2026 Retirement Plan Contribution Limits: How Advisors Can Open Conversations Around SECURE 2.0 Provisions
Each year, the IRS updates its contribution limits for workplace retirement plans. Typically, advisors glance at the numbers, update their materials, and move on. But the latest updates are worth a second look.
2026 DC Plan Contribution Limit Changes: An Overview
This year’s adjustments reflect newly implemented provisions from the 2022 SECURE 2.0 Act that both expand the savings potential for participants in their early 60s and introduce a Roth requirement with implications for sponsors and higher-salary savers.
| 2025 | 2026 | |
|---|---|---|
| Elective deferral limit, for those through age 49 in 2026 | $23,500 | $24,500 |
| Elective deferral limit, for those who attain age 50 or older during 2026 | $31,000 (includes eligible catch-up deferral of up to $7,500) |
$32,500 (includes eligible catch-up deferral of up to $8,000) |
| Higher elective deferral limit, for those who attain age 60–63 during 2026 | $34,750 (includes eligible catch-up deferral of up to $11,250) |
$35,750 (includes eligible catch-up deferral of up to $11,250) |
| Annual DC limit | $70,000, plus any eligible catch-up amount (see limits above) | $72,000, plus any eligible catch-up amount (see limits above) |
| Compensation limit | $350,000 | $360,000 |
IRS Sources: IRS Notice 2025-67; Retirement topics – Catch-up contributions
________________________________________
RPAG Members
Download the full conversation guide – with ready-to-use questions for your clients, prospects, and participants – from the Resource Center. Navigate to the category titled “Fiduciary Compliance & Plan Design” and then click “Plan Limits”.
Not an RPAG Member?
Contact us to learn how membership gives you access to tools like this one, designed to help you drive meaningful client and prospect conversations.
This material is provided and intended for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, investment, or fiduciary advice.
Retirement Plan Advisory Group, LLC (“RPAG”) provides technology, solutions and services for a fee to its customers, who are primarily retirement plan advisors and associated institutions. The services include ratings of various third-party investment vehicles based on RPAG’s proprietary quantitative and qualitative scoring methodology. The investment vehicles do not pay to be evaluated and scored; nor do the companies that provide services to the investment vehicles pay for them to be evaluated and scored, but those companies may have commercial relationships and affiliations with RPAG.