Small boat Channel crossings
Small-boat Channel crossings are the dominant route of detected illegal entry to the UK. This page tracks them weekly, with the official quarterly statistics for method of entry, nationality and demographics.
17,480 people arrived in the UK by small boat between 1 January 2026 and 17 September 2026, with 143 in the latest week (13 September 2026).
Cumulative arrivals by day of year
Annual totals since the route emerged
Monthly arrivals since 2018
All detected illegal entry routes
Small boats are one route among several the Home Office counts. Detections in the UK and at UK ports have fallen as the small-boat route has grown.
| Method of entry | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small boat arrivals | 299 | 1,843 | 8,466 | 28,526 | 45,774 | 29,437 | 36,816 | 41,472 |
| Inadequately documented air arrivals | 4,769 | 5,237 | 2,328 | 2,561 | 5,130 | 3,854 | 3,349 | 3,016 |
| Recorded detections in the UK | 7,257 | 8,492 | 5,428 | 5,036 | 3,379 | 2,836 | 2,900 | 1,816 |
| Recorded detections at UK ports | 1,052 | 959 | 808 | 662 | 291 | 236 | 225 | 204 |
Nationalities, 2025
Nationality as recorded at encounter; self-reported in some cases.
Who arrives: age and sex, 2025
| Age group | Male | Female | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17 and under | 4,343 | 1,286 | 5,629 |
| 18 to 24 | 11,226 | 1,772 | 12,999 |
| 25 to 39 | 16,315 | 2,539 | 18,854 |
| 40 and over | 2,557 | 556 | 3,113 |
| Not currently recorded | 0 | 0 | 877 |
74.1% of 2025 small-boat arrivals were adult males (18 or over, of those with a recorded age).
Age as recorded; age-assessment disputes exist for some arrivals.
Age assessments: the caveat, quantified
Where an arrival's claimed age is doubted, an age assessment is raised. In year ending june 2026, 6,409 assessments were raised and 6,265 closed: 3,512 found to be under 18 and 2,753 found to be adults.
The legal routes, for scale
This site is about illegal entry — but its own rule is that legal and illegal migration are always distinguished, so here is the legal humanitarian side, from the same quarterly release.
| Route | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Year ending June 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resettlement route arrivals | 18,032 | 5,900 | 4,327 | 7,933 | 6,417 | 3,840 |
| BN(O) Hong Kong visa grants | 96,418 | 57,137 | 37,450 | 28,773 | 16,028 | 13,969 |
| Ukraine visa grants | — | 232,135 | 49,027 | 21,235 | 148,522 | 94,233 |
| Refugee Family Reunion visa grants | 5,645 | 4,113 | 9,320 | 19,258 | 18,577 | 12,888 |
Share of arrivals who claim asylum, by year
Computed from the linkage table's own arrivals and claims columns — numerator and denominator from one published table.
What happens after arrival
Of the 40,595 people who arrived by small boat in 2025, 39,952 (98%) claimed asylum (including 7,929 who also received a modern-slavery NRM referral), and 540 neither claimed asylum nor were referred. Small-boat arrival is, in practice, an asylum-claim route.
The UK–France agreement, in practice
The only official series on the returns agreement: 1,087 people returned from the UK to France and 1,117 transferred into the UK under the agreement's legal route (6 August 2025 and 30 June 2026 ). Monthly: April 142 out / 138 in, May 218 out / 222 in, June 264 out / 314 in.
IN = transfers into the UK under the agreement's legal route; OUT = returns from the UK to France under the agreement. Never compare these counts against total arrivals as a rate.
Net migration: a different number entirely
This figure is total long-term net migration — overwhelmingly lawful routes: work, study, family and the Ukraine and BNO schemes. It is not what the rest of this page measures, and the two must never be added together or expressed as shares of each other. It is here because the numbers are so routinely confused. ONS estimates net migration at 171,000 for year ending Dec 2025 (provisional) — down from 331,000 a year earlier (year ending Dec 2024), within a stated confidence interval of 145,000–197,000. Of that total, ONS attributes 350,000 to non-EU+ nationals, with British nationals at -136,000 and EU+ nationals at -42,000 (both net outflows).
Net migration is a difference, not a count of arrivals, and it is the figure most often read as though it were one. The same ONS table gives both sides of it: 813,000 people arrived long-term and 642,000 left, and the difference between those two is the 171,000 above. A fall in net migration can therefore mean fewer people arriving, more people leaving, or both — the net figure alone does not say which.
What this site does and does not claim is set out on this page.
Download this data
- Small-boat arrivals by month: CSV · JSON
- Annual totals: CSV · JSON
- Detected entry by method: CSV · JSON
- Nationalities: CSV · JSON
- Net migration (context): CSV · JSON
Every file carries provenance headers. All datasets →
Ministers make claims about small-boat crossings and net migration in Parliament. Read them beside these figures → — quoted verbatim, with the period of both, and no verdict from this site.
Data as of
Cite this page
Illegal arrivals: small-boat Channel crossings. Migration Watchdog, data as of 2026-09-25. https://migrationwatchdog.com/arrivals Underlying figures: UK official statistics, re-published under OGL v3.0 — every figure links to its source on the page.
Sources for this page
- Small boat activity in the English Channel — weekly time series — Home Office · retrieved 2026-09-25
- Illegal entry routes to the UK summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office) — Home Office · calendar years, published in the year ending June 2026 release · retrieved 2026-09-02
- Safe and legal (humanitarian) routes summary tables, year ending June 2026 (Home Office) — Home Office · Year ending June 2026 · retrieved 2026-09-02