Overview
- Recruitment opens in early 2026 for about 150 places offering a year of paid experience across the Army, Royal Navy and RAF.
- Participants will not deploy on active operations and there is no obligation to remain in service after completing the programme.
- Service designs differ: the Army option includes 13 weeks’ basic training within a longer placement, the Navy proposes a year‑long, profession‑agnostic track, and the RAF is still scoping its plan.
- The government aims to scale the scheme to more than 1,000 places annually, subject to demand and evaluation, with salary and funding details yet to be confirmed.
- The model draws on Australia’s ADF Gap Year, which enrolled 664 people in 2023 with about half later taking permanent roles, as UK forces grapple with reduced recruitment and training throughput and critics question the pilot’s small scale.