2026 VA Disability Rates: Full Pay Chart (And Why Your Deposit Doesn't Match It)

2026 VA disability rates went up 2.8%, effective December 1, 2025. A veteran with no dependents gets $180.42/month at 10% and $3,938.58/month at 100%. Because VA pays a month behind, the new rate first showed up in the payment for December 2025. That one was due January 1, 2026, a federal holiday, so it moved to the prior business day: Wednesday, December 31, 2025.

If your deposit doesn’t match the chart below, you’re not being cheated and you’re probably not misreading it. There are six specific things VA does to a payment before it hits your account, and the full charts plus the diagnostic checklist are both below.

Key Takeaways

• The 2026 COLA is 2.8%, matching the Social Security increase announced by SSA on October 24, 2025. VA disability compensation is tied to the same figure by law.
• Rates took effect December 1, 2025 and run through November 30, 2026. The 2027 rates are announced in October 2026.
• Dependents only add money at 30% or higher. At 10% and 20% you get the same check whether you’re single or supporting five people.
• A veteran with no dependents got exactly 2.8% at every rating. A veteran with a spouse got somewhere between 2.669% and 2.811%, because VA rounds the dependent add-on to whole dollars at every rating below 100%.
• The most common reason a deposit is smaller than the chart is not an error. It’s either the 38 CFR 3.31 payment-start rule, a retired-pay waiver, or a recoupment.

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2026 VA Disability Pay Chart

All figures are the official rates published by the Department of Veterans Affairs, effective December 1, 2025.

10% and 20% ratings

Dependents do not increase these. VA states it plainly: if you have a 10% to 20% rating, “you won’t receive a higher rate even if you have a dependent spouse, child, or parent.” This catches people every year.

30% to 60% ratings

70% to 100% ratings

Added amounts (30% and up only)

Add these on top of the row above, for each dependent beyond what that row already covers.

One warning about this chart that VA doesn’t give you: don’t build your own combination by adding columns together. The rows are separate statutory rates, not components you stack. At 100%, “with spouse” is $219.59 above the alone rate and “with 1 child only” is $146.85 above it. Stack both onto the $3,938.58 alone rate and you get $4,305.02. The actual “with spouse and 1 child” rate is $4,318.99, or $13.97 higher. Find the row that matches your household, then use the added-amounts table only for dependents that row doesn’t already count.

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What the 2.8% Did to Your Check

Here is the year-over-year change for a veteran with no dependents, comparing the 2025 rates (effective December 1, 2024) to the current ones.

The part nobody tells you: most veterans with dependents did not get 2.8%

Run the same math with a spouse in the picture and the headline number stops holding. VA sets the base rate to the penny and applies the COLA exactly, but the dependent add-on at every rating below 100% is a whole-dollar figure. Rounding takes a bite.

A married veteran at 30% got a 2.669% raise, not 2.8%. A married veteran at 80% got 2.811%. At 100% the add-on carries cents, so it tracks the COLA exactly.

The dollar amounts are small. The reason to know this is diagnostic: if you multiplied last year’s payment by 1.028 and the answer is a few dollars off from your deposit, that gap is rounding, not an error, and there’s nothing to appeal.

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Your Deposit Doesn’t Match the Chart. Here’s Why.

Now the part most rate pages skip. VA takes the chart figure and runs it through a series of adjustments before it reaches your bank. Work down this list in order. The first one that describes your situation is almost certainly your answer.

The one that confuses the most people: 38 CFR 3.31

This regulation is short and it explains more angry phone calls to VA than anything else on the list. Payment of monetary benefits based on an original, supplemental, or increased award “may not be made for any period prior to the first day of the calendar month following the month in which the award became effective.”

In plain terms: your effective date determines what you’re owed. It does not determine when money starts. If your effective date is March 14, your entitlement runs from March, but the first month VA will actually pay is April, and that April money arrives at the beginning of May because VA pays in arrears.

So a veteran with a March effective date, staring at an empty account in April, has not been shorted. They’re looking at the gap the regulation creates.

Retired pay: the reason a 60% rating sometimes adds nothing

If you’re a military retiree, you generally can’t collect retired pay and VA disability compensation at the same time. You waive retired pay dollar-for-dollar to take the VA money. Because VA compensation is tax-free and retired pay isn’t, the waiver is usually still worth it, but your total deposit doesn’t grow by the full chart amount.

Concurrent Retirement and Disability Pay (CRDP) restores the offset, and the threshold is specific: a service-connected disability rated by VA at not less than 50 percent. Chapter 61 medical retirees must also have 20 or more years of creditable service. CRDP is largely automatic, so most people who qualify never file anything. The exceptions matter, though: Reserve and Guard members retired under Chapter 61 before reaching eligibility age need their branch to contact DFAS, and anyone who believes they qualify but isn’t being paid CRDP has to submit DD Form 827. Combat-Related Special Compensation (CRSC) is the separate program for combat-connected conditions, and that one always requires an application.

This is why a retiree who goes from 40% to 50% sometimes sees a much bigger jump than the $337.06/month the chart predicts. Crossing 50% didn’t just raise the rate. It turned on CRDP.

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Worked Example: Reading an Award Letter Line by Line

The figures below are built from VA’s published 2026 rates to show the arithmetic. They are not drawn from a specific veteran’s file.

A married veteran with two children under 18 is rated 70%. What should the deposit be?

1. Start with the matching row, not the alone row. “With spouse and 1 child” at 70% is $2,074.45. Do not start at $1,808.45 and add pieces.
2. Add the second child. That row covers one child, so the second uses the added-amounts table: +$76.
3. Running total: $2,150.45.
4. Check for a school-age child. If the older child turns 18 and enrolls full time, VA Form 21-674 moves them to the school rate. If nobody files that form, the child drops off the award entirely and the payment falls by $76 with no warning letter that reads like a reduction.
5. Subtract anything on the offset list above. If this veteran took separation pay at discharge, recoupment applies until the after-tax amount is repaid, and the deposit could be far lower than $2,150.45 for years.

The step people miss is #1. Building the number by stacking add-ons onto the “veteran alone” rate produces a figure that’s close enough to look right and wrong enough to send someone into an appeal they don’t need.

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How to Fix the Two Problems Worth Fixing

Most items on the diagnostic list are working as designed. Two are worth your time.

Dependents that were never added. This is the most common recoverable money on the list. If you have a 30% or higher rating and a spouse, a child under 18, a child 18 to 23 in school, or a dependent parent, and they aren’t on your award, you’re being underpaid every month. File VA Form 21-686c (add 21-674 for a student, or 21P-509 for a parent). File it online: VA treats the day you start the online application as the date it received your claim, which protects your back pay while you gather documents.

The deadline that matters is one year. If VA receives your evidence within one year of the marriage, birth, or adoption, back pay can reach the date of that event. Past a year, you’re generally limited to the date VA received the claim. VA says it starts paying within two weeks of approving the dependency claim.

An overpayment you didn’t create. If the Debt Management Center is withholding part of your check for a debt caused by VA’s own processing delay, you can request a waiver rather than a repayment plan. Do it fast. After 120 days of non-payment, the debt goes to the Treasury, which can then reach your tax refund and other federal benefits.