Military Pay Chart 2026: Complete Guide (Every Rank, Every Rate)
The 2026 military pay raise is 3.8%, effective January 1, 2026.
That’s the short version of this year’s military pay chart: every service member in every branch got a 3.8% bump to basic pay on January 1, 2026. An E-1 just out of basic training now earns $2,407.20 a month in basic pay, and basic pay tops out at $18,999.90 a month for the most senior officers (there’s a legal cap — more on that below). One table covers every branch, because the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force, and Coast Guard all use the same Department of Defense pay table.
But the pay chart is only the starting point. Basic pay is taxable, and it’s usually just over half of what a service member actually brings in — tax-free housing and food allowances, special pays, and benefits stack on top. I’ll walk you through every table, what else changed in 2026, and what the 2027 raise proposal looks like (clearly marked as a proposal, because too many sites present it as fact).
Independent guide — not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense or any military branch. All pay figures below come from the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) 2026 basic pay tables.
2026 Pay Raise at a Glance
The 3.8% raise was authorized by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026 (Public Law 119-60), signed on December 18, 2025. It applies uniformly — no targeted bumps for junior ranks this year, unlike 2025.
Why 3.8% specifically? Federal law (37 U.S.C. § 1009) ties the annual military pay raise to the Employment Cost Index, which tracks private-sector wage growth, unless Congress or the President sets a different number. For 2026, lawmakers went with the formula number.
Here’s where the raise sits in recent history:
| Year | Raise | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2.7% | — |
| 2023 | 4.6% | — |
| 2024 | 5.2% | — |
| 2025 | 4.5% | Plus a separate 10% targeted bump for E-1 through E-4 (effective Apr 1, 2025) |
| 2026 | 3.8% | Uniform across all grades |
When did it show up in paychecks? Technically January 1, but most people saw it on the mid-January Leave and Earnings Statement (LES) — the first January paycheck covers December work, and DFAS needs time to load new rates. Anything owed back to January 1 is paid retroactively, so the delay costs you nothing.
2026 Enlisted Pay Chart (E-1 to E-9)
Monthly basic pay, effective January 1, 2026. I’ve shown the service steps most people actually look up; DFAS publishes the full 13-column table (up to “over 40” for senior grades) for anyone who needs the complete detail.
| Grade | Under 2 years | Over 4 | Over 10 | Over 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E-1 | $2,407.20 | $2,407.20 | $2,407.20 | $2,407.20 |
| E-2 | $2,697.90 | $2,697.90 | $2,697.90 | $2,697.90 |
| E-3 | $2,836.80 | $3,198.00 | $3,198.00 | $3,198.00 |
| E-4 | $3,142.20 | $3,658.50 | $3,815.40 | $3,815.40 |
| E-5 | $3,342.90 | $3,946.80 | $4,395.30 | $4,421.70 |
| E-6 | $3,401.10 | $4,068.90 | $4,759.50 | $5,267.70 |
| E-7 | $3,932.10 | $4,673.10 | $5,300.40 | $6,245.70 |
| E-8 | — | — | $5,907.00 | $6,995.40 |
| E-9 | — | — | $6,910.20 | $8,105.10 |
Three things about this table trip people up every year:
1. “Over 4” means MORE than 4 years. DFAS columns read “over N,” so if you have exactly 4.0 years of service, you’re paid at the “over 3” step — the higher rate kicks in one day later.
2. E-1 through E-4 have honest caps. E-1 and E-2 never move with time in service (one rate, always). E-3 stops at “over 3” ($3,198.00), E-4 at “over 6” ($3,815.40). By design, these grades are expected to promote.
3. There’s an E-1 rate that isn’t on the chart. With less than 4 months of active duty, E-1s earn $2,225.70 a month — so most of basic training is paid at the lower rate, and the $2,407.20 kicks in after month four.
Two more special rates worth knowing: the senior enlisted advisor of each service (and the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman) earns $11,166.90 a month regardless of years of service, and academy cadets and midshipmen earn $1,452.90.
2026 Warrant Officer Pay Chart (W-1 to W-5)
Warrant officers are technical specialists sitting between enlisted and commissioned ranks — the Army uses them most, and the Air Force reestablished a small cyber/IT warrant corps in 2024.
| Grade | Under 2 years | Over 4 | Over 10 | Over 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| W-1 | $4,056.60 | $4,859.10 | $5,786.10 | $7,010.10 |
| W-2 | $4,621.80 | $5,286.00 | $6,282.60 | $7,437.00 |
| W-3 | $5,223.30 | $5,736.90 | $6,910.50 | $8,476.50 |
| W-4 | $5,719.80 | $6,502.20 | $7,398.00 | $9,228.90 |
| W-5 | — | — | — | $10,169.70 |
W-5 has no published rate below the “over 20” step — the grade effectively requires that much service before anyone holds it.
