Nobody Knows the 2027 UK Seasonal Worker Quota Yet — Including the People Already Selling You a 2027 Place
Search the UK seasonal worker visa today and you will be given a number. It will be 42,900, or 45,000, or 55,000, depending on which page you open. One site will offer you a “projected 2027 quota” of 45,000-plus and invite you to register early to secure a place.
Only one of those figures is real. And the 2027 number does not exist at all — not because it is secret, but because the UK government has not published it yet.
That gap between what has been decided and what is being sold is where money gets taken from people who cannot afford to lose it.
The short answer
The UK’s confirmed 2026 Seasonal Worker allocation is 42,900 places — 41,000 horticulture and 1,900 poultry. The 2027–2029 allocations have not been published. Any agency offering a guaranteed 2027 place, or quoting a 2027 quota, is quoting a figure no government has announced.
What is actually confirmed for 2026
For 2026 the overall allocation is 42,900 places, with 41,000 available to the horticulture sector and 1,900 for poultry, compared with 43,000 horticulture places and 2,000 poultry places in 2025.
The National Farmers’ Union confirms the government made 41,000 visas available for horticulture in 2026 with another 1,900 for poultry, and DEFRA announced those figures back in November 2025.
So when a page tells you the 2026 quota is 55,000, it is not out of date by a little. It is repeating a figure from a different era of the scheme — the 2023–24 period, when the horticulture quota was 45,000 with the possibility of 10,000 more. That headroom is gone. The direction of travel since then has been steadily downward.
Anyone still publishing 55,000 in August 2026 has not checked their page in three years. Ask yourself what else on that page has not been checked.
Why there is no 2027 number yet
This is the part that matters if you are planning ahead.
The NFU states that details on the number of visas available for 2026–2029 will be published later this year, and that the union is calling on the government to confirm the factors taken into account when visa allocations are decided, and to confirm the allocation by the summer of each year — precisely so growers are not left guessing.
Read that carefully. The farmers themselves do not know the 2027 number. They are lobbying the government to tell them earlier. And they have more access to DEFRA than any recruitment agency on the internet does.
So when a website publishes a “projected 2027 quota: 45,000+” and opens early registration on the strength of it, the projection is not information. It is a sales page dressed as a forecast.
What is confirmed for the longer term is the route’s survival: at the NFU’s 2025 conference the government confirmed a five-year extension to the seasonal worker visa scheme. The scheme continuing is not the same as a number being set.
The one deadline that is real right now
If you want a date to act on, this is it.
The poultry strand of the Seasonal Worker visa is for overseas nationals aged 18 or over to work in the UK between 2 October and 31 December of the same year, and poultry applications must be submitted on or before 15 November.
That is a genuine, government-set, published deadline sitting three months ahead of you. It covers a small allocation — 1,900 places — for the busiest weeks of the UK poultry year running into Christmas.
Horticulture works differently. Applications can be made at any point in the year, because the picking calendar runs from spring asparagus through to the autumn apple harvest.
How the route actually works
The single most important structural fact, and the one that makes most scams possible:
Seasonal workers must be sponsored by approved scheme operators. Individual employers cannot hold a Seasonal Worker sponsor licence, even if they are licensed under other immigration routes, and employers access labour through these operators rather than sponsoring workers directly.
You cannot apply to a farm. You cannot be sponsored by a farm. A farm offering to sponsor you does not have the licence to do it, regardless of how genuine the photographs look.
The operators are a small, named group listed on GOV.UK. Here the published sources disagree with each other in a way worth knowing about: one guide refers to seven approved scheme operators, another lists six by name. That inconsistency is exactly why the only list you should act on is the one on GOV.UK on the day you apply. Operators are added and removed.
The rest of the mechanics, as set out by UK immigration practitioners: you need a job offer through one of the licensed scheme operators, a role in edible horticulture, poultry production or ornamental horticulture, a Certificate of Sponsorship from that operator, and proof of £1,270 in personal savings held for 28 days unless the operator certifies maintenance on your behalf.
A horticulture worker can stay a maximum of six months in any 10-month period, poultry runs strictly 2 October to 31 December, the visa is not a route to settlement, and applicants cannot be joined by dependent partners or children.
That last sentence is worth reading twice if anyone has suggested this route as a way to bring your family to Britain. It is not one, and it never has been.
Nobody may lawfully charge you for the job
This is the protection that most applicants have never heard of.
The scheme runs on the Employer Pays Principle, under which recruitment fees cannot lawfully be charged to workers. Guidance published on the operators is blunt about the practical version: licensed operators charge nothing for placement, and any demand for a fee in exchange for a job is a scam signal.
So the test is simple, and you can apply it in one question.
Has anyone asked you for money in exchange for a job offer, a Certificate of Sponsorship, or a “reserved place”? If yes, stop. That is not how this route works, and paying does not put you closer to a visa.
You will still have your own costs — the visa application fee, travel, documents. Those are yours and they are legitimate. The job itself is free.
One caution on that fee: the published figures disagree. One 2026 guide reports the application fee rising to £340 from 8 April 2026, up from £319, while another still lists £319. Do not budget from an article, including this one. Check the current fee on GOV.UK before you pay anything.
What you should actually earn
Under the scheme rules, visa workers must be paid at least the National Living Wage for each hour worked — £12.71 from 1 April 2026 — and must receive at least 32 hours of paid employment.
That 32-hour guarantee is the number to hold on to. It is what stops a bad season becoming an unpayable debt. If someone describes the work as paid “per box” or “per punnet” with no minimum, that arrangement is not what the scheme permits.
Note also that the Low Pay Commission has published a consultation on the National Living Wage and minimum wage rates to apply from April 2027 — so the hourly figure will move again before next year’s season.
The 2027 planning question, answered honestly
If your plan is to work a UK harvest in 2027, here is what you can and cannot do now.
You can: learn which operators are currently licensed on GOV.UK, prepare your passport and documents, understand the £1,270 savings rule, and follow the operators’ own websites for when they open recruitment for the next season.
You cannot: secure a 2027 place today. There is no quota, no allocation to operators, and therefore nothing to reserve. Anyone taking money for one is selling a promise they have no mechanism to keep.
Watch for the DEFRA announcement of the multi-year allocations. When it lands, it will be published by the government, reported by the NFU, and free to read. It will not arrive first in a WhatsApp group.
Key Takeaways
- The confirmed 2026 allocation is 42,900 — 41,000 horticulture, 1,900 poultry.
- Pages quoting 45,000 or 55,000 are years out of date.
- The 2027–2029 allocations have not been published; even the NFU is still asking for them.
- Poultry runs 2 October to 31 December, with applications due by 15 November.
- You cannot be sponsored by a farm — only by a licensed scheme operator listed on GOV.UK.
- Under the Employer Pays Principle, no recruitment fee may be charged to you.
- Pay must be at least the National Living Wage (£12.71 from April 2026) with a 32-hour weekly minimum.
- The visa is not a route to settlement and does not allow dependants.
- Sources disagree on the fee and the operator count — verify both on GOV.UK before applying.