Belief in God in Great Britain 2019-2026

Share of people who believe in God in Great Britain from August 2019 to May 2026

Great Britain has long been regarded as one of the most secular societies in the Western world, with belief in God in steady decline for decades, but recent polling suggests an unexpected turn. The share of people in Great Britain who say they believe in God rose from around 27% in August 2019 to about 34-35% by 2026, an increase of some eight percentage points overall that has surprised many observers and challenged the long-held assumption that British religiosity could only ever continue its decline. After holding flat in the mid-20s from 2019 through 2022 with no clear direction, belief climbed notably in 2023 and 2024 before surging to around 35% by early 2025, a pattern that contrasts with the steady decline shown in our share of Catholics in Germany analysis. The wider continental picture of faith is explored in our religion in Europe analysis.

The most striking feature of this rise is that it has been led by young adults, the very group long assumed to be leading and driving Britain's secularisation. Belief in God among 18-to-24-year-olds reportedly rose from about 16% in 2021 to 37% by 2025, more than doubling in just four years and reversing the usual pattern in which older people are the most religious. This is precisely the opposite of what decades of secularisation theory would predict, which is why it has attracted so much attention from researchers and commentators alike. This generational shift, together with rising church attendance among the young, has prompted talk of a "quiet revival" in British religious life, though researchers urge caution in interpreting the figures. Whether this represents a genuine spiritual reawakening or a quirk of how the surveys are conducted remains hotly debated among those who study religion. The German church decline that contrasts with this is covered in our members of the Evangelical Church in Germany analysis.

This article traces the share of Britons who believe in God from August 2019 to May 2026, examining the apparent reversal of the secular trend, the dramatic youth surge, the breakdown by age, and the possible reasons behind the change. It also looks at the important caveats around the data, since much of it comes from online opt-in polling with known limitations, and at how belief in God fits into Britain's broader, complex religious landscape. The global context of faith is discussed in our world religions analysis.

Belief in God in Great Britain by Survey Wave

The table tracks the share of Britons believing in God across the survey waves from August 2019 to May 2026. The figures held steady in the mid-to-high 20s through 2019 to 2022, then began climbing: 29% by early 2023, 30% by January 2024, and a notable jump to 35% by January 2025, before settling around 34% in the latest estimate for 2026. The upward path is unmistakable across the second half of the period. This represents a clear break from the long-running secular trend, even allowing for the margin of error in survey data, and stands in contrast to the marriage patterns in our Catholic weddings in Germany by partner religion analysis. These percentages come from YouGov's tracker polling for Great Britain. The broader population context is in our world population analysis.

The Belief Trend From 2019 to 2026

The trend line shows two distinct phases. From August 2019 through to early 2022, belief in God was essentially flat, drifting between 26% and 28% with no clear direction, consistent with the long-standing picture of Britain as a stable, secular society in which religion played an ever-diminishing role. Nothing in this early part of the series hinted at the change that was to come. Then, from late 2022 and into 2023, the line begins to climb, gently at first and then more steeply, reaching its recent peak of 35% in January 2025. This upward turn, after years of stagnation or gentle decline, is what has drawn so much attention, since it runs counter to the assumption that British religiosity could only keep falling. The German contrast is in our Evangelical Church members in Germany analysis, referenced earlier.

The Turning Point Around 2023

The turning point appears to have come around 2022 to 2023, when the long-flat figures began to rise in earnest. The increase from 28% in 2022 to 29% in early 2023 might have been dismissed as noise, but the continued climb to 30% in 2024 and the sharp jump to 35% in early 2025 established a clear upward trend that is harder to explain away as mere statistical fluctuation. A single year's rise could be chance, but a sustained multi-year climb demands a more substantial explanation.

The 2025 figure in particular represents the highest level of belief in God recorded in the recent series, marking a genuine departure from the pattern of the previous decade. For a country so often held up as a textbook case of advanced secularisation, even a modest reversal of this kind is striking and worthy of close attention. Whether this proves to be a lasting shift or a temporary blip remains easily one of the most interesting open questions in the study of British religion today. Only several more years of consistent data will reveal whether 2025 marked the start of a genuine trend or simply an unusual peak.

