The pensions dashboard is meant to show your pensions in one place online. Schemes must connect by 31 October 2026; public use starts on a date still to be announced.
If you are asking what the pensions dashboard is, the plain answer is a free online service built to find your pensions and display them side by side, State Pension included. It is not open to the public yet: the law keeps it for invited testers until the government names a start date. Questions about your own pots, in the meantime, are for an FCA-authorised adviser. To request that call, complete the form on this page; nobody is charged for requesting one.
What a pensions dashboard is meant to show you
DWP's guidance on connection sets out the aim: anyone should be able to look up their pensions, the State Pension among them, free of charge, online, in a single place and whenever suits them. Dashboards are also meant to bring lost or forgotten pensions back to their owners.
The FCA's Handbook guidance (PERG 12A.3) is narrower: a pensions dashboard service is "a secure digital interface that will allow consumers to find their pensions that are not yet in payment and view basic information about them in one place." So it is a window onto pensions held elsewhere, not a pension scheme in its own right, and it is aimed at pensions you have not started drawing.
The first public dashboard will be on the MoneyHelper website. The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), on its dashboards page as archived in January 2026, said it would be open to savers with a UK pension that has not yet been accessed or is not currently being paid; for the State Pension, the user must be under State Pension age. It will not sell products or give advice. Instead it will point users to MoneyHelper's guidance, to ways of finding regulated advice and to a free Pension Wise appointment, which what Pension Wise is explains.
Who must connect, and by when
The duty comes from the Pensions Dashboards Regulations 2022 (SI 2022/1220), made on 21 November 2022 and in force from 12 December 2022, under powers that sections 118 and 119 of the Pension Schemes Act 2021 inserted into the Pensions Act 2004. The Pensions Dashboards (Amendment) Regulations 2023 (SI 2023/858), in force from 9 August 2023, introduced a single connection deadline. The duty falls on schemes rather than savers: trustees or managers of an occupational scheme are caught where it had 100 or more relevant members on the reference date, and the FCA made matching rules for personal and stakeholder pension providers in COBS 19.11 of its Handbook.
As amended, the regulations define the "connection deadline" as "31st October 2026, being the latest date by which relevant occupational pension schemes must be connected to the Money and Pensions Service". DWP's guidance (updated 6 August 2025) applies the same date to providers in scope and warns that missing it "may result in enforcement action by the relevant regulator."
Ahead of that date the guidance sets a staged timetable, largest first. The earliest "connect by" date was 30 April 2025, for master trusts with 20,000 or more members and FCA-regulated providers with 5,000 or more pots. Public service schemes were due by 31 October 2025, and the last dated cohort, schemes with 100 to 124 relevant members, by 30 September 2026. The timetable is not mandatory, though schemes are encouraged to follow it; the legal date is 31 October 2026.
The Pensions Regulator's page for its webinar of 8 July 2026 said 75% of member records were then connected. It also reminded schemes that connecting is only a first step: before public launch they must find members, return accurate values and make dashboards part of normal operations.
When will the public be able to use it?
Connection is not launch. The regulations create a separate "Dashboards Available Point": under regulation 4, dashboard services "are to be available for use by the general public from a date to be specified" in a notice from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. Until then they are open only to people "invited by or on behalf of the Money and Pensions Service" to help with testing or service improvements.
The same regulation sets three conditions. The notice must be issued "at least 6 months before" that date. Before issuing it, the Secretary of State must be satisfied the system is ready for widespread public use, after consulting MaPS, the Pensions Regulator and the FCA. And the notice must be published on DWP's GOV.UK homepage. In a written answer to Parliament on 26 February 2026, a minister said: "When we have assurances that the service is safe, secure and thoroughly user-tested, the Secretary of State will provide industry 6 months’ notice ahead of the launch of the government-backed MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard."
Public access is therefore a later, separate step that waits for that notice. When we searched GOV.UK on 20 October 2026, we found no notice naming a Dashboards Available Point. Any start date will come through that notice, and the Pensions Dashboards Programme and MoneyHelper will carry it; a date quoted anywhere else is second-hand.
