IG Cashback Offer UK 2026 — Get Up to £5,000 Cashback
- expertise:
- CFD Trading, Forex, Derivatives, Risk Management
- credentials:
- Chartered ACII (2018) · Trading since 2012
- tested:
- 40+ forex & CFD platforms with live accounts
- expertise:
- Broker Comparison, ISA Strategy, Portfolio Management
- credentials:
- Active investor since 2013 · 11+ years experience
- tested:
- 40+ brokers with funded accounts
How We Test
Real accounts. Real money. Real trades. No demo accounts or press releases.
What we measure:
- Spreads vs advertised rates
- Execution speed and slippage
- Hidden fees (overnight, withdrawal, conversion)
- Actual withdrawal times
Scoring:
Fees (25%) · Platform (20%) · Assets (15%) · Mobile (15%) · Tools (10%) · Support (10%) · Regulation (5%)
Regulatory checks:
FCA Register verification · FSCS protection
Testing team:
Adam Woodhead (investing since 2013), Thomas Drury (Chartered ACII, 2018), Dom Farnell (investing since 2013) — 50+ platforms with funded accounts
Quarterly reviews · Corrections: info@theinvestorscentre.co.uk
Disclaimer
Not financial advice. Educational content only. We're not FCA authorised. Consult a qualified advisor before investing.
Capital at risk. Investments can fall. Past performance doesn't guarantee future results.
CFD warning. 67-84% of retail accounts lose money trading CFDs. High risk due to leverage.
Contact: info@theinvestorscentre.co.uk
Live IG offers — pick one
Three IG promotions live for UK investors right now. You can only claim one — the right pick depends on whether you’re depositing new cash or transferring an existing portfolio. Each is broken down in detail further down the page.
IG — CASHBACK250
- Best For
- New investors depositing fresh cash
- Max Reward
- £250 cashback
- Min. Investment
- £500 in shares/ETFs
- Accounts
- ISA, GIA, SIPP
- Deadline
- 30 April 2026
69% of retail CFD accounts lose money.
IG — WELCOME300
- Best For
- New investors after April
- Reward
- £40–£300 in UK shares
- Min. Traded
- £300 net
- Accounts
- ISA, GIA, SIPP
- Deadline
- 31 December 2026
69% of retail CFD accounts lose money.
IG — TRANSFER5000
- Best For
- Transferring an existing portfolio
- Max Reward
- £5,000 (fixed tiers)
- Min. Transfer
- £10,000
- Accounts
- ISA, GIA, SIPP
- Form By
- 31 May 2026
69% of retail CFD accounts lose money.
The headline cashback offer (CASHBACK250) ends 30 April — days from when this page was last updated — paying £50, £150 or £250 depending on what you put in. After it expires, the new welcome bonus (WELCOME300) takes over, paying out in randomly allocated UK shares worth between £40 and £300 to anyone who deposits and trades £300 or more by the end of December.
There’s also a brand-new transfer offer (TRANSFER5000) for anyone bringing across an existing portfolio. £10,000 minimum to qualify, fixed-tier cashback going up to £5,000 for transfers above £1 million. Each of the three is broken down properly below.
One thing first though. £50 to £250 in cashback, or a few quid in random UK shares, is nice but it doesn’t undo a year of paying inflated platform fees if IG isn’t the right home for the way you invest. Take the offer because IG suits you, not the other way round.
The short version
Use code CASHBACK250 when you open a new IG share dealing account before 30 April, fund with £500 or more, buy shares, and don’t touch the money until November. Depending on how much you put in, you’ll get £50, £150 or £250 paid into your IG General Investment Account at the end of the year.
Missed the April window? Use code WELCOME300 instead. Same general idea but the reward is £40 to £300 in randomly allocated UK shares rather than cash. Runs to 31 December 2026, with a three-month hold instead of six.
Bringing across an existing portfolio worth £10,000 or more from another broker? TRANSFER5000 pays fixed-tier cashback up to £5,000. One promo per customer either way.
