United Kingdom

Official risk classification

United Kingdom carries no numeric risk category anywhere in the record (Jan 1, 1999 to Jun 26, 2026). This layer collapses OECD category 0 (the high-income exemption) and blank rows into one exempt state, so the reading here does not say which of the two applies to United Kingdom.

The CRC scores the likelihood a country services its external debt on an eight-step scale, from 0 to 7, and sets the minimum premiums the OECD Arrangement participants charge on officially supported export credit. Categories 1 to 7 are the risk ladder (1 lowest, 7 highest). Category 0 marks high-income OECD and high-income euro-area economies whose credit is priced on market terms. This layer shows category 0 and a blank row as the same exempt state, so an exempt reading is not a zero-risk rating and does not on its own separate an exemption from a market the OECD never classified.

Source: OECD, Country Risk Classifications of the Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits OECD CRC, free reuse with attribution. Category is an ordinal 0-7 risk step, not a probability; 0 and blank denote exemption. Methodology

Debt to GDP trajectory

Debt to GDP by perimeter, observed years only (no IMF forecast years). Household and nonfinancial corporate IMF GDD series are plotted separately where reported. Where neither component is reported, the private sector, aggregate (no household/corporate split published) is shown as a coverage fallback, not as a third private component. Shaded bands are sovereign-debt crisis years.

Source: IMF Global Debt Database (Mbaye, Moreno-Badia & Chae, IMF WP/18/111) | IMF World Economic Outlook Debt is % of GDP; household and nonfinancial corporate GDD series are plotted separately. Where both components are unavailable, the fallback is private sector, aggregate (no household/corporate split published). Crisis-year shading comes from the sovereign-debt chronologies. Methodology

Debt profile

Quarterly debt (World Bank QPSD)

A higher-frequency companion to the annual IMF figures above: general government gross debt, quarter by quarter, from the World Bank Quarterly Public Sector Debt database.

QPSD and the annual IMF WEO/GDD series are not the same measure: coverage of the public sector and the valuation of instruments (nominal, face or market value) can differ, so a quarterly QPSD reading and an annual IMF reading for the same period need not match. Read the quarterly line as within-year timing, not as a re-statement of the annual ratio.

Source: World Bank Quarterly Public Sector Debt (QPSD) World Bank QPSD, CC BY 4.0. General government gross debt, percent of GDP; 1995Q4 to 2025Q4. Methodology

External debt (World Bank IDS)

No IDS external-debt series for United Kingdom. The World Bank’s International Debt Statistics is compiled from the Debtor Reporting System, so a country is covered only while it reports to that system.

Debt in default (BoC-BoE CRAG)

Stock of United Kingdom’s government debt in default in 2022, from the Bank of Canada–Bank of England Sovereign Default Database, broken down by creditor class. The external total is $509.0M (current US dollars, excluding domestic arrears, matching the database’s published headline).

In default (external) for 44 distinct years between 1979 and 2022. Peak external default stock: $798.8M.

Source: BoC-BoE Sovereign Default Database 2025 (Beers, Ndukwe & Berry, Bank of Canada SAN 2025-24) BoC-BoE Sovereign Default Database, Bank of Canada terms (free use with attribution). Units: current US dollars; total excludes domestic arrears. Methodology

Sovereign-debt crisis history

Each episode with the government debt-to-GDP ratio in its start year, where a reading exists. Episode dates use the same merge as the crisis atlas (consecutive crisis years bridged across gaps of up to two years).

• 1932Pre-1950
  Debt at start: 189.1% (General govt (GMD historical))episode →

Source: Global Macro Database 2026_06 (Müller, Xu, Lehbib & Chen 2025) | Reinhart-Rogoff via HBS BFFS | Laeven & Valencia (2020) Methodology

Restructuring history and creditor losses

No sovereign-debt restructuring on record for United Kingdom in the Cruces–Trebesch haircut database (1815 to present).

Reading this profile

• Debt levels mix perimeters. The headline and debt-at-start figures fall back through IMF general government, then central government, then WEO gross debt, then (before 1950) the GMD historical series.
• Crisis flags end in 2016 (Reinhart-Rogoff) and 2017 (GMD, Laeven-Valencia), while debt runs to 2024. “Years since last crisis” and the absence of recent crises reflect where the sources stop, not a guarantee of calm.
• Debt level is a weak predictor of default on its own; see the methodology for the debt-intolerance evidence and the full construction.