National Careers Week 2026

We are proud to be supporting National Careers Week 2026 – an annual event devoted to celebrating great careers guidance in education across the UK.

The theme this year is “Own your future”. High-quality careers guidance can play a pivotal part in helping young people build the confidence, skills and knowledge they need to take their next step. The future is full of opportunities for young people, but a growing and concerning number of them are not being supported to best fulfil their potential. The latest data from the Office for National Statistics showed that there were 957,000 young people not in education, employment or training in the final quarter of 2025.

Our recent report, ‘A three-lane superhighway into work’, looks at how we can strengthen the three routes into the labour market that young people most commonly take – direct entry into work, apprenticeships or university. It sets out a series of deliverable steps that we can take to strengthen the system supporting young people’s transitions so that no one gets left behind.

We have lots of activity that contributes to this agenda planned for National Careers Week:

• What does modern work experience need to look like as tech-driven roles grow? As tech roles now make up the highest share of all high-demand occupations, Tech UK will be publishing our insight on this later this week
• On Wednesday, our Central London Careers Hub team is hosting the DWP Milburn Review team at a roundtable event bringing together employers, education providers, the health sector, local charities and other local stakeholders to explore the increase in NEET rates among young people
• Wednesday is also National Contact Centre Day, and our team will be working with young people to challenge stereotypes around contact centre careers
• And on Friday, our Central London Careers Hub is coordinating a careers event at London Zoo, bringing together 100 young people aged 12-13 from five London schools to explore sustainable careers in finance, data, construction, conservation and technology

Read our full report here.