IG Cashback Offer UK 2026 — Get Up to £5,000 Cashback

How does the 2% cashback offer actually work?

The simplest of the three offers. Open a new IG account before 31 May 2026, invest at least £1,000, hold the position until 30 September 2026, and IG pays you 2% of your initial deposit back as cash. Capped at £200, meaning the offer effectively maxes out at a £10,000 deposit — anything you put in above that doesn’t earn extra cashback.

How the maths works

Linear, unlike the old tiered offers. Whatever you invest, you get 2% of it back up to the £200 cap. So £1,000 in pays £20. £5,000 pays £100. £10,000 pays the maximum £200. £20,000 still only pays £200. There’s no benefit to depositing more than £10,000 unless you genuinely want to invest that much anyway.

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 and funded by 31 May 2026 with the cashback offer selected at sign-up.
• At least £1,000 actually invested in shares or ETFs. Cash parked in the account doesn’t count.
• Position maintained until 30 September 2026.

What doesn’t count

• Smart Portfolios. IG’s managed service is out.
• CFDs and spread bets. Share dealing only.
• Existing assets you transfer in. Has to be new cash going into new positions.
• Combining with any other IG offer. One promo per customer.

When you actually get paid

Cashback is credited to your IG General Investment Account once the hold period closes on 30 September 2026. If you opened the offer using an ISA or SIPP, IG sets up a separate GIA for the payout — the cash itself sits outside the tax wrapper. IG’s payment timing on this kind of offer has historically been reliable. Where people lose the cashback is by withdrawing money during the hold period and dropping below the £1,000 threshold.

What about the free shares offer?

Same entry requirement as the cashback offer — £1,000 invested by 31 May 2026 — but the reward comes in shares rather than cash, and it’s randomly allocated within a range. Open a new IG account, invest £1,000 or more, hold the position until 31 August 2026, and IG drops a bundle of shares worth somewhere between £50 and £1,000 into your account.

How the random allocation works

It’s a lottery within a range. Most people will land closer to the £50–£150 end than the £1,000 end — that’s the maths of any randomised allocation. The headline £1,000 figure is the absolute ceiling, not the expected outcome. Go in expecting somewhere around £75–£150 and treat anything above £200 as a bonus. You can sell the shares the moment they hit your account or keep them.

The W-8BEN catch

This is the one structural difference vs the cashback offer. The shares awarded are US-listed, so you need to submit a W-8BEN form to claim them. The W-8BEN is a standard US tax form for non-US residents that reduces US dividend withholding from 30% to 15%. IG handles the form within the platform — it’s a few clicks during account setup, not a paper document — but if you skip it, the offer doesn’t apply. The cashback offer (above) has no W-8BEN requirement because it pays in GBP cash.

Who can claim

• New IG share