that period. Lump sums, monthly direct debits and ad-hoc transfers all count.

The 25% government bonus is paid on top of your £4,000. The most that can go into your LISA in a year is £5,000: £4,000 from you plus a £1,000 bonus, before any interest or investment growth.

The limit did not change on 6 April 2026, and it is not due to change for a while. The government has said the Lifetime ISA subscription limit stays at £4,000 until 5 April 2031, alongside the £20,000 overall ISA limit and the £9,000 Junior ISA limit. For plans that run several years, use £4,000 a year as your figure.

To see how the £4,000 cap and bonus add up over time, use our LISA bonus calculator. To learn what the account is and who can open one, read the Lifetime ISA explained.

How the £4,000 LISA cap fits within the £20,000 ISA allowance

The £4,000 LISA cap is part of the overall £20,000 annual ISA allowance. It is not separate from it. If you pay the maximum £4,000 into a LISA, you have £16,000 left for cash, stocks & shares, and innovative finance ISAs in the same tax year. For a fuller answer, read does a Lifetime ISA count towards your ISA allowance.

The 25% government bonus is paid on top and does not count toward the £20,000 ISA limit.

Lifetime ISA age limits

Two age boundaries control LISA contributions:

• To open a LISA: you must be 18 or over and under 40. From your 40th birthday, you can no longer open a new account. The Lifetime ISA age limit and eligibility guide covers this in more detail.
• To contribute: you can pay in, and earn the 25% bonus, until your 50th birthday. From age 50, the LISA stays open and can grow through interest or investment returns. No further contributions or bonuses are accepted.

In practice, if you open a LISA at 18 and pay in £4,000 every year until you turn 50, total bonuses would be £32,000 to £33,000 (£1,000 for each tax year you can contribute in), before any growth. You only get the higher figure if your birthday falls late enough in the tax year to fit in one extra full contribution before you turn 50.

What happens if you overpay into a Lifetime ISA?

Most UK LISA providers (including Moneybox, AJ Bell, Hargreaves Lansdown, Nutmeg and Beehive Money) actively block payments that would breach the £4,000 cap. The check usually runs in real time, when you make the contribution.

If a contribution does get through, for example because you have more than one LISA across providers in the same tax year (which itself breaches HMRC’s ‘one LISA per year’ rule):

• Your provider returns the over-cap amount to you
• No 25% bonus is paid on the excess
• HMRC may flag the LISA as ‘void’ for the tax year if you opened more than one LISA in the same year

You need to track your contributions across providers if you have moved between LISAs mid-year. You can avoid problems by checking the current tax-year contribution figure in your LISA app before each payment.

Can you have multiple Lifetime ISAs?

You can own multiple LISAs. But you can only contribute to one LISA per tax year. Transfers between providers do not breach this rule. If you opened a LISA in 2025/26 with one provider and switched to another for 2026/27 contributions, that is fine. The old LISA can stay open and keep earning interest. You just cannot pay new money into it.

The same restriction applies to the regular ISA family. For new contributions, you can use one cash ISA, one stocks & shares ISA, one innovative finance ISA and one LISA per tax year.

What if you do not max the £4,000 limit?

Unused LISA allowance does not roll over. If you pay in only £1,000 in 2026/27, you cannot pay £7,000 the next year. The 2027/28 cap is still £4,000. The same applies to the £1,000 bonus. Any bonus you did not claim in an earlier year is gone.

This is one reason savers often set up a monthly direct debit of £333. That pays in £3,996 across 12 months and earns £999 in bonus. To learn how the bonus works, read how the LISA government bonus works. To see how long the money takes to appear, read when the government pays your LISA bonus.

You do not lose anything by paying in less than the cap. The bonus is 25% of what you actually pay in, so a smaller contribution still earns a bonus. It is just a smaller one. There is no minimum contribution. There is no penalty for paying in nothing in a given year. You also do not have to keep the direct debit running. The only cost of a quiet year is the bonus you did not claim.

Are the LISA contribution rules changing?

Not for the 2026/27 tax year. The £4,000 limit, the 25% bonus, the £1,000 annual bonus cap, the £450,000 property cap and the 25% early withdrawal charge are all the same as in 2025/26.

There is also a longer-term consultation. It is worth knowing about if you are opening an account now. On 22 June 2026, the government published a consultation on a First Time Buyer ISA. It is proposed to be offered in place of the Lifetime ISA. The consultation closed on 18 August 2026. As set out in the consultation, the new account would pay its bonus at the point of purchase. It would carry no withdrawal charge and have no upper age limit. The bonus rate and contribution limits would be announced at a future fiscal event.

None of this is law yet. No start date has been set. You can still open a Lifetime ISA until the replacement is available. People who already hold a LISA can carry on saving into it under the existing rules. The charge that applies today is still the 25% one, described in the LISA withdrawal rules.