Social Security faces 2026 with an increasingly visible problem in its accounts. On the one hand, contribution income continues to accelerate and has once again reached record levels at the start of the year. On the other hand, the system maintains a structural dependence on the State to pay pensions and other benefits, to the point that the extended budget includes 38,722.9 million euros in State transfers and 38,796.3 million in total transfers.
This need for public money is due to the 2025 budget structure itself, which reserves 19,888 million euros linked to the first recommendation of the Toledo Pact, in addition to 7,261 million for minimum supplements, 3,003 million for non-contributory pensions and 3,097 million for the Minimum Living Income. In other words, a growing part of social spending is no longer covered by contributions, but by general taxes.
Pressure is best understood by watching the execution. In February, Social Security accumulated 28,872 million in contributions, 7.4% more than a year before, while the Intergenerational Equity Mechanism contributed 680 million to the Reserve Fund. At the end of March, the system already added 43,318.8 million euros in rights recognized by social contributions, 7.6% more than in the same period of 2024.
Prices are growing, but they are not closing the hole
The increase in income has not eliminated the imbalance, since the system’s budget for 2025 amounts to 209,305 million euros, and in March alone the recognized obligations already reached 51,109 million. At that same monthly close, recognized current transfers were close to 4,971 million, a sign that State support continues to be activated early despite the good tone of employment and contribution bases.
The explanation for this is not to look only at the revaluation of pensions. It is also worth looking at the aging of our population (although it is a dynamic that Europe is also experiencing), the substitution effect between new registrations and cancellations, and the expansion of benefits managed by Social Security. AIReF already warned in its report on the spending rule that “implicit transfers from the rest of the Social Security Funds or the Central Administration must increase” to absorb the expected growth in pension spending.
The problem is no longer temporary
This scenario fits with what some expert analysts such as Fedea say, who maintain that, if State transfers are excluded, “the basic deficit of the system has continued to increase” and already exceeds 69,000 million euros in its expanded series. This reading reinforces the idea that the imbalance has not been corrected, but is being covered with a permanent transfer of resources from the Central Administration.
That does not mean that the system is on the brink of default. It means something different if viewed from a budgetary perspective: that pension spending continues to grow on an improving contributory income base, but not at the same pace as obligations. For this reason, although contributions are breaking records, the immediate sustainability of the system continues to rest on increasingly higher transfers from the State, a dynamic that once again puts pressure on public accounts and that is expected to remain at the center of the fiscal debate in the coming years.