The gap between what FTSE 100 chief executives and their employees take home just hit its widest point in eight years, according to new data from the High Pay Centre think tank. Median CEO pay across Britain’s biggest listed companies rose 8.6% in 2025-26, from £4.66 million to £5.06 million, the highest level on record and the fourth consecutive year of growth. That puts the median FTSE 100 CEO at 130 times the pay of the median UK full-time worker, up from a 124-to-1 ratio the year before.

The growth was broad, not concentrated in a handful of outliers: 66 of the 100 companies, about 70%, gave their CEO a bigger package than the year before, up from 61% the prior year. Long-term incentive plan payouts drove much of the increase, with the mean award rising 20% to £2.71 million, while short-term incentive awards climbed 14% to a mean £1.84 million. Total spending on FTSE 100 executives reached £856.6 million, with £550.4 million of that going to CEOs alone. Female representation in the CEO seat slipped to 10 companies, down one from the prior year.

Why it matters for reward and people teams: pay-ratio disclosure was supposed to create pressure toward narrower gaps, but eight years of published ratios have coincided with the widest spread yet, which is a signal that transparency alone is not the lever compensation committees assumed it would be. The High Pay Centre argues explicitly that spending at the top is coming at the expense of pay growth for the rest of the workforce, and is pushing for worker board representation and stronger pay-transparency rules as a corrective, not just more disclosure.

The original insight HR and reward leaders should take from this: the same transparency mechanics now driving executive pay scrutiny are converging with the broader pay-disclosure agenda already reshaping hiring, including the UK’s own consultation on requiring pay disclosure in job adverts. Reward strategy and recruitment marketing are being pulled into the same compliance conversation, and compensation committees that treat them separately are going to find that harder to sustain.

Source: High Pay Centre