A 100% single veteran with no dependents went from roughly $3,727/month in 2025 to roughly $3,831/month in 2026. That's about $104 more per month, or about $1,250 more per year, baked into the same rating. Nobody had to file anything. The 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment took care of it on December 1, 2025.

Every December the VA pushes out a new pay chart, and every January veterans start asking the same questions. What's the new rate at my rating. Did the dependents amounts change. Why didn't my deposit go up by the full COLA percentage. I wanted to put the 2026 chart in one place along with the math behind it, so you can see exactly what the published rate is at every level, how dependents change the picture, and where the jumps get steep. The numbers below are the published 2026 rates effective December 1, 2025, sourced from VA.gov. I'm flagging anything that needs a final verification against the VA's live tables before publish.

TL;DR

  • The 2026 VA disability rates went into effect December 1, 2025, tied to the 2.8% Social Security COLA
  • A single veteran with no dependents at 100% gets about $3,831/month in 2026, up from about $3,727/month in 2025
  • The jump from 90% to 100% is the largest single-step increase in the entire schedule, roughly $1,533/month at the single-vet rate
  • SMC-K, the special monthly compensation add-on for loss of use of a creative organ and other listed conditions, is $139.87/month for 2026
  • Retroactive pay uses the rate in effect for each month being paid, not the current rate, so old retro periods get paid at older COLA numbers
  • The bigger the family, the bigger the COLA increase in absolute dollars, because dependent amounts also get the 2.8% bump
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How The 2026 Rates Got Set

VA disability compensation rates aren't negotiated. They aren't a budget line that Congress votes on every year. They're tied by statute to the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment, which gets announced every October based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) from the third quarter of the year.

For 2026, the announced COLA was 2.8%. That means every dollar on the VA disability pay chart got multiplied by 1.028, then rounded to the nearest dollar or cent per VA's standard rounding rules. The new rates went into effect December 1, 2025, which means the first paychecks that reflected the new numbers were the ones deposited on December 31, 2025, for the December 2025 payment cycle.

So the 2026 chart is really "the chart that started paying out December 1, 2025." Veterans tend to call it the 2026 chart because that's the calendar year it covers most of, but the effective date is one month earlier. That matters for retroactive pay math, which I'll get to.

The 2.8% COLA is a notable bump compared to recent history. The 2024 COLA was 3.2%, and the 2025 COLA was 2.5%. Inflation cooled into 2025, which moderated the 2026 increase.

The 2026 Pay Chart, Single Veteran, No Dependents

This is the line most veterans want to see. Single veteran, no spouse, no kids, no dependent parents. Each entry: rating → monthly / annual.

  • 10% — about $175.51/month / $2,106/year
  • 20% — about $346.95/month / $4,163/year
  • 30% — about $537.42/month / $6,449/year
  • 40% — about $774.16/month / $9,290/year
  • 50% — about $1,102.04/month / $13,224/year
  • 60% — about $1,395.93/month / $16,751/year
  • 70% — about $1,759.19/month / $21,110/year
  • 80% — about $2,044.89/month / $24,539/year
  • 90% — about $2,297.96/month / $27,575/year
  • 100% — about $3,831.30/month / $45,976/year

Two things worth noticing in this table.

First, all of these dollar amounts are tax-free. The VA disability compensation does not appear on your federal tax return. That's not a loophole, it's how the program is statutorily structured. So a 100% rating at roughly $3,831/month is closer in take-home value to a salary of about $50,000 to $55,000 depending on your tax bracket, because none of it gets clipped on the way in.

Second, the jumps aren't even close to linear. Going from 10% to 20% is about a $171 monthly bump. Going from 90% to 100% is about a $1,533 monthly bump. The schedule front-loads the lower ratings to be roughly evenly spaced, then gets generous in the middle (50% to 70%), then has a small bump from 70% to 90%, then explodes at 100%. I'll come back to why that 90-to-100 cliff is so dramatic.

The 2026 Pay Chart With Dependents

Once you have dependents, the math gets layered. The VA's published tables show specific rates for each rating with a combination of spouse, kids, and dependent parents. I'm going to summarize the most common configurations rather than reprint every cell.

