Serious and organised crime (SOC) continues to present a profound threat to the UK. Its corrosive impact is felt nationally, in our institutions and economy, and locally, in the safety, confidence, and resilience of communities across the country. To combat it, we need to understand it, and that is the point of this 2026 National Strategic Assessment.

We have changed the structure of the assessment this year from a threat focus to looking at domains: within communities, at the border, transnationally, online, and within finance. The intent is to shine a different light on familiar challenges, expose how criminals exploit vulnerabilities across multiple spheres, and thus enrich our understanding of crime and how we can tackle it. 

That domain focus has helped illuminate four cross-cutting trends: the technological transformation of SOC; the convergence, diversification, and expansion of criminal activity; the increasing impact on the UK of SOC exploitation of global instability and geopolitics; and, as a result, the increasing harm posed to society. Of these trends, the most notable has been technology. This year we assess technology is no longer just an enabler of SOC; it is driving a large-scale transformation in terms of its scale, sophistication, and resilience.

The consequence is that, overall, we assess that the SOC threat has increased in 2025 and – despite the excellent work of NCA officers, policing and our partners - is likely to do so again in the coming year.

It has not done so uniformly. Of the nine specific threats we assess, drugs remains the only one where both the threat and the harm have increased, driven by increased production, falling wholesale prices, rising consumption of a wider range of drugs, and a diversification of smuggling routes and methodologies.

The threat from organised immigration crime and illicit finance has also increased, reflecting higher demand, more organised facilitation, and rising criminal profits. Whilst the harms from cybercrime and fraud have escalated following several high-impact ransomware attacks and increasing romance investment frauds, both fuelled by online enablers and increasingly sophisticated social engineering. 

The overall level of the remaining four threats - child sexual abuse, firearms, modern slavery and human trafficking, and organised acquisitive crime - has neither increased nor decreased.

Little of what is set out in this assessment applies uniquely to SOC. We see the same trends affect terrorism, state threats, violence against women and girls, and much other crime. And we see more links between these threats and SOC. This insight has informed the Government's decision to merge the NCA and Counter Terrorism Policing into a new National Police Service. As criminality becomes more interconnected, so must we. I am confident this assessment provides a foundation from which to do so, and I am grateful to all those who have contributed to it.

Graeme Biggar CBE