The Striking Surge Among Young Adults

The single most remarkable element of the data is the dramatic rise in belief in God among young adults, the group long assumed to be leading Britain's march towards secularism. According to YouGov tracking, the share of 18-to-24-year-olds who say they believe there is a God or gods rose from just 16% in August 2021 to 37% by August 2025, more than doubling in only four years. Over the same period, the proportion of young adults describing themselves as non-believers fell from 49% to 42%, confirming a genuine shift in the beliefs of the youngest cohort rather than a simple movement between undecided categories. Both ends of the spectrum moved in the same direction, towards belief and away from outright non-belief.

This youth surge is genuinely extraordinary because it inverts one of the most reliable patterns in the sociology of religion, in which each younger generation tends to be less religious than the one before it. If the figures hold, Britain's youngest adults would be among its most likely to believe in God, a reversal that has prompted intense debate about what is driving it. Such a finding would overturn assumptions that have guided the sociology of religion for generations, which is why it is being scrutinised so closely. Some researchers link it to rising immigration from more religious parts of the world, others to a search for meaning and community among a generation facing economic and social uncertainty, and still others to a backlash against an aggressively secular culture. The truth likely involves a mix of these explanations, and disentangling them is far from straightforward given the limitations of the available data. This places Britain within a wider, shifting global landscape of faith and belief.

Belief in God by Age Group

The breakdown by age shows just how concentrated the rise has been among the young. While belief among 18-to-24-year-olds more than doubled from 16% to 37% between 2021 and 2025, the increase among 25-to-49-year-olds was much more modest, rising from around 21% to 25% over the same period. Older age groups, who have traditionally been the most likely to believe in God, showed more stable figures, meaning the overall national rise was driven disproportionately by the youngest adults. This concentration among the young is precisely what makes the trend so notable, since it cannot be explained simply by an ageing, more religious population gradually coming to dominate the figures. The change is being driven by the young becoming more religious, not merely by older believers making up a larger share. The demographic patterns are in our US population by sex and age analysis.

The Decline of the Non-Believers

The mirror image of rising belief in God is the shrinking share of confirmed non-believers. The proportion of Britons who say they do not believe in any God or higher power fell from around 41% in 2019 to about 32-33% by 2025, a meaningful decline over the period. This shift suggests that the rise in belief is not merely people moving from "don't know" into belief, but a genuine reduction in committed non-belief, which makes the trend more significant and harder to dismiss. A fall in confirmed atheism is a more meaningful signal than a simple reshuffling of the undecided. The categories in between, such as those who believe in "a higher spiritual power" but not a God, have remained relatively stable throughout the period, neither growing nor shrinking much. This suggests the action has been concentrated at the two ends of the belief spectrum rather than in the middle.

It is worth noting that British belief remains a complex, hybrid picture rather than a simple split between believers and atheists. Alongside the roughly third who believe in God and the third who reject any higher power, a substantial group of around a fifth believe in some kind of spiritual power without calling it God, and others are simply unsure. Even among self-identified Christians, only just over half say they believe in God in the conventional sense, with many holding vaguer spiritual beliefs, a complexity also seen in our religious change in Spain analysis. This complexity means the headline "belief in God" figure captures only one part of a rich and varied national picture of faith and doubt. Britain is neither straightforwardly religious nor straightforwardly secular, but rather a society in which a wide spectrum of beliefs, half-beliefs, and uncertainties coexist.

Why Is Belief in God Rising?

The reasons behind the apparent rise in belief in God, especially among the young, are the subject of considerable debate, and no single explanation has emerged as definitive. One leading factor is immigration: Britain has seen substantial immigration in recent years from regions of the world that are far more religious than the native population, which adds believers to the overall total and is particularly visible among younger age groups. This demographic effect alone could account for a meaningful part of the rise, since new arrivals from more religious societies add believers to the totals without any change in the beliefs of the existing population, much as recorded in our population of Finland by religious community analysis.