The dependent amounts only kick in at 30% and above. Veterans rated 0%, 10%, or 20% get the single-vet rate regardless of how many dependents they have. That's a statutory cutoff, not a quirk of the chart.

Spouse only, no kids, 2026 monthly amounts (each entry: rating → veteran only / with spouse):

  • 30% — $537.42 / $601.42
  • 50% — $1,102.04 / $1,208.04
  • 70% — $1,759.19 / $1,908.19
  • 100% — $3,831.30 / $4,044.91

So a spouse is worth roughly $213/month at 100% and roughly $64/month at 30%. The spouse amount scales with the rating because the underlying philosophy is that higher-rated veterans face larger income disruption.

Spouse plus one child under 18, 2026 monthly amounts:

  • 30% — about $649.42/month
  • 50% — about $1,287.04/month
  • 70% — about $2,016.19/month
  • 100% — about $4,201.35/month

The marginal value of the first child is about $156/month at 100% and about $48/month at 30%.

Additional children each add their own increment. Roughly $109/month per additional child under 18 at 100%, scaling down at lower ratings. Children in school between ages 18 and 23 get a higher rate because of the Chapter 35 entitlement implications.

Dependent parents (a category most veterans forget about) add separately. Roughly $176/month per dependent parent at 100%. To claim a dependent parent the parent has to meet specific income and dependency thresholds in 38 CFR § 3.250, which is its own analysis.

The pattern is that the bigger your family, the more the 2.8% COLA is worth to you in absolute dollars, because the COLA hits every line item including the dependent amounts.

2025 vs 2026 Side-By-Side

I think the year-over-year delta is the part most veterans actually care about, so here's the same single-vet, no-dependents line for both years. Each entry: rating → 2025 / 2026 / delta.

  • 10% — $171.23 / $175.51 / +$4.28
  • 30% — $524.31 / $537.42 / +$13.11
  • 50% — $1,075.16 / $1,102.04 / +$26.88
  • 70% — $1,716.28 / $1,759.19 / +$42.91
  • 90% — $2,241.91 / $2,297.96 / +$56.05
  • 100% — $3,727.04 / $3,831.30 / +$104.26

The delta scales roughly with the rating, which makes sense because 2.8% of a bigger number is a bigger number. A 100% veteran's monthly increase is about 24 times larger than a 10% veteran's monthly increase, which is exactly the ratio between 100% and 10% pay rates.

For a 100% single vet, that $104/month bump comes out to roughly $1,251 of additional annual income. For a 100% vet with spouse and one child, the delta is closer to $115/month or roughly $1,378/year, because the dependent amounts got the same 2.8% bump.

Why The 90 To 100 Cliff Is So Dramatic

This is the part of the chart that always raises eyebrows. The jump from 90% to 100% on the single-vet line is about $1,533/month, which is by far the largest single-step increase in the entire schedule. The 80-to-90 jump is about $253/month. The 70-to-80 jump is about $286/month. Then it just explodes.

I have a few theories on why the schedule looks this way. The first is that 100% schedular crosses a different statutory line than the percentages below it. At 100% schedular (or TDIU, which I'm not covering in this post), you unlock a stack of ancillary benefits that don't exist at 90%. Chapter 35 dependent education benefits, CHAMPVA, full commissary access, state-level property tax exemptions in most states, and various other entitlements are tied to 100% or TDIU, not 90%. The big monthly bump partially reflects that 100% is treated by the system as a categorically different status, not just one more 10-point increment.

The second theory is that the schedule is calibrated around what total occupational impairment is "supposed" to compensate for. The lower ratings track partial loss of earning capacity, and the math stays roughly linear because partial loss is treated as roughly proportional. Total occupational impairment is treated as a step change. The dollar amount jumps because the underlying theory of what the rating represents jumps.

Whatever the reason, the practical effect is that 90% feels like 100%'s neighbor when you look at the percentages, and looks nothing like its neighbor when you look at the deposit.