What IG’s running this April
Three things going on at once. Pick one. The right choice mostly comes down to whether you’re putting in new money or shifting an existing portfolio across.
How the £250 cashback actually works
The headline cashback offer, but you’ve got to be quick — this one ends 30 April 2026. After that the welcome bonus (covered next) takes over. Open to new IG share dealing customers only, meaning ISA, GIA or SIPP. Account opened and funded in April, money held until the end of October, cashback paid in November.
How the tiers work
The £50 / £150 / £250 you get is based on what you’ve actually got invested on average across the six-month hold period, not what you initially deposit. Put £10,000 in for April, pull most of it out in June, and you’ve blown the £250 tier.
| Average Invested (May–Oct 2026) | Cashback Earned |
|---|---|
| £500 – £2,999 | £50 |
| £3,000 – £9,999 | £150 |
| £10,000+ | £250 |
There’s no in-between. £2,999 invested pays £50. £3,000 invested pays £150. If you’re sitting just under one of those thresholds, an extra few quid is the most lopsided rate of return you’ll ever see.
Who can claim
- New IG share dealing customers. If you’ve only ever had a spread betting or CFD account with them, you’re still eligible. If you’ve held an IG ISA, GIA or SIPP before, you’re out.
- UK resident, 18 or over, with an NI number.
- Account opened during April with the code CASHBACK250 entered as you signed up.
- At least £500 actually invested in shares or ETFs. Cash parked in the account doesn’t count and never will.
What doesn’t count
- Smart Portfolios. IG’s managed service is out completely.
- CFDs and spread bets. Share dealing only.
- Existing assets you transfer in. Has to be new cash going into new positions.
- Combining with anything else IG’s running. One promo per customer.
When you actually get paid
By 30 November 2026, in cash, into a General Investment Account. If you used the offer to open an ISA or SIPP, it doesn’t go into those — IG sets up a separate GIA for the payout. So it sits outside any tax wrapper.
Payments tend to land bang on schedule. I’ve never seen IG miss one of these dates. Where people lose the cashback is by withdrawing money during the hold period, not by anything to do with the payment itself.
What if I’m bringing a portfolio across?
This is the brand new transfer offer that just launched on 24 April, replacing the previous TRANSFER5K incentive. Different structure too — instead of a flat 1% of whatever you bring in, IG now pays a fixed cashback amount based on which tier your transfer lands in. Maximum is still £5,000, but you need to transfer over £1 million to hit it.
Worth saying upfront: for transfers between roughly £20,000 and £500,000, the new structure is meaningfully less generous than the offer it replaced. A £100,000 transfer would have paid £1,000 under the old 1% structure; under the new fixed tiers it pays £500. If you were on the fence about transferring under the old terms, do the maths properly before pulling the trigger.
The terms in short
- Code: TRANSFER5000
- £10,000 minimum transfer (was £5,000 under the old offer)
- Promotion window: 24 April to 31 May 2026 — transfer form has to be in by 23:59 on 31 May
- Transfer itself has to complete by 31 July 2026
- Hold the transferred assets until 31 May 2027
- Cashback paid by 30 June 2027 (into your IG GIA)
- Works for ISAs, SIPPs and general accounts
The thing that catches people out
Open the account. Submit the transfer request. Then trade. Get those out of order — fund the account and start buying things before the transfer’s been requested — and the cashback won’t apply. I watched someone do exactly this on a similar offer last year and it was a nightmare to unpick afterwards.
Transfers themselves take two to eight weeks. Modern brokers (Hargreaves, AJ Bell, Trading 212) are quicker. SIPP transfers from older legacy schemes are usually slowest because of the verification on their end. With the 31 July transfer-completion deadline, you’d want the form in well before late May to give legacy providers the time they need.