Beyond immigration, many commentators point to a search for meaning and community among a younger generation that has faced the pandemic, economic insecurity, social isolation, and a pervasive sense of anxiety amplified by social media. For some young people, religion may offer a sense of structure, purpose, and belonging that secular culture has failed to provide in an age of fragmentation and uncertainty. Faith communities can supply social connection and a framework of meaning that many young adults find lacking elsewhere in modern life. Others suggest a backlash against an aggressively secular and materialist culture, or simply a renewed openness to spirituality after decades in which religion was seen as unfashionable. Rising church attendance among the young, documented separately, lends some support to the idea of a genuine shift rather than a mere statistical artefact, since attending a service is a far more demanding commitment than answering a survey. When behaviour changes alongside stated belief, the case for a real shift grows stronger.

It is likely that several of these factors are working together rather than any one acting alone, combining to produce the aggregate rise visible in the headline figures. No single explanation captures the full picture, and the relative weight of each remains a matter of active research. Immigration adds believers to the population, while social and cultural shifts may be changing the attitudes of young Britons born in the country, and the two effects reinforce one another in the aggregate figures. What is clear is that the simple narrative of inexorable secular decline no longer fits the recent data, even if the deeper causes remain contested. Disentangling the demographic effect of immigration from any genuine change in belief among the native-born population is one of the key challenges for researchers trying to make sense of the trend.

Rising Church Attendance Among the Young

Supporting the picture of a possible religious revival is separate evidence of rising church attendance, particularly among young people. Survey data suggests that the share of British adults attending a church service at least once a month rose from around 8% in 2018 to about 12% in 2024, an increase of more than half over just six years. This translates into millions of additional monthly worshippers, a meaningful change in the religious behaviour of the population. Among 18-to-24-year-olds specifically, monthly church attendance reportedly rose from just 4% in 2018 to around 16% in 2024, a striking fourfold increase that echoes the rise in belief in God among the same age group.

This rise in attendance, dubbed the "Quiet Revival" by some researchers, is significant because actually going to church is a much stronger commitment than simply ticking a box in a survey, making it harder to dismiss as a mere change in how people answer questions. Behaviour is generally a more reliable indicator than stated opinion, so the attendance data carries particular weight. The increase has been particularly pronounced within Catholicism among young adults, echoing patterns in our Finland religious community data and the German church tax trends in our Catholic Church tax revenue in Germany analysis. Together with the belief figures, the attendance data strengthens the case that something real is happening in British religious life, even if its scale and durability remain uncertain. The broader economic and social backdrop is in our global economy analysis.

Important Caveats About the Data

For all the excitement about a possible religious revival, it is essential to treat these figures with caution, as several respected researchers have warned. Much of the headline data comes from online opt-in polls rather than rigorous probability-based surveys, and such polls can be unrepresentative in ways that are hard to correct, potentially exaggerating trends. The Pew Research Center and others have specifically cautioned that some of the surveys showing a Christian revival among young Britons were commissioned by faith-based organisations and may not reflect the wider population accurately. When a survey is funded by a group with an interest in the result, its findings deserve extra scrutiny before being taken at face value.

There is also the perennial difficulty that survey answers about belief depend heavily on exactly how questions are worded, and small differences in phrasing can produce quite different results between otherwise similar polls. The very concept of "belief in God" means different things to different people, which complicates any precise measurement and makes cross-survey comparison hazardous. One person's firm belief and another's vague sense of something greater may both be captured by the same tick-box, blurring what the headline number really represents.

The category "believe in God" sits alongside softer options like "believe in a higher power", and people may move between these depending on the precise phrasing. The makeup of global faith is set out in our countries with the largest Muslim population analysis. None of this means the rise is illusory, but it does mean the precise figures should be treated as indicative rather than definitive, and the longer-term picture will only become clear with more years of consistent, high-quality data from rigorous, probability-based surveys. Until then, a degree of healthy scepticism is warranted alongside genuine interest in the trend. Prudent observers therefore speak of a possible or apparent revival rather than a confirmed one, reserving judgement until more robust evidence accumulates. The honest position is that something appears to be changing in British religious life, but its true scale and durability cannot yet be stated with confidence.

Belief in God in Britain - Key Statistics

Frequently Asked Questions - Belief in God in Britain