2026 Officer Pay Chart (O-1 to O-10)
| Grade | Under 2 years | Over 4 | Over 10 | Over 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| O-1 | $4,150.20 | $5,222.40 | $5,222.40 | $5,222.40 |
| O-2 | $4,782.00 | $6,484.50 | $6,617.70 | $6,617.70 |
| O-3 | $5,534.10 | $7,382.70 | $8,375.70 | $9,004.20 |
| O-4 | $6,294.60 | $7,881.00 | $9,420.00 | $10,509.90 |
| O-5 | $7,295.40 | $8,894.10 | $9,928.50 | $12,032.70 |
| O-6 | $8,751.30 | $10,245.00 | $10,783.50 | $13,751.10 |
| O-7 | $11,540.10 | $12,522.00 | $13,639.20 | $16,817.70 |
| O-8 | $13,888.50 | $14,729.40 | $15,882.00 | $18,598.20 |
| O-9 | — | — | — | $18,999.90 |
| O-10 | — | — | — | $18,999.90 |
Why the top of the officer table goes flat: the pay caps
Two legal ceilings flatten the senior rows, and they’re the reason a lot of published pay charts are wrong:
- O-7 through O-10 are capped at $18,999.90 a month — Level II of the Executive Schedule. That’s why O-9 and O-10 show one flat figure at every step, and why a four-star general and a three-star admiral draw identical basic pay. It applies to the Chairman and Vice Chairman, the service chiefs, and combatant commanders too.
- O-6 and below are capped at $15,408.30 a month — the Level V rate. An O-6 reaches that ceiling at the “over 30” step.
The caps apply to basic pay only. Allowances and special pays don’t count against them.
Prior-Enlisted Officer Pay (O-1E, O-2E, O-3E)
If you were credited with more than four years of active service as enlisted or a warrant officer before commissioning (four years and one day — the threshold is strict), you’re paid on a separate table marked with an “E.”
| Grade | Over 4 | Over 6 | Over 10 | Over 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| O-1E | $5,222.40 | $5,576.70 | $5,993.70 | $6,484.50 |
| O-2E | $6,484.50 | $6,617.70 | $7,183.80 | $7,663.50 |
| O-3E | $7,382.70 | $7,737.00 | $8,375.70 | $9,609.60 |
Here’s the part most pay charts get backwards: the prior-enlisted advantage is zero at the four-year step and grows with service, because the standard O-1/O-2 tables flatten early while the O-xE tables keep climbing. At the top of the scale, O-1E is worth $1,262.10 more a month than O-1 ($15,145 a year). In practice, most officers promote out of O-1 and O-2 long before the gap widens — the rate that matters to a career prior-enlisted officer is O-3E, worth $605.40 a month extra at the top.
How Military Pay Actually Works (It’s Not Just the Chart)
The chart shows basic pay — taxable, set by grade and years of service, identical in every branch. Here’s what stacks on top:
Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) — tax-free, varies by duty-station ZIP code, grade, and dependent status. 2026 rates rose an average of 4.2% (announced December 11, 2025), effective January 1. BAH covers roughly 95% of local housing costs — the member absorbs about 5%. Look yours up in our BAH rate-by-ZIP guide, and read what BAH is for the full picture.
Basic Allowance for Subsistence (BAS) — tax-free food money. 2026: $476.95 a month for enlisted, $328.48 for officers (up 2.4%). There’s also BAS II at $953.90 — exactly double the enlisted rate — for a narrow set of circumstances. Full breakdown in our What Is BAS? guide.
Special and incentive pays — imminent danger pay ($275/month), Family Separation Allowance ($300/month, prorated at $10/day), hardship duty pay ($50 or $100/month), plus flight, sea, submarine, and aviation pays scaled by duty. These change more often than basic pay, so confirm current rates with your finance office. For the full breakdown of each hazard and special pay — including the October 2026 rate changes — see my hazard pay guide. Per diem — the daily travel allowance for TDY and PCS travel — is another tax-free piece of total compensation.
Combat zone tax exclusion — pay earned in a designated combat zone is federally tax-free; for enlisted there’s no cap, and officers’ exclusion is capped at the senior-enlisted basic pay rate ($11,166.90) plus $275 of imminent danger pay.
