From 1 October 2026, the deadline for bringing most employment tribunal claims doubles. Three months becomes six.
That's the headline. If something happens to you at work on or after that date — you're dismissed, you're harassed, money goes missing from your wages — you'll have six months to start a claim rather than three.
If it happened before 1 October 2026, nothing has changed for you. The old three-month deadline still applies. That's the part most coverage of this leaves until the end, and it's the part that can cost someone a claim, so it has its own box further down this page.
The change comes from the Employment Rights Act 2025, section 152 and Schedule 12 — which rewrites the time limits sitting inside the older laws, including the Employment Rights Act 1996 and the Equality Act 2010.
What "three months" actually means
Worth being exact, because the old rule is written in an odd way and it still governs anything that happened before October.
The limit is three months less one day from the date of the thing you're complaining about. Dismissed on 14 August? Your deadline is 13 November. Not the end of November. Not "about three months". The 13th.
From 1 October 2026 the same arithmetic runs on the longer period: six months less one day.
Which claims get the six months
The extension is wide. The four most likely to matter to you:
- Unfair dismissal — being dismissed without a fair reason or a fair process (Employment Rights Act 1996, s.111).
- Discrimination, harassment and victimisation — being treated worse because of who you are, or punished for raising it (Equality Act 2010, s.123). Schedule 12 of the new Act does this by changing a single word: "3" becomes "6".
- Unlawful deduction from wages — pay that never arrived, overtime not paid, money taken off you without your written agreement (ERA 1996, s.23).
- Whistleblowing detriment — being treated badly because you raised a concern about wrongdoing (ERA 1996, s.48).
Behind those sits a longer list moving to six months on the same date and the same terms: holiday pay, TUPE, agency worker rights, National Minimum Wage, the right to be accompanied at a hearing, and trade union claims under TULRCA 1992, among others.
Three things are worth knowing because they don't follow the pattern:
- Equal pay claims already had six months (Equality Act 2010, s.129). Unchanged.
- Statutory redundancy pay already had six months (ERA 1996, s.164). Unchanged.
- Interim relief — the urgent application to keep being paid while a dismissal claim is heard — is still seven days. A week. That one has not moved at all.
Breach of contract claims in the tribunal are a separate, slightly different change. They aren't covered by Schedule 12; they're extended by their own order, which as things stand applies to England and Wales only. The Scottish equivalent was still pending when this page was last checked. If your claim is about a contract term and you work in Scotland, treat six months as unconfirmed and check the position before you rely on it.
The six months is not backdated. Check your date first.
The new limit applies only where the act you're complaining about happened on or after 1 October 2026. Where there's a series of connected acts, it's the date of the last one that counts.
If everything you're complaining about happened before 1 October 2026, your deadline is still three months less one day — no matter when you read this, and no matter when you bring the claim.
Dismissed on 20 August 2026? Your deadline is 19 November 2026. Not February 2027.
This is set out in Reg 10 of the Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026.
If you're not certain which side of the line your situation falls on, work to the earlier date.
Why the extra time matters more than it sounds
It would be easy to read "six months" as six months to decide whether to bother. It isn't — and the tribunal's own numbers explain why.
By December 2025 the employment tribunal's open caseload had reached 831,000 — the highest since 2013/14. The mean time to resolve a claim has risen to 31 weeks, up from 19 weeks a year earlier. Complex cases are commonly waiting 18 months or more before a final hearing. The government's own economic analysis of the Act, published in January 2026, anticipates the reforms could increase the number of cases reaching ACAS and the tribunal by around 17%.
So the extra three months isn't extra time in the queue. The queue was already long.
What it is, is time at the start. Time to work out what actually happened to you. Time to get proper advice from a union rep, ACAS or an adviser. Time to gather the letters, the payslips, the dates. Under the three-month rule, someone dismissed on a Friday had to understand an unfamiliar process, find help, and decide on one of the biggest questions of their working life inside about twelve weeks — usually while looking for another job. Six months doesn't fix the backlog. It does change how rushed the most important part is.
And it only applies from 1 October 2026 onwards. If your situation started before then, you're still working to twelve weeks.
ACAS early conciliation, and what it does to the clock
There's a step before the tribunal that catches people out.
You generally can't go straight to an employment tribunal. You have to notify ACAS first and go through early conciliation — a free process where a conciliator talks to both sides to see whether the matter can be settled without a hearing. It isn't a hearing, it isn't an admission of anything, and you don't have to accept whatever is offered.
The important bit for your deadline: early conciliation pauses the clock. The time it takes doesn't count against you. Since 1 December 2025 the maximum early conciliation period has been 12 weeks, up from six — so that pause can now be a long one.
What it doesn't do is undo the time you spent before you picked up the phone. If you wait until week eleven of a three-month window to contact ACAS, you have used eleven weeks. The pause protects what's left, not what's gone. Notify ACAS early, whichever deadline you're working to.
One more change, coming in January 2027
Separate rule, separate date, easy to mix up with this one.
From 1 January 2027, the qualifying period for claiming unfair dismissal drops from two years' service to six months. That's about whether you're eligible to claim at all — not about how long you have to do it. The October 2026 change is your deadline; the January 2027 change is your eligibility. Neither affects the other, and neither is backdated.
What to do with the extra time
The honest answer is: start now, whichever deadline applies to you.
Write down what happened while you can still remember it properly — dates, times, who was in the room, what was actually said, what you were told and by whom. Keep the emails, the invite letters, the policy documents, the payslips. Keep them somewhere private, on your own device, not on a work laptop or a work email account.
This isn't only for a tribunal. It's what a union rep needs on the first call, what ACAS asks for, and what an adviser reads before telling you where you stand.
Recording what happened commits you to nothing. Most people who do it never bring a claim. They just stop being the person in the room who can't remember the date.
Not sure where to start? Start with the record.
Stewrd is an AI workplace companion for UK workers — built by a former union rep and branch secretary. It explains where you stand in plain English and builds a private, dated record as you go, straight from your phone. Ready to hand to a rep, ACAS or an adviser when it matters.
Know your rights. Record what matters.
Common questions
Does the six months apply to something that happened to me in August 2026?
No. Your limit is three months less one day from the date it happened. The new limit only reaches acts on or after 1 October 2026.
What if it's been going on for months and is still going on?
Where there's a series of connected acts, the clock runs from the last one. If that last act falls on or after 1 October 2026, the six months applies. If the series ended before then, it doesn't. This is one of the harder things to judge — worth getting checked rather than assumed.
Do I have to contact ACAS before making a claim?
In almost all cases, yes. Notify ACAS as soon as you can. The conciliation period pauses your deadline, but only from the point you get in touch.
Where does this come from?
Employment Rights Act 2025 (c. 36), section 152 and Schedule 12, paragraph 18; and Reg 10 of the Employment Tribunal (Extension of Time Limits) (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2026. All published on legislation.gov.uk.