What you’d actually earn
Seven fixed cashback tiers based on what you transfer in:
| Transferred Amount | Cashback |
|---|---|
| £10,000 – £20,000 | £100 |
| £20,001 – £50,000 | £250 |
| £50,001 – £100,000 | £500 |
| £100,001 – £250,000 | £1,000 |
| £250,001 – £500,000 | £2,000 |
| £500,001 – £1,000,000 | £3,000 |
| Over £1,000,000 | £5,000 (max) |
Same fixed-amount logic as CASHBACK250: tiers aren’t pro-rated. A £20,000 transfer pays £100, but pushing it to £20,001 jumps you to £250. If you’re anywhere near a tier boundary, even a small top-up before submitting the form is worth it.
You don’t need to add any new money for this one — IG pays you to bring across what you already own.
What about WELCOME300?
The new welcome offer. Lower bar to entry than CASHBACK250, longer running, and the reward comes in UK shares rather than cash. Open a new IG account using code WELCOME300, do at least £300 of net trades by the end of the same calendar month as your first trade, and hold an average of £300 invested for three full months after that. IG then drops a randomly allocated bundle of UK-listed shares worth somewhere between £40 and £300 into your account.
The honest catch: it’s a lottery within a range. Most people will land closer to the £40–£75 end than the £300 end — that’s the maths of any randomised allocation. So go in expecting a small reward and treating anything above £100 as a bonus. You can sell the shares the moment they hit your account or keep them.
Where it wins over the April cashback offer: shorter hold (three months instead of six), lower minimum (£300 instead of £500), runs to 31 December 2026 so there’s no rush, and you can use the same ISA, GIA or SIPP wrappers. Where it loses: cash is cash, and a guaranteed £50 from CASHBACK250 beats a likely £40–£75 of randomly chosen UK shares for most people who can hit the April deadline.
Worth a look at our free shares in the UK guide for what other brokers are doing on the same idea.
Hold on, who actually are IG?
IG’s been around since 1974, so longer than most banks you can name. They started as a spread betting outfit and added share dealing, ISAs and SIPPs over the past decade or so. Listed on the London Stock Exchange under IGG, FCA-regulated (firm reference 195355 if you fancy looking them up), and managing somewhere north of £100 billion of client money worldwide.
Practically speaking: your money sits in segregated accounts and you’re FSCS-protected up to £85,000 if anything ever went wrong on their end. CFD accounts get negative balance protection too. Standard fare for any decent UK broker but worth knowing it’s there. You can check the registration yourself on the FCA Register.
Where IG isn’t great: small, passive portfolios. If you’re putting £1,000 into an index fund and never trading it, you’ll pay less elsewhere. Trading 212 and InvestEngine come to mind. Take the £50 cashback once, then ask yourself whether you’ll quietly pay it back to IG over the next twelve months in fees you wouldn’t have paid somewhere cheaper.
Where IG genuinely shines: bigger portfolios, active investors, anyone wanting share dealing alongside spread betting and CFDs from one login. Not many UK brokers do all of that under one roof. For a fuller take, the IG review goes into where it works and where it doesn’t.
Right, what do I actually have to do?
In order, because the order matters here:
- Check the offer’s still live on the IG page before you start.
- Open the account. Pick your wrapper — ISA, SIPP, or general.
- Type CASHBACK250 into the promo code field when it asks. Don’t skip this. There’s no adding the code in afterwards.
- Get through the ID checks. Name, address, NI number, the usual.
- Fund the account by 30 April. Bank transfer or debit card — both free. No credit cards.
- Use the money to buy shares or ETFs. Anything left as cash doesn’t count.
- Don’t withdraw before 31 October. Your average invested value across those six months is what determines your tier.
- Wait. Cashback lands in your GIA by the end of November.
Going for the transfer offer instead? Slightly different sequence: open the account, request the transfer, wait for it to complete, then trade. Hold what you’ve moved across until the end of May 2027.
So which one should I take?
