The British Medical Association (BMA) has announced another round of strike action by resident doctors.
Here, we tell you everything you need to know about the BMA resident doctor strikes, including what patients need to know about their care.
Are resident doctors going on strike?
The BMA Resident Doctors Committee has announced another strike from 15-19 June 2026.
The BMA Resident Doctors Committee took three rounds of five-day strike action in 2025 (25-30 July, 14-19 October and 17-22 December 2025).
They also went on strike for six days from 7-13 April 2026.
How much do resident doctors earn?
Basic pay for a new full-time first year doctor will be £40,190 this year. After allowing for the impact of additional earnings, such as for working additional or unsocial hours, we might expect this to increase average earnings to over £50,000.
That is substantially more, in a resident doctor’s first year, than the average full-time worker in this country earns.
For the most experienced full-time resident doctors, basic pay will be £76,582. After allowing for the impact of additional earnings, such as for working additional or unsocial hours, we might expect this to increase average earnings to over £100,000
What pay rises have they had in recent years?
Resident doctors have had a 33.4% pay rise over the last four years – the highest anywhere across the public sector.
What happens next and what are you doing to stop strikes?
In March, the Government offered a deal which was rejected by the BMA. It included:
- An average pay rise of 4.9% this year, making resident doctors on average 35.2% better off than four years ago.
- Even higher pay rises on average for the lowest paid FY1 and FY2 doctors – at 6.2% and 7.1% respectively
- Starting pay for new graduates entering the profession standing at almost £12,000 higher than in 2022-23,
- Reform of the pay structure leading to more frequent pay rises as doctors gain more key competencies and therefore contribute to improving NHS performance and productivity.
- At least 4,000 and up to 4,500 additional speciality training posts over the next three years, with at least 1,000 of these brought forward this year to tackle training bottlenecks.
- Reimbursement of mandatory Royal College exam fees – saving doctors thousands of pounds.
- Substantial contract reforms to benefit locally employed doctors.
The Secretary of State has been clear he will honour the existing deal on the table for resident doctors if they call off strikes. It’s not too late for the BMA to come back to the table and work with us to improve working conditions for their members.
If the BMA RDC accepts the offer and calls off strikes, the commitment to 4,500 posts will remain. However, it is no longer possible to accelerate posts because of the financial and operational impact of strike action during the application window.
Is it true that there’s a doctor employment crisis, and what are you doing to tackle this?
There are record numbers of doctors working in our NHS this year, but we recognise the legitimate concerns resident doctors have raised about access to specialty training places.
We invest over £4 billion each year in training the medical workforce, yet homegrown talent has faced worsening bottlenecks for specialty training places since 2020.
We have responded to resident doctors' concerns by introducing The Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act this year, to prioritise UK medical graduates and others with significant NHS experience for speciality training. This is expected to halve competition ratios.
As part of the offer put to the BMA Resident Doctors Committee on 22 March, the government committed to introduce up to 4,500 specialty training places over three years, with 1,000 of these brought forward in a recruitment round this April for an August 2026 start date. The offer is on the table with these 4,500 posts, but we have timed out of bringing these posts forward for this year.
Is it true that most resident doctors didn’t vote to strike?
Yes.
Of the 81,000 resident doctors working in our NHS, only around a third actually voted for strike action in the BMA’s ballot on pay.
Under 50% of BMA members voted in favour of strike action. Because of the turnout (52.5%), under half of resident doctors in the BMA actually voted in favour of strike action (49%).
How are you keeping patients safe during strikes?
Our priority is to keep patients safe, and we will do everything we can to mitigate the impact of the strikes on patients and the disruption that will follow.
Thanks to the incredible efforts of NHS staff, during the latest round of industrial action from 7th to 13th April 2026, the NHS maintained 94.1% of elective activity, compared with the same period last year.
Will my appointment be cancelled during strikes?
Patients with appointments booked on strike days will be contacted if their appointment needs to be rescheduled due to industrial action.
If they have not been contacted, they should attend their appointment as planned.
Any appointments that need to be rescheduled will be done so as a priority.
What if I need urgent medical attention?
It’s important that you do not put off seeking urgent care, and you should turn up for planned appointments unless you have been told otherwise.
Anyone who needs urgent care should use NHS 111 online or use the NHS App to be assessed and directed to the right care for them.
As usual, patients should only use 999 if it is a serious or life-threatening emergency.
For more information on when to call 999 and when to go to A&E, you can visit the NHS UK website.
Should I be worried about falling ill during strikes?
The NHS has tried and tested ways to keep patients safe during strikes.
This includes derogations which are exemptions or special arrangements that allow certain essential services to continue operating during industrial action, even when healthcare workers are on strike.
When NHS staff take strike action, they work with hospital management to identify critical services that must be maintained to ensure patient safety and prevent serious harm.
This ensures that whilst industrial action can proceed to highlight disputes over pay, working conditions, or other issues, patient safety remains the primary concern.
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