Class 2 National Insurance ends April 6. You have three weeks.

If you've been living and working in the UK and paying voluntary National Insurance contributions from abroad to build your UK state pension — this is a deadline you can't miss.

From April 6, the cheap route is gone.

Right now, overseas workers can maintain their UK state pension record by paying voluntary Class 2 National Insurance contributions. It costs £182 a year. That's it. For that, you stay on track toward a full UK state pension — worth £241.30 per week from April 2026, about £12,500 a year.

From April 6, Class 2 is abolished for overseas workers. The only option becomes Class 3, which costs £907 a year — five times more. And a new condition: you now need at least 10 years of UK contributions or residence to qualify to pay voluntarily at all. Previously it was 3 years.

What does that mean in practice?

If you worked in the UK for, say, 7 years and then moved — you can still fill gaps before April 6 using the cheap Class 2 rate. After April 6, you may no longer qualify to contribute at all. HMRC says it will write to affected people from July.That's after the deadline has already passed.

To get any UK state pension, you need a minimum of 10 qualifying years. To get the full amount, you need 35. Every year you're missing is a gap that costs money to fill — and from April, filling it gets five times more expensive.

Go to GOV.UK, search "Check your State Pension forecast," and look at your National Insurance record before April 5. One missing year, filled now, can add over £342 a year to your pension for life. Over 20 years of retirement, that's nearly £7,000 from a £182 payment made this week.