UK Living Roundup August 2026

Every year, while the rest of us try to slow down in August, UCAS starts pumping out admissions data at full throttle, with minor updates every weekday for a fortnight after A level results day. It’s a whirlwind, if you’re into that kind of thing, but it’s also the best, most current picture of how student numbers are shaping up for the coming academic year.

In this roundup:  

• Universities ride the demographic wave
• What the international student numbers tell us – and what they don’t
• Students head to London, the North West and… home?

On A level results day – 13 August – nearly 263,000 18-year-olds secured a place at university, which was a record (up 3% year-on-year). We won’t know the total number until September’s end of cycle release, but it does imply little overall change in young people’s perception of university despite the endless discourse about the value of a degree (‘overall’ being the operative word, seeing as there are 43% more accepted applicants for engineering courses and 26% fewer for languages than in 2019).

That’s the good news: young people continue to want to study at university. But the proportion of 18-year-olds securing a place has effectively plateaued. In England, it’s 31.9% (before clearing), down from 32.5% last year but broadly in line with the last five years. Scotland’s entry rate has been rising steadily, while Wales’s is on a downward trend.

All else being equal, therefore, the number of UK 18-year-olds applying to university will continue to rise thanks to the fact that the number of 18-year-olds is growing every year. Eventually, however, those favourable demographics will reverse, and universities will need to make the case for studying to a greater proportion of young people. And crunch time isn’t far away. The number of 18-year-olds is forecast to peak in 2030 and fall by more than 10% in the following decade.

Of course, universities aren’t driven solely by domestic demographics, and if the local pool of potential recruits starts to shrink, the incentive to look overseas rises.

For close watchers of international student numbers, UCAS data in recent years has told a positive, if incomplete, story.

What the data gives us is the number of overseas students applying for an undergraduate degree using UCAS – in other words, there are some considerable limitations. Undergraduates make up roughly 30% of international students in the UK, and only a portion of them applied through UCAS (EU students are more likely to than non-EU students, but numbers have been overwhelmingly weighted toward those outside the EU since Brexit).

Still, it’s a useful metric to consider, especially given that the most recent comprehensive data on student numbers from HESA goes up to the 2024/25 academic year.

UCAS shows that the number of successful overseas applicants is up 3% on 2025.  At over 57,000, it’s at the highest level since 2020/21, the last year of significant EU student enrolment at UK institutions.

Students from outside the EU continue to grow at pace, reaching a new high of 46,000 this year. But even though the number has risen by a third (11,500) since 2020/21, it hasn’t made up for the number of successful EU applicants lost in that time (14,500).

On an annual basis, though, a rise is a rise. The question is whether it’s representative of the full picture. Though accounting for just a proportion of the total, UCAS data has historically tracked the number of first year international undergraduates as per HESA, so an uptick, even with all the caveats, is a good indication of a rise in demand.

For a better understanding of what’s going on with postgraduate numbers, we’ll need to wait until early next year when HESA releases its 2025/26 data.

Another story the UCAS numbers reinforce is one of divergence. As we have seen time and time again in recent years, students are making choices that systematically benefit some universities and some locations over others.

A record 42% of applicants were accepted to universities with higher entry requirements (up from 33% in 2017) and a record low 27% were accepted to ones with lower ones (down from 35%). Among international students, the split is even starker, with 73% securing a place at high tariff universities and just 9% at low tariff ones.

That’s broadly good news for established universities, and for specialist institutions – ones that focus on one or two subjects – which, despite attracting far fewer applicants than the big names, are seeing acceptances remain relatively steady.

Students are also increasingly choosing to study in London and the North West, with both regions having seen acceptances grow by about a quarter since 2017. By contrast, the Midlands, Yorkshire and Wales are effectively flat, and the East of England has seen acceptances fall by more than a fifth.

This is not only driven by students becoming more selective with their institution of choice; it’s also a reflection of population size (specifically among those demographics most likely to go to university) as students increasingly choose to live at home. This specifically benefits London, which has by far the highest entry rate in the UK.

The proportion of students intending to live at home has risen to 38% - up from a third pre-pandemic – driven in large part by changing preferences among English students. In Wales, the proportion is lower at 30% and is around the same level as before the pandemic. In Scotland, where the government covers the cost of fees for Scottish students, effectively incentivising them to study locally, the level is much higher at 59%. But, crucially, it’s only slightly up on pre-pandemic levels.

The one thing that unites each country is that students (temporarily) wanted to live in halls after lockdown ended, but affordability is now a more important consideration – to varying degrees.

At risk of sounding like a broken record, we can’t ignore the variation in the data. UK higher education is a vast sector stretching across many regions with dynamics and local regulations that affect each differently. For every headline statistic about general trends, there are a dozen exceptions. And for anyone working in the sector, understanding location is not just helpful – it’s absolutely necessary.