401(k) Contribution Limits for 2026: Every Number, Sourced
One IRS announcement sets every retirement account limit for the year. Here are the 2026 numbers as published, what they mean per month, and exactly what happens if you go over.
Every November the IRS announces the retirement plan limits for the following year, indexed to inflation under the tax code. For 2026 the numbers — released in IR-2025-111 — moved again, and they are worth knowing precisely, because "contribute as much as you can" is a lot more actionable once "much" has a number.
Three reading rules before the table:
- Limits are per person, not per account. Two 401(k)s in one year share one deferral cap.
- Limits are not targets. The cap is a ceiling, not a recommendation — the right number is what your budget and match justify.
- Limits change annually. Everything below is 2026-specific; next year's page may read differently.
- The IRA catch-up is approximate. Indexed to CPI under SECURE 2.0, it is the one 2026 number the IRS publishes as an estimate.
The 2026 limits at a glance
These are the 2026 federal caps, read straight from the constants the 401(k) calculator runs on:
| Limit | 2026 amount | Who it applies to |
|---|---|---|
| 401(k)/403(b)/most 457/TSP elective deferral | $24,500 | Everyone under 50 with workplace plan access |
| Age-50 catch-up (workplace plans) | $8,000 | Participants age 50 and older, on top of the deferral cap |
| Ages 60–63 catch-up (workplace plans) | $11,250 | SECURE 2.0 special window; at 64 the catch-up drops back to $8,000 |
| IRA annual contribution | $7,500 | Anyone with eligible compensation; Roth eligibility phases out by income |
| IRA age-50 catch-up | ≈ $1,100 | Indexed to CPI under SECURE 2.0, so the IRS publishes it as an approximate figure |
One nuance hides in the catch-up rows: the ages-60-to-63 window is a SECURE 2.0 option, not a mandate — a plan may keep the standard age-50 amount for everyone, and even plans that adopt it drop you back to $8,000 the year you turn 64. Your plan document, not your birthday alone, determines which row you actually get.
What the cap means per month — and how to actually hit it
Annual limits are how the IRS writes them; budgets run monthly. The arithmetic is trivial but worth seeing:
monthly deferral to max out = annual limit ÷ 12| Age in 2026 | Max annual deferral | Monthly equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Under 50 | $24,500 | $2,041.67/mo |
| 50–59 or 64+ | $32,500 | $2,708.33/mo |
| 60–63 | $35,750 | $2,979.17/mo |
A 35-year-old maxing out defers $2,041.67 per month. That is the whole calculation — the hard part is usually finding the room in a household budget, which is where a raise-to-contribution habit helps: each pay increase, redirect half to the plan before you feel it.
Payroll mechanics matter too. Most plans accept a percentage or a flat dollar amount per paycheck; spread across 26 biweekly checks, $24,500 is about $942.31 per check. Some plans also let you front-load deferrals early in the year — which gets money invested sooner, but can pause your match once deferrals stop. Check whether your employer trues up the match at year-end before racing to the cap.
- Find your match formula first. Get the full match before anything else — it is the only guaranteed, instant return in the system.
- Automate the increase. Set deferrals to auto-escalate with each raise; manual good intentions lose to payroll inertia every year.
- Check the plan's true-up policy. If you front-load contributions, confirm the employer reconciles the match at year-end.
- Track the combined total if you change jobs. The deferral limit is per person across all plans in a year.
- Re-verify every November. New limits arrive with the IRS fall announcement; adjust your percentage once, then forget it.
What maxing out actually becomes
Limits are inputs, not outcomes. Run the 2026 maximum through a plain growth projection — $24,500 a year for 25 years at a 7% net return, no starting balance, no employer money:
| Year | You contributed (cum.) | Balance at year-end |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $24,500 | $24,500 |
| 5 | $122,500 | $140,893 |
| 10 | $245,000 | $338,503 |
| 15 | $367,500 | $615,661 |
| 20 | $490,000 | $1,004,390 |
| 25 | $612,500 | $1,549,601 |
After 25 years the balance stands at $1,549,601 on $612,500 of your own contributions — growth supplies the rest. Run the identical contributions inside a plan charging 0.4% in fund fees instead of 0.04%, and the same projection lands at $1,463,434: a fee difference smaller than most people's cable bill, worth $86,168 over the period. Two caveats belong next to that table: 7% is an assumption, not a forecast — rerun the projection at 5% or 6% and watch the ending balance bend — and the table ignores employer money entirely, which flatters nobody's real plan. Add a match on top and the same schedule moves again; that is exactly what the 401(k) calculator projects with your real salary and match formula.
