Super contribution caps rise on 1 July 2026: what the timing question turns on

If you are weighing a large superannuation contribution over the next few weeks, the date you make it matters more this year than most. On 1 July 2026 the concessional contributions cap rises from $30,000 to $32,500, and the non-concessional cap from $120,000 to $130,000. Both increases are real. Neither of them does the two things people assume they do: they do not re-base a bring-forward period that is already running, and they do not save unused concessional cap from 2020–21, which expires on 30 June.

So the timing question is not really about the higher caps at all. It is about which part of your own capacity is fixed, which part is expiring, and when your fund actually receives the money.

What changes on 1 July 2026

Three general limits move on the same date.

The concessional cap — before-tax contributions, meaning employer super guarantee, salary sacrifice, and personal contributions you claim as a deduction — rises to $32,500. The ATO's guidance on the concessional contributions cap explains that it increases in increments of $2,500 in line with average weekly ordinary time earnings, which is why it moves in steps rather than every year. It has sat at $30,000 since 1 July 2024.

The non-concessional cap — after-tax contributions — rises to $130,000. It is not indexed on its own. The ATO's key super rates and thresholds note that the non-concessional cap for an income year is a multiple of the concessional cap, and that multiple is four. It is why the after-tax cap steps by $10,000 whenever the before-tax cap steps by $2,500.

The general transfer balance cap rises from $2 million to $2.1 million, per the ATO's table of general transfer balance caps. That figure does more work than most people realise, because it also sets the total super balance at which your non-concessional cap becomes nil.

Those are the general caps. Your own cap for a year can be well above the general one, or nil. Which of the two it is depends on the rules below.

A bring-forward period already running is not re-based

If you contribute more than the annual non-concessional cap in a year, and you are under 75 at some point in that year, you automatically gain access to the next one or two years' caps. That is the bring-forward arrangement. How many years you get depends on your total super balance at 30 June of the previous year.

Here is the part that catches people. The ATO states it plainly in its guidance on the non-concessional contributions cap: once you trigger the arrangement, "any indexation to the non-concessional contributions cap for the bring-forward period doesn't apply to you. The bring-forward cap amount is based on the cap in the first year of the period."

Take someone who contributed $200,000 in March 2026, with a total super balance under $1.76 million at 30 June 2025. That triggered a three-year bring-forward with a fixed total of $360,000, covering 2025–26, 2026–27 and 2027–28. The rise to $130,000 on 1 July 2026 does not lift that total to $380,000, and it does not lift it to $390,000. It stays $360,000. Remaining capacity across the two later years is $360,000 less the $200,000 already contributed — $160,000, and not a dollar more.

There is a second condition sitting inside the period. For any later year of a bring-forward arrangement, the remaining cap is reduced to nil if your total super balance at the previous 30 June is at or above the general transfer balance cap. Triggering the arrangement fixes the total; it does not guarantee you will be able to use it.

Some carry-forward capacity expires on 30 June, used or not

The concessional side has its own mechanism, and it runs the opposite way. If your total super balance was under $500,000 at 30 June of the previous year, you can carry forward unused concessional cap from up to five previous years, starting from 2018–19. The oldest unused year is always applied first.

It is a rolling five-year window that moves forward each 1 July and drops its oldest year over the edge. The ATO puts it directly: "Unused cap amounts are available for 5 years and expire after this. For example, a 2020–21 unused cap amount that is not used by the end of 2025–26 will expire." Moneysmart says the same thing in plainer terms — unused amounts expire if they are not used within the five years.

The general concessional cap in 2020–21 was $25,000. If you made $12,000 of concessional contributions that year, $13,000 of it is unused, and that $13,000 is available up to and including 2025–26. From 1 July 2026 it is gone. Nothing about the general cap rising to $32,500 replaces it. The two are separate mechanisms, and a $2,500 increase is not a substitute for a $13,000 slice.

Expiry is not a penalty for inaction. It is how the rule was built.

Two different total super balance gates

Both mechanisms are gated on total super balance, but on different numbers, and the distinction matters.

