2026 Retirement Contribution Limits: 401(k), IRA and Catch-Ups
Every 2026 retirement limit from IRS Notice 2025-67 — 401(k), IRA, both catch-ups and the Roth phase-outs — with the arithmetic behind each ceiling shown
The 2026 401(k) contribution limit is $24,500. That is the elective deferral limit — the cap on what you can send into a 401(k) from your own paycheck — set by IRS Notice 2025-67, the cost-of-living adjustment notice that fixes every retirement figure for the year. From age 50, the standard catch-up adds $8,000, lifting your deferral ceiling to 24,500 + 8,000 = $32,500. Savers aged 60 through 63 may instead use the larger $11,250 catch-up where their plan offers it, for 24,500 + 11,250 = $35,750 — at 64 the standard $8,000 applies again.
The IRA runs on its own, smaller track: $7,500 for 2026, plus a $1,100 catch-up from age 50, so 7,500 + 1,100 = $8,600 — one ceiling shared across every traditional and Roth IRA you own, not a per-account allowance. Both IRA pieces rose from 2025: the base by 7,500 − 7,000 = $500 and the catch-up by 1,100 − 1,000 = $100. Those figures answer the search that brought you here; what follows is the part the headline hides — a second 401(k) ceiling most savers have never met, the age window where the catch-up jumps, income rules that quietly shrink the IRA number, and the arithmetic for each.
| 2026 limit | Amount | What it caps |
|---|---|---|
| Elective deferral | $24,500 | Your own paycheck deferrals, all plans combined |
| Catch-up, age 50+ | $8,000 | Extra deferral room on top of $24,500 |
| Catch-up, ages 60–63 | $11,250 | Replaces the $8,000 where the plan offers it |
| Annual additions | $72,000 | Employee plus employer money, catch-up excluded |
| IRA contribution | $7,500 | Traditional and Roth IRAs combined |
| IRA catch-up, age 50+ | $1,100 | Extra IRA room, $8,600 total |
A 401(k) has two ceilings, not one
The $24,500 figure limits only what you defer. A separate cap — the annual-additions limit, $72,000 for 2026 — governs the total flowing into your account: deferrals, employer match, and profit-sharing together. Two properties of this pair cause most of the confusion. First, the deferral limit follows the person: elective deferrals are aggregated across every plan you participate in, so changing jobs mid-year or holding two jobs neither resets nor doubles your $24,500. Second, catch-up contributions sit outside the annual-additions cap. A 55-year-old with a generous employer can therefore see 72,000 + 8,000 = $80,000 land in the plan in 2026, and a 62-year-old using the larger catch-up, 72,000 + 11,250 = $83,250.
The catch-up is a limit, not a bonus
A catch-up never deposits itself. It only raises the ceiling your payroll election is measured against, and three constraints compete to bind first: your compensation, your election, and the combined limit. The catch-up contribution calculator reconciles all three as the minimum of the trio. Take a 61-year-old earning $90,000 who elects $30,000 of deferrals: her ceiling is 24,500 + 11,250 = $35,750, so the full $30,000 fits, with 35,750 − 30,000 = $5,750 of room unused. A 55-year-old making the identical election gets the standard ceiling of $32,500 — the $30,000 still fits, but only 32,500 − 30,000 = $2,500 of headroom remains.
Two operational wrinkles are worth confirming with your plan before December. The ages-60-to-63 amount depends on plan operation — payroll may simply not offer it. And under current rules, catch-up contributions for higher-wage participants must be designated Roth; whether that requirement reaches you turns on your prior-year wages from that employer, so verify the treatment rather than assuming pre-tax.
Self-employed: you contribute in two capacities
A solo 401(k) treats one person as both employee and employer, each with its own arithmetic. As employee you defer up to the same $24,500 anyone else gets — and because deferrals aggregate per person, a day-job 401(k) eats into it. As employer, the business contributes a percentage of eligible compensation. Both flows count against the $72,000 annual-additions ceiling; the catch-up, as always, rides outside it.
Run the solo 401(k) contribution calculator's own fixture: $120,000 of eligible compensation, a full $24,500 deferral, a 20% employer contribution. The employer side is 120,000 × 20% = $24,000; annual additions come to 24,500 + 24,000 = $48,500 — well inside $72,000, leaving 72,000 − 48,500 = $23,500 of ceiling unused. The trap is the phrase eligible compensation. For the self-employed it is not net profit: IRS Publication 560 requires an iterative adjustment, because the contribution reduces the very compensation it is computed from. The calculator assumes that adjustment is already done — feed it raw Schedule C profit and the employer figure comes out too high.
The IRA limit is $7,500 — until your income says otherwise
Anyone with earned income can fund a 401(k) at any salary, but direct Roth IRA contributions phase out with modified AGI. The 2026 ranges from Notice 2025-67: $153,000–$168,000 for Single and Head of Household, $242,000–$252,000 for Married Filing Jointly, and $0–$10,000 for Married Filing Separately — a range Congress never indexed, which in practice makes it a near-total bar. Inside a range, Publication 590-A Worksheet 2-2 shrinks the limit proportionally:
reduced limit = full limit − full limit × (MAGI − lower bound) ÷ width of the phase-out range
then rounds the result up to the next $10, and lifts any nonzero result under $200 up to $200.
Worked with the same fixture the Roth IRA calculator uses: a single filer aged 50 or older with $160,000 of MAGI. Her full limit is $8,600. She sits 160,000 − 153,000 = $7,000 into a 168,000 − 153,000 = $15,000 range, so the reduction is 8,600 × 7,000 ÷ 15,000 = $4,013.33, leaving 8,600 − 4,013.33 = $4,586.67 — rounded up to the next $10, a 2026 limit of $4,590. The full worksheet adds two steps this shorthand skips: the limit is also capped by taxable compensation, and anything contributed to another IRA subtracts from it.
Above the phase-out: the backdoor and its pro-rata catch
At or above the top of the range, direct Roth contributions stop entirely. The workaround is well established: contribute to a traditional IRA nondeductibly — the contribution itself has no income cap, only the deduction does — then convert to Roth. The tax bill on the conversion is where it goes wrong, because Form 8606 aggregates all traditional, SEP and SIMPLE IRA balances when splitting a conversion into taxable and nontaxable parts, not just the account opened for the maneuver.
The backdoor Roth calculator runs that split. Convert $7,500 of fresh nondeductible basis while an old rollover IRA holds $22,500 pre-tax: the aggregated balance is 7,500 + 22,500 = $30,000, the after-tax share is 7,500 ÷ 30,000 = 25%, the nontaxable portion is 7,500 × 25% = $1,875, and the taxable remainder is 7,500 − 1,875 = $5,625. Three-quarters of a supposedly tax-free maneuver just became ordinary income. Employer-plan balances stay out of this fraction — which is why rolling pre-tax IRA money into a 401(k) before converting is the standard cleanup.
Three checks before you set the election
First, the plan document beats the statute: the 60–63 catch-up and the Roth catch-up mandate are matters of plan operation, so what payroll offers may lag what the law allows. Second, dates outrank sources. A correct number attached to the wrong year is the commonest failure in this territory, which is why every retirement tool on Quanta is pinned to a governing year and to the IRS document it was verified against — the figures above answer 2026 questions and no others. Third, expect the sources in your life to disagree at least once: a benefits portal still serving last year's limits, an advisor's worksheet, this page. The notice is the referee in every such dispute — and on the off chance the stale party is us, the contact page is the fastest route to getting this page corrected.