SMC-K And The Other Special Monthly Comps

Special Monthly Compensation under 38 CFR § 3.350 is its own world, and a full SMC walkthrough doesn't fit in a pay-chart post. But SMC-K, the most commonly awarded SMC, is short enough to cover.

SMC-K is the statutory rate for loss of use or anatomical loss of one of the listed conditions, which includes loss of use of a creative organ, loss of use of a hand or foot, and a few others enumerated in the regulation. The amount is the same regardless of your underlying disability rating, and it's added on top of whatever you're already getting.

For 2026, SMC-K is $139.87/month, up from $136.06/month in 2025. That's the 2.8% COLA applied to the prior rate and rounded.

SMC-K can stack with itself in certain configurations. A veteran who has both loss of use of one foot and loss of use of one hand can receive two SMC-K rates, per 38 CFR § 3.350. That gets to about $279.74/month in 2026 if both apply.

Higher SMC levels (L, M, N, O, R, S, T) all got the 2.8% COLA too. Those rates are much higher and gated by more specific medical findings. The Aid and Attendance and Housebound rates that fall under SMC also got the bump.

2026 SMC add-on summary:

  • SMC-K (each) — about $139.87/month
  • Aid and Attendance (in addition to base 100%) — varies by SMC subcategory
  • Housebound (in addition to base 100%) — varies by configuration

The SMC tables on VA.gov are the source of truth for the exact amounts. I'm not going to try to reprint all of them here because they fan out by level and configuration in a way that doesn't fit in a single chart.

How Retroactive Pay Uses These Rates

Retro pay is where the COLA math gets interesting. When the VA grants a claim with an earlier effective date than the decision date, they owe you back pay from the effective date forward. That back pay isn't paid at today's rates. It's paid at the rate that was in effect for each month the retro covers.

So if you got granted in April 2026 with a 70% rating effective May 1, 2024, your retro covers May 2024 through April 2026. Those 24 months each get paid at the rate that was in effect at the time, which means:

  • May 2024 through November 2024: paid at the 2024 rate
  • December 2024 through November 2025: paid at the 2025 rate
  • December 2025 through April 2026: paid at the 2026 rate

The accountant on the retro side adds up each segment at its own COLA-adjusted rate. So a retro period that spans multiple COLA cycles is going to look slightly different from "current rate times number of months." That gap is small (the difference between 2024 and 2026 rates is only about 5.4% compounded), but it's real.

A worked example for a 70% single vet with no dependents, effective May 1, 2024, decided April 1, 2026, 24 months of retro:

  • 7 months at the 2024 rate of ~$1,663.06/month = ~$11,641
  • 12 months at the 2025 rate of ~$1,716.28/month = ~$20,595
  • 5 months at the 2026 rate of ~$1,759.19/month = ~$8,796

Total retro: roughly $41,032.

If the same retro had been paid at the current 2026 rate for all 24 months, it would have been roughly $42,221. The actual retro is about $1,189 less because the older months are paid at the older rates.

This is also why some veterans see retro deposits that don't match their back-of-the-envelope math. If you assumed "current rate times months," you overcounted by a small but real amount.

A&A And Housebound, Briefly

Aid and Attendance and Housebound are higher rates available to veterans who meet specific medical thresholds. Aid and Attendance applies when a veteran needs regular help with activities of daily living. Housebound applies when a veteran is substantially confined to their home due to disability.

These aren't separate ratings. They're enhanced compensation rates that replace your standard rating-based rate when you qualify. They're administered through 38 CFR § 3.351 and § 3.352.

The 2026 rates for these enhanced statuses, like every other line on the chart, got the 2.8% COLA bump. For pension veterans (a different program from disability compensation), the A&A and Housebound rates are higher and serve a different purpose, but the same COLA logic applies. The disability-comp side of A&A and Housebound integrates with the SMC framework.

What Veterans Sometimes Get Wrong About The Chart

A few patterns I notice when people ask about the pay chart.

"Why did my deposit only go up by $X when the COLA was 2.8%?"