Carry-forward concessional requires a total super balance under $500,000 at 30 June of the previous financial year. That threshold is not indexed and has not moved since the rule began.

Non-concessional contributions are capped at nil if your total super balance at 30 June of the previous year is at or above the general transfer balance cap. The bring-forward tiers then sit one and two annual caps below it. For 2025–26, with a $120,000 cap and a $2 million transfer balance cap, that gives:

• under $1.76 million — three-year bring-forward, $360,000
• $1.76 million to under $1.88 million — two-year, $240,000
• $1.88 million to under $2 million — no bring-forward, $120,000
• $2 million or more — nil

From 1 July 2026, with a $130,000 cap and a $2.1 million transfer balance cap, the same structure lands on $1.84 million, $1.97 million and $2.1 million, giving $390,000, $260,000 and $130,000. The tiers move because both inputs move.

Which year's thresholds apply to you is settled by the year the contribution falls in, which brings us to the last mechanism.

A contribution counts when the fund receives it

Not when you instruct the transfer. The ATO's concessional cap guidance is explicit: "Contributions count towards a cap in the year your super fund receives them." Taxation Ruling TR 2010/1 sets out the general rule that a contribution is made when the funds are received by the superannuation provider, and that for an electronic transfer, the contribution is made when the funds are credited to the provider's account.

A transfer instructed on 29 June 2026 that lands on 2 July is a 2026–27 contribution, measured against the 2026–27 caps. That can be the outcome you wanted, or the one you did not.

Two related timing points. An employer can make super guarantee contributions for the quarter ending 30 June by 28 July, so a June-quarter payment may fall into the following year's cap. And where there is a salary sacrifice agreement, the ATO's guidance is that if you want the fund to receive those amounts by 30 June, the agreement itself needs to provide for it.

For someone at risk of exceeding the cap, the ATO's own suggestion is to stop or reduce before-tax voluntary contributions and to delay personal contributions they intend to claim as a deduction. If you run a self-managed superannuation fund, there is a further mechanism worth knowing about: a member may in limited circumstances ask that a contribution made in one financial year be counted towards the following year's cap.

Example: the same money, two financial years

Take a Robina business owner, 54, with a total super balance of $430,000 at 30 June 2025. Her unused concessional cap is $13,000 from 2020–21, $9,500 from 2021–22, $8,000 from 2022–23, $6,000 from 2023–24 and $5,000 from 2024–25 — $41,500 in all. Employer contributions and salary sacrifice have put $18,000 into her fund so far in 2025–26.

If the fund receives a further contribution by 30 June 2026. Her individual cap for 2025–26 is $30,000 plus $41,500, or $71,500. With $18,000 used, $53,500 remains. Contributing all of it uses every carried-forward dollar, including the $13,000 from 2020–21. She goes into 2026–27 with the $32,500 general cap and nothing carried forward.

If nothing further arrives before 30 June 2026. The $13,000 from 2020–21 expires. Her 2025–26 unused amount becomes $12,000, and that joins the window. Her individual cap for 2026–27 is $32,500 plus $40,500 carried forward — $73,000, slightly more than this year's figure. But it is conditional: the carry-forward test is applied again at 30 June 2026, and her balance has to still be under $500,000.

Across the two years, the first path allows $104,000 of concessional contributions and the second allows $91,000. The $13,000 gap is exactly the 2020–21 slice.

There is a second-order effect worth seeing. A $53,500 concessional contribution adds about $45,475 to her balance after the 15 per cent contributions tax. On $430,000, plus a year of employer contributions and earnings, that is enough to make the $500,000 test at 30 June 2026 a live question rather than a formality. Using capacity in one year can be what removes capacity in the next.

Which of the two paths suits depends on things the caps say nothing about: what marginal rate applies in each year, whether the cash is available in June or in August, and the fact that money inside super is preserved until a condition of release is met. Those inputs sit alongside the rest of a tax position rather than separate from it. If it helps to work the numbers through with someone before 30 June, that is what our accounting and advisory team is for.