Quick rule of thumb based on what I’d say to a mate asking:
| If this is you... | Take this | Because |
|---|---|---|
| New, with £500–£3,000 to put in (and you can hit the 30 April deadline) | CASHBACK250 | Guaranteed £50 cash beats a likely £40–£75 of random UK shares. |
| New, with £3,000 or more (April deadline doable) | CASHBACK250 | Once you clear the £3k line, the £150 / £250 tiers are well above anything WELCOME300 will hand you. |
| New investor, missed April or only have £300 to spare | WELCOME300 | Lower minimum, shorter hold, runs to 31 December — no rush. |
| Existing portfolio worth less than £10k elsewhere | CASHBACK250 with new cash (or WELCOME300 after April) | Below the £10k transfer minimum, so the transfer offer’s out entirely. |
| Existing portfolio of £20k+ in an ISA or SIPP | TRANSFER5000 | Once you’re past £20k, the fixed-tier cashback meaningfully beats the others. Tax wrapper comes with you too. |
Quick example. Last year a colleague used a similar IG transfer promo to bring a £40,000 ISA across from a legacy provider. Under the new TRANSFER5000 tiers a £40,000 transfer would land them in the £20,001–£50,000 band, paying £250. Less generous than the old 1% structure (which would have paid £400) but still hard to beat any other way — you can’t open a fresh ISA with £40,000 in it because the annual limit is £20,000.
Are other brokers offering more?
IG isn’t always winning on the headline number. Hargreaves Lansdown’s transfer offer can pay more on mid-sized pots, AJ Bell sometimes matches them, and Trading 212 occasionally throws around free shares worth roughly the same as WELCOME300’s lower end. Where IG comes out cleaner is in what’s actually required of you. A lot of the bigger “free share” promos at rivals come with hidden trading-volume hurdles or expire if you go quiet. IG just asks you to deposit and wait.
| Broker | Top New-Customer Offer | Min. Deposit | Holding Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| IG (CASHBACK250) | Up to £250 cashback | £500 invested | 6 months |
| IG (WELCOME300) | £40–£300 random UK shares | £300 net trades | 3 months |
| IG (TRANSFER5000) | Up to £5,000 fixed-tier cashback | £10,000 transfer | 12 months |
| eToro | Variable — typically 1 free stock | $50 deposit | None for stock; trading required for cash bonuses |
| Trading 212 | Free share worth up to £100 | £1 deposit | Verify within 10 days |
| Hargreaves Lansdown | Up to £1,000 cashback (transfer-only) | £5,000 transfer | 12 months |
| AJ Bell | Periodic £250 transfer offer | £25,000 transfer | 12 months |
What’s the catch?
A handful of things I’d want to know before clicking sign up:
- The hold period genuinely matters. Pull money out across May to October and you’ll likely drop a tier. Pull out enough and you fall out of the offer altogether.
- It’s taxable. The cashback gets paid in cash into a General Investment Account, which means HMRC sees it. Sits outside your ISA wrapper even if you used the offer to open one. Tax treatment depends on your circumstances and changes over time.
- Self-directed only. Smart Portfolios and any managed service is out.
- Markets fall. If your £10,000 portfolio is worth £8,000 by November, the £250 doesn’t help much. Standard caveat but worth saying out loud.
- The promo code goes in at sign-up. Once. There’s no retrofitting it on the phone afterwards. Check before you click submit.
If you’re thinking about a SIPP transfer or anything tax-heavy, talk to an IFA before you move money around. There isn’t enough in a £250 cashback to recover from a planning mistake on a six-figure pot.
FAQs
Are these offers actually real?
Yes — all three are currently live. CASHBACK250 runs to 30 April 2026, WELCOME300 runs to 31 December, and TRANSFER5000 (the new transfer offer that replaced TRANSFER5K on 24 April) runs to 31 May. Each pays out cash or shares directly into your IG account on its own schedule. The terms pages are linked in each section above if you want to double-check before applying.
I’m already with IG — can I still claim?
Mostly no, but there’s a workaround. The offers are only for new IG share dealing customers. If you’ve held an IG ISA, GIA or SIPP before, you’re locked out. But if you’ve only ever spread bet or traded CFDs with them, you count as new for share dealing and you’re back in. Worth ringing IG support if you’re not sure which side of that line you’re on.
