Band 5 Nurse Salary 2026/27: Exact Pay & Take-Home

If you're a newly qualified or newly registered nurse, the number you actually want is simple: what does Band 5 pay, and what genuinely lands in your account each month once everything's been taken off? This page answers exactly that, without the wider detour into the full nursing career ladder — for that broader picture, see our nursing pay and careers guide instead.

Not sure how bands work? Read what Agenda for Change is and how NHS pay bands are decided.

Band 5 nurse pay points 2026/27 (England, Wales & Northern Ireland)

NHS Scotland runs a separate pay deal and pay spine — Band 5 there runs from £34,544 to £43,039 for 2026/27. See our full Agenda for Change pay scales guide for the complete Scottish table alongside every other band, and our Band 5 salary deep-dive for how Band 5 works across every profession that starts there, not just nursing. To see what the pensionable pay you enter could build towards in the 2015 Scheme, try our NHS pension calculator for nurses.

What a typical first-job nurse rota actually adds on top

The annual figures above are basic Agenda for Change salary — they don't include unsocial hours pay, and for most ward-based Band 5 nurses, unsocial hours pay is not a rounding error. A typical first ward job involves a rotating pattern of days, nights, weekends and bank holidays, and each of those attracts an enhancement on top of your basic hourly rate: nights and Saturdays add a significant percentage, and Sundays and bank holidays add considerably more again. Two Band 5 nurses on the identical point can end up with noticeably different take-home pay purely because of how many unsocial shifts their specific rota includes.

If you already know (or can estimate) your rota pattern, use the Unsocial Hours Calculator to see what it adds in cash terms, rather than guessing from the headline salary alone.

Nursing pay beyond Band 5

Band 5 is the on-ramp, not the destination — nursing pay runs from Band 5 through to consultant nurse posts at Band 8c, via two genuinely different routes (clinical specialisation and leadership) that diverge from Band 6 onward. Our nursing pay and careers guide covers the whole ladder, fields of nursing, and NMC registration in full.