The latest hate crime figures from the Home Office for England and Wales show a 7 per cent rise from the previous dataset a year ago.
Racist hate crimes rose by 9 per cent (98,890 the previous year), with religiously aggravated hate crimes up 13 per cent (11,419 offences).
Within religious hate crimes, Muslim communities experienced a 15 per cent rise in hate crimes and a 10 per cent rise in antisemitic hate crimes towards Jewish communities.
The Home Office analysis excludes data from the Metropolitan Police; however, due to methodological differences, the force implemented in 2024 is no longer comparable to previous years.
Even when excluding the Met, reports of racially and religiously aggravated hate crimes hit record levels of recording, with 8,214 religious hate crimes and 90,378 racist hate crimes recorded, respectively.
Rising hate crimes towards Muslim and Jewish communities accounted for a clear majority of religious hate crime offences, with Muslim communities facing 46 per cent (5,132 hate crimes) for the year ending March 2026. When controlling for religious hate crimes by population, antisemitic hate crimes stood at 117 per 10,000 population, while anti-Muslim hate crimes stood at 13 per 10,000 population.
Police forces recorded over 8,000 racial and religious hate crimes for five consecutive months between April and August last year, with 7,907 such offences recorded in May.
Consistent with previous years, the Home Office analysis revealed that just over half (53 per cent) of recorded hate crimes fell under the umbrella of public order offences, as 40 per cent accounted for violence against the person offences.
The Home Office acknowledged that “In the last 2 years, there has been a rise in hate crime offences that is not seen in the overall violent and public order offences trend. This may suggest there has been a genuine increase in hate crime offences over the last 2 years.”
In recent weeks, Tell MAMA has reported a persistent rise in reports of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic abuse, systemic discrimination and targeted harassment in the past two years. Alongside a rise in street-level cases that saw Muslim communities targeted by motorists or when trying to access public transport, including at bus stops.
Today’s Home Office release confirms what Tell MAMA has argued for years: animus towards Muslim communities has reached a sustained, escalating crisis driven by political scapegoating and street-level aggression. London alone has seen a sixfold rise in cases to our service since 2021. With 1,031 anti-Muslim cases reported to Tell MAMA in the capital in the first six months of this year, that figure has already eclipsed the whole of 2023.
To repeat what we said last year: “Communities deserve more than platitudes and gesture politics. They want to feel safe at their places of worship, on our streets, and in public. There is a failure of leadership and of a coherent strategy to address this growing scourge and improve community relations, whilst ensuring there is no place for racism and bigotry in political and public life.”
Tell MAMA repeats its calls for a response from government that goes beyond security funding for faith institutions to a cohesive, comprehensive action plan to tackle these alarming rises in religious and racial hate crimes. That includes updating and refreshing a hate crime action plan, tackling disinformation and misinformation on social media, improving digital literacy and critical thinking skills, and bringing communities together with an updated community cohesion plan that gives everyone a voice.