What’s the difference between WELCOME300 and CASHBACK250?
WELCOME300 pays you in a randomly allocated bundle of UK-listed shares worth £40 to £300; CASHBACK250 pays straight cash up to £250 in tiers. Lower minimum on WELCOME300 (£300 vs £500), shorter hold (3 months vs 6), and it runs all the way to 31 December rather than ending on 30 April. CASHBACK250 is generally the better choice if you can hit the April deadline and you can deposit £500+ — cash is cash. WELCOME300 is the only option after April.
How is TRANSFER5000 different from the old TRANSFER5K?
TRANSFER5000 launched on 24 April 2026 and replaced TRANSFER5K. Two big changes: minimum transfer is now £10,000 (was £5,000), and the cashback is calculated as fixed amounts per tier rather than a flat 1% of value. For most mid-sized transfers the new structure is less generous — a £100,000 transfer used to pay £1,000 (1%), now pays £500 (the £50,001–£100,000 tier). The maximum £5,000 cashback now requires a transfer above £1 million.
What if I need to take money out before the hold period ends?
Depends which offer and how much. CASHBACK250 looks at your average invested value over the six months, so a small dip won’t kill it — but if your average falls below the tier you applied under, you drop a tier (or out completely below £500). WELCOME300 needs an average £300 invested for three months. TRANSFER5000 needs the £10,000 minimum maintained until 31 May 2027.
Does the cashback eat into my ISA allowance?
No. IG pays cash rewards (CASHBACK250, TRANSFER5000) into a General Investment Account regardless of which account type you used to claim. So your £20,000 ISA allowance is untouched. Downside: the cashback itself isn’t sheltered by the ISA — it’s just normal cash sitting in a GIA, taxable like anything else there. WELCOME300’s share allocation goes into the account you opened (so into the ISA itself if that’s where you traded).
Can I claim more than one offer?
No. One promo per customer — you’re eligible only for the offer you begin participating in first. If you’re transferring £20,000 or more, TRANSFER5000 usually beats the others. Between the two new-money offers, CASHBACK250 wins on cash value if you can hit April; WELCOME300 wins on flexibility and runs longer.
Is IG safe to use?
Yes. They’re FCA-authorised (FRN 195355), client money is FSCS-protected up to £85,000, listed on the LSE under IGG, and they’ve been around since 1974. You can check the registration yourself on the FCA Register. Our is IG safe breakdown covers it in more detail.
What if I miss all the deadlines?
WELCOME300 runs all the way to 31 December 2026, so there’s a long runway on at least one of these. After that, IG usually has a new welcome promo within a few weeks — different code, different terms. We refresh this page when new offers launch, so check back rather than chasing expired ones.
Is it worth it?
Quick decision tree, in plain terms.
If IG was already on your shortlist and you can hit the 30 April deadline with £3,000+ to invest for six months, take CASHBACK250. The terms are unusually clean — no trading volume hurdles, no quarterly review traps, just hold and get paid. The £3k+ tiers are where the offer pays meaningful money.
If it’s after April, or you only have £300–£500 to put in, take WELCOME300. The reward is randomly allocated UK shares worth £40–£300, so go in expecting somewhere in the £40–£75 range and treat anything more as a bonus. Lower commitment than CASHBACK250, but you’re also not getting cash and the upper end of the range is unlikely.
If you’re moving an existing portfolio worth £20,000 or more across from another broker, take TRANSFER5000. The new fixed-tier structure is less generous than the offer it replaced (worth knowing) but still adds up fast at higher transfer values, and you don’t need to add any new money.
What I wouldn’t do is open an IG account purely because of any of these. £40 to £5,000 in cashback or shares is nice, but if IG isn’t the right home for the way you invest, you’ll quietly pay it back in fees within a year. If you’re not sure whether IG suits you, our full IG review and is IG good for beginners breakdown both cover where it fits.