Employer money doesn't count against your cap
The $24,500 deferral limit is your contributions only. Matching and profit-sharing contributions are counted under a separate, much higher overall plan limit, so a generous match never eats your personal room. Match formulas themselves vary widely — dollar-for-dollar on the first 4% at one employer, 50 cents on the dollar up to 6% at another — so "I get a 4% match" can mean very different checks. Practically: always contribute at least enough to capture the full match before directing anything to an IRA — declining a match is turning down part of your compensation.
One boundary case worth knowing: if you work for two unrelated employers with separate plans, each plan's match is independent — but your deferral cap is still shared. Optimizing the match at both jobs while staying under the personal limit is legal and occasionally lucrative.
IRA limits are separate — use both if you can
The IRA cap is an entirely different bucket. In 2026 that's $7,500 a year ($625.00/month), or $8,600 with the 50+ catch-up. A common annual rhythm: max the workplace plan up to the match, fund an IRA, then return to the workplace plan for anything left over. Two income tests govern the IRA side — deductibility of traditional contributions if you or a spouse are covered by a workplace plan, and eligibility to contribute to a Roth at all — and the IRS updates both phase-out ranges annually. Check the IRA pages linked below before assuming your IRA door is open or closed.
One ordering note: if the workplace plan is expensive (high fees, weak fund menu), funding the IRA first can be rational even beyond the match math — the match argument wins at every quality level, but the "which bucket next" question legitimately depends on costs.
The mega backdoor Roth, in one paragraph
Some plans (a minority — check your Summary Plan Description) allow after-tax employee contributions beyond the $24,500 deferral, and either in-plan Roth conversion or in-service withdrawals of those after-tax dollars. The result: money that entered as after-tax contributions can be converted to Roth, where growth becomes tax-free. It is legal, plan-dependent, and worth doing only after the ordinary buckets are full. Note it is unrelated to the catch-up limits above.
One distinction worth keeping straight: the mega backdoor is not the backdoor Roth IRA. The backdoor Roth is a two-step contribute-and-convert strategy for people whose income exceeds Roth IRA eligibility, and it has its own pro-rata wrinkle if you hold pre-tax IRA money. The mega backdoor uses your employer plan's after-tax bucket and exists only if the plan document allows it — different mechanism, different constraints, occasionally both useful in the same year.
What happens if you over-contribute
Excess deferrals are not a freebie and not instantly catastrophic — but they compound into a mess if ignored. Under the IRS rules, an excess left in the plan is hit with a 6% excise tax for each year it remains, and it is also taxed again when distributed. The clean fix: withdraw the excess plus its earnings by the tax-filing deadline (including extensions) for the contribution year. The most common way excess deferrals happen is a mid-year job change — each plan's payroll stops at the limit independently, but the deferral limit is per person, not per plan — and auto-escalation features that raise your percentage late in the year can push you over too. If two plans are in play in one year, track the combined total yourself: payroll departments only watch their own plan.
The mistakes that trigger the 6% excise are consistently boring: assuming the two plans coordinate (they don't), forgetting that a side-business solo 401(k) shares the same personal cap, and losing track of after-tax versus Roth designations when moving money between providers. None of them require bad intentions — just unmerged records.
Sources and verification
These numbers come from one primary source, and the IRS pages below are the authority if anything here ever disagrees with them:
Limits drift most years — they are indexed to official cost-of-living figures, and the IRS announcement typically lands in the fall for the following year. Treat any page quoting retirement limits, this one included, as current only for the year on its label, and re-verify each November before planning around a new number.
- IRS News Release IR-2025-111 — 2026 retirement plan contribution limits: irs.gov/newsroom
- IRS Retirement Topics — 401(k) and profit-sharing plan contribution limits: irs.gov/retirement-plans
- IRS Retirement Topics — IRA contribution limits: irs.gov/retirement-plans
Ready to plug the 2026 cap into your own numbers? The 401(k) calculator runs the year-by-year projection with your salary, match, and fees.