And because BAH and BAS are tax-free, they’re worth more than the same dollars of taxable basic pay — a point our is-BAH-taxable guide works through in detail.
Guard & Reserve Drill Pay in 2026
Guard and Reserve members draw from the same basic pay tables but get paid by the drill period: one period equals monthly basic pay ÷ 30, and a standard drill weekend is four periods. So a weekend pays 4/30ths of the equivalent monthly basic pay — and the 3.8% raise flowed through on January 1 exactly as it did for active duty.
| Grade | 1 drill (under 2 yrs) | Weekend (under 2 yrs) | 1 drill (over 6) | Weekend (over 6) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E-3 | $94.56 | $378.24 | $106.60 | $426.40 |
| E-4 | $104.74 | $418.96 | $127.18 | $508.72 |
| E-5 | $111.43 | $445.72 | $137.00 | $548.00 |
| E-6 | $113.37 | $453.48 | $141.19 | $564.76 |
| E-7 | $131.07 | $524.28 | $161.46 | $645.84 |
| O-1 | $138.34 | $553.36 | $174.08 | $696.32 |
| O-2 | $159.40 | $637.60 | $220.59 | $882.36 |
| O-3 | $184.47 | $737.88 | $257.90 | $1,031.60 |
| O-4 | $209.82 | $839.28 | $277.74 | $1,110.96 |
Worked example: an E-5 at the “over 6” step earns $4,110.00 a month. One drill = $4,110 ÷ 30 = $137.00. A four-drill weekend = $548.00. Over a year (48 drills) that’s $6,576, plus 15 days of annual training at full active-duty pay ($2,055) — roughly $8,631 in basic pay for the year. See our National Guard & Reserve BAH guide for the allowance side of reserve pay.
What Time in Service and Promotions Are Worth
Two things move your basic pay: crossing a years-of-service step (automatic) and promotion (worth far more). Follow an E-5 through the table:
| Service step | Monthly basic pay | Annual | Step increase |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 2 years | $3,342.90 | $40,114.80 | — |
| Over 2 | $3,598.20 | $43,178.40 | +$255.30 |
| Over 3 | $3,775.80 | $45,309.60 | +$177.60 |
| Over 4 | $3,946.80 | $47,361.60 | +$171.00 |
| Over 6 | $4,110.00 | $49,320.00 | +$163.20 |
| Over 8 | $4,299.90 | $51,598.80 | +$189.90 |
| Over 10 | $4,395.30 | $52,743.60 | +$95.40 |
| Over 12 | $4,421.70 | $53,060.40 | +$26.40 |
From day one to the top of the E-5 scale: +$1,078.80 a month, or $12,945.60 a year — and then E-5 stops growing entirely (an E-5 at 25 years earns exactly what an E-5 at 13 years earns).
Now compare that to what one promotion buys, at the same length of service:
| Promotion | Service step | Before | After | Monthly gain | Annual gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| E-4 → E-5 | Over 6 | $3,815.40 | $4,110.00 | +$294.60 | +$3,535.20 |
| E-5 → E-6 | Over 6 | $4,110.00 | $4,235.70 | +$125.70 | +$1,508.40 |
| E-6 → E-7 | Over 10 | $4,759.50 | $5,300.40 | +$540.90 | +$6,490.80 |
| E-7 → E-8 | Over 12 | $5,591.70 | $6,061.80 | +$470.10 | +$5,641.20 |
| E-8 → E-9 | Over 16 | $6,448.20 | $7,496.10 | +$1,047.90 | +$12,574.80 |
| O-2 → O-3 | Over 6 | $6,617.70 | $7,737.00 | +$1,119.30 | +$13,431.60 |
| O-3 → O-4 | Over 10 | $8,375.70 | $9,420.00 | +$1,044.30 | +$12,531.60 |
| O-4 → O-5 | Over 16 | $10,401.60 | $11,391.30 | +$989.70 | +$11,876.40 |
E-5 to E-6 is the smallest bump on the list ($125.70 a month) because the two grades overlap heavily at low service; E-6 to E-7 is more than four times larger. Officer promotions run bigger still — O-2 to O-3 alone is worth over $13,000 a year.
Total Compensation: Why Base Pay Isn’t Your Paycheck
Base pay understates what service is worth, because the biggest pieces are either tax-free or not cash at all. Take an E-6 at the “over 10” step ($4,759.50/month), married, stationed near Fayetteville, North Carolina:
| Component | Basis | Annual value |
|---|---|---|
| Basic pay | $4,759.50 × 12 | $57,114.00 |
| BAH (Fayetteville NC, with dependents) | $2,049 × 12 | $24,588.00 |
| BAS | $476.95 × 12 | $5,723.40 |
| Healthcare value (family) | Estimated saving vs civilian coverage | ~$15,000 |
| Estimated total value | ~$102,425 |
(Healthcare figure is an illustrative estimate; basic pay, BAH, and BAS are official 2026 figures. Check your own BAH rate for your duty station and dependent status.)