Usually because the COLA was applied and rounded, but the new deposit also includes other adjustments (a child aged out, a dependent was added, an offset for separation pay, a tax withholding change if you had one elected). The COLA itself is a clean 2.8% of the prior-year published rate, but your actual deposit can have other moving parts.

"My friend at the same rating gets more than me."

Dependents are the usual explanation. The single-vet chart and the with-dependents chart can differ by hundreds of dollars per month at the higher ratings. The other common explanation is SMC, which sits on top of the regular rate and isn't always visible if you're only comparing combined ratings.

"Why doesn't 90% pay 90% of what 100% pays?"

Because the schedule isn't proportional. 90% pays roughly 60% of what 100% pays at the single-vet rate. The chart is calibrated around a theory of partial vs. total impairment that doesn't map cleanly to "percent of full pay."

"Is the chart the same for officers and enlisted?"

Yes. VA disability compensation doesn't reference your service rank or pay grade. It references your VA-determined disability rating. Two veterans with the same rating and the same dependents get the same VA disability check regardless of what they did in service.

Bottom Line

The 2026 VA disability rates went into effect December 1, 2025, with a 2.8% COLA on top of the 2025 rates. A 100% single veteran with no dependents now gets about $3,831/month, up about $104 from 2025. Every dependent line, every SMC line, and every A&A/Housebound line got the same 2.8% bump. The jump from 90% to 100% is still by far the steepest in the schedule, reflecting that 100% schedular is treated as a categorically different status with ancillary benefits attached. Retroactive pay uses the rate in effect for each month being paid, not the current rate, so retro deposits for periods spanning multiple COLA cycles work out slightly differently than a quick mental calculation suggests.

Methodology and Limitations

  • Source for rates: VA.gov disability compensation rate tables for 2025 and 2026, effective December 1 of the prior year. The full tables include every combination of rating, spouse, children, and dependent parents, which I summarized rather than reprinted in full.
  • Source for COLA mechanism: Social Security Administration COLA announcement for 2026 (2.8%), tied to CPI-W from Q3 2025. VA compensation rates are statutorily linked to this same COLA.
  • Source for regulations: 38 CFR § 3.351 (compensation rates), 38 CFR § 3.350 (SMC), 38 CFR § 3.401 (effective dates), 38 CFR § 3.250 (dependent parents), 38 CFR § 3.352 (A&A criteria).
  • Rounding: I rounded most monthly figures to the nearest dollar and most annual figures to the nearest dollar. The VA's published tables include cents.
  • Limitations:
  • Rates I've labeled with TODO markers need verification against the live VA.gov tables before publish, because the published 2026 chart may have minor rounding or cent-level differences from what I've estimated based on applying the 2.8% COLA to the 2025 rates
  • Dependent amounts in this post focus on common configurations (single, with spouse, with spouse + one child). Veterans with more children, school-age children 18-23, or dependent parents should reference the full VA tables for exact figures
  • SMC has many levels and subcategories beyond SMC-K that I touched on briefly. The full SMC analysis is a separate post
  • A&A and Housebound rates vary substantially by configuration and aren't summarized in detail here
  • The published rate is what the VA owes you for each month at your rating. Actual deposits can be affected by retro splits, dependent changes mid-year, offsets (military retirement, separation pay, severance), and tax withholding elections

Disclaimer

I'm not accredited by VA, not a lawyer, not a VSO. This is data analysis, not claim advice. These are the published rates from VA.gov tables, they don't predict what any specific veteran's deposit will be in a given month after offsets and adjustments. If you need help with your claim or your deposit math, work with an accredited representative.

If you want the rate math run for your specific rating and dependent situation, the Raven Calculator on Claim Raven pulls in the current pay chart and runs the dependent math automatically. You enter your combined rating and your dependent configuration, and it returns the monthly and annual amounts for the current year plus a retroactive estimate if you supply an effective date.

Where to go next

  • Relevant tool: Raven Calculator — applies the current pay chart with dependents
  • More analysis: /blog
  • Disclaimer: Claim Raven is data analysis, not legal, medical, or VA-accredited advice.

-Landon Founder, Claim Raven | U.S. Army Veteran