Dashboards run by other firms
The same January 2026 MaPS page said other FCA-regulated organisations will be able to build and host their own dashboards, and that these "will be introduced after the MoneyHelper Pensions Dashboard has been made publicly available." The February 2026 written answer adds that what is learned from running MoneyHelper's dashboard will help set the launch date for private sector ones.
Running one is a regulated activity. In policy statement PS24/15 the FCA said it will regulate firms that operate pensions dashboard services, and that such firms "will need to get the new regulatory permission to do so"; its Handbook ties the activity to services that connect to the MaPS digital architecture. The PS24/15 page, last updated on 8 November 2024, said the regulator was "not yet opening the gateway" for applications. That was the position at that date; whether the gateway has opened since has not been established here.
What you can do while you wait
The 31 October 2026 deadline is for schemes, not savers, but the pieces a dashboard would draw together can be gathered by hand now. Old statements carry the provider's name and a reference; if one has gone missing, how to find a lost pension covers the Pension Tracing Service and contacting a provider, and whether that service is free answers the cost question. Your State Pension has its own forecast, set out in the UK State Pension guide.
A dashboard shows what you hold; it does not say whether to leave a pot where it is, merge it or move it. Those questions turn on guarantees, charges and tax, which an adviser authorised by the FCA can weigh across several pots together. A representative of an adviser firm telephones you following a submission of the form on this page, and the call costs you nothing. For the mechanics, how to transfer a pension is the step-by-step guide, whether to merge pensions sets out the trade-offs and what it costs to transfer or combine pensions covers fees.
The usual pension scam rules apply in the meantime. The FCA treats an unexpected phone call about your pension as illegal and probably a scam; its advice is to hang up and never to take advice from whoever made contact. MoneyHelper, which will host the first public dashboard, said on its safeguarding page (archived January 2025) that it never contacts people out of the blue or charges for its services. More is in our pension scams guide and on the FCA's pension scams page.
Questions people ask about the pensions dashboard
When does the pensions dashboard go live?
For schemes, the legal connection deadline is 31 October 2026. For the public, the date is whatever the Secretary of State specifies in a notice, which must be issued at least six months ahead.
Do I need to do anything on 31 October 2026?
The deadline is a duty on the trustees, managers and providers in scope: it is the date by which their schemes must be connected. It is not a sign-up date for savers.
What is the MoneyHelper pensions dashboard?
It is the government-backed dashboard, run by MaPS, that will be the first one open to the public. Dashboards from other FCA-regulated firms are due to follow after it.
Will it show my State Pension and pensions I am already drawing?
DWP's guidance includes the State Pension in what dashboards will show. MaPS describes the MoneyHelper dashboard as covering pensions not yet accessed or not currently being paid, with State Pension users under State Pension age.
Will it cost anything?
DWP describes dashboards as free to use. Moving or combining pots after seeing them is a separate step with its own checks and possible costs.
Your next step
Until a launch date is announced, the useful work is on paper: keep statements together, trace any pot you think is lost, and treat any date as provisional until DWP's notice appears. If seeing your pensions side by side raises questions about what to do with them, a short form on this page hands your details to an authorised adviser firm that will ring you; no fee applies. Pension Wise and MoneyHelper remain free alternatives.
Sources, accessed 20 October 2026: DWP, Pensions dashboards: guidance on connection (updated 6 August 2025); legislation.gov.uk, Pensions Dashboards Regulations 2022 (SI 2022/1220) and Pensions Dashboards (Amendment) Regulations 2023 (SI 2023/858); UK Parliament, written question 115378 (answered 26 February 2026); Money and Pensions Service, Pensions dashboards (archived copy of 17 January 2026); Pensions Dashboards Programme, homepage (archived copy of 9 July 2026); The Pensions Regulator, Pensions dashboards: guidance (updated 23 April 2026) and July 2026 webinar page; FCA, PS24/15 (last updated 8 November 2024), PERG 12A.3 and Pension scams (updated 19 January 2026); MoneyHelper, Pension safeguarding (archived copy of 19 January 2025).