That’s over $102,000 of value from a $57,114 basic-pay line — and only the basic pay is subject to federal income tax. The military’s own concept for this is Regular Military Compensation (RMC): basic pay + BAH + BAS + the tax advantage of the tax-free allowances. When a civilian job offer looks bigger on paper, run the RMC math before deciding it actually is. You can run your own exact numbers on our military pay calculator and the 2027 BAH complete guide.
2027 Pay Raise Outlook — Proposed, Not Final
I’m including this because it’s the question everyone asks next, but please read the label: none of this is final.
The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget request proposes a tiered military pay raise effective January 1, 2027:
- 7% for E-5 and below
- 6% for E-6 through O-3
- 5% for O-4 and above
If Congress doesn’t act, the automatic formula (37 U.S.C. § 1009) would produce roughly a 3.6% raise for 2027 based on the Employment Cost Index — the Congressional Research Service puts the automatic figure at 3.6%. So the realistic range for 2027 is somewhere between the formula’s 3.6% and the proposal’s 5–7% tiers, depending on what the FY2027 NDAA actually contains.
For BAH, the FY2027 budget request assumed an average 4.2% increase — again, a proposal, not a rate. Real 2027 BAH rates get published by DTMO in mid-December 2026; our 2027 BAH increase guide tracks that story as it develops. I’ll update this article the moment official 2027 figures land.
2026 Military Pay Dates
Active duty is paid on the 1st and 15th of each month. When a payday falls on a weekend or federal holiday, the deposit posts on the prior business day — so you occasionally get paid early. Banks like USAA and Navy Federal often post deposits a day or two before the official DFAS date. (The full month-by-month 2026 pay-date calendar lives in our dedicated military pay dates calendar.)
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How much is the 2026 military pay raise?
3.8% across all pay grades and branches, effective January 1, 2026, authorized by the FY2026 NDAA.
2. When did the 2026 pay raise show up in paychecks?
Technically January 1, but most members saw it on the mid-January LES — the first January paycheck covers December work. Anything owed back to January 1 is paid retroactively.
3. How much does an E-5 make per month in 2026?
Between $3,342.90 (under 2 years) and $4,421.70 (over 12 years) in basic pay — plus tax-free BAH and BAS on top.
4. How much does an O-3 (Captain/Lieutenant) make in 2026?
Between $5,534.10 (under 2 years) and $9,004.20 (over 14+ years) in monthly basic pay.
5. Is military base pay the same in every branch?
Yes. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force, and Coast Guard all use the same DoD pay table — only the rank titles differ.
6. Is the pay chart the same as total military pay?
No. The chart shows basic pay only (taxable). Total compensation adds tax-free BAH and BAS, plus special pays, healthcare, retirement, and other benefits — often nearly doubling the chart number’s value.
7. What is the highest military basic pay in 2026?
$18,999.90 a month — the Executive Schedule Level II cap that applies to O-7 through O-10. O-6 and below are capped at $15,408.30.
8. How much do reservists make per drill weekend in 2026?
4/30ths of the equivalent monthly basic pay. For example, an E-5 at the “over 6” step earns $548.00 for a standard four-drill weekend.
9. Does the pay chart include BAH and BAS?
No — the chart is basic pay only. BAH depends on your duty-station ZIP code, grade, and dependent status; BAS is a flat $476.95 (enlisted) or $328.48 (officers) a month in 2026.
10. What is the 2027 military pay raise expected to be?
The FY2027 budget request proposes a tiered 7%/6%/5% raise (proposal only, under congressional review). The automatic ECI formula would yield about 3.6%. Official 2027 rates come with the FY2027 NDAA, typically finalized in December 2026.
Sources: DFAS 2026 basic pay tables (enlisted, warrant officer, commissioned officer, prior-enlisted officer); FY2026 NDAA (Public Law 119-60); 37 U.S.C. § 1009; DoD 2026 BAH announcement (via Military.com, Dec 11, 2025); DoD FMR Vol 7A Ch 25 (BAS); Congressional Research Service, “FY2027 NDAA: Military Basic Pay Raise Proposal.”
Last updated: October 18, 2026. Rates are the official 2026 figures; this article will be updated when official 2027 rates publish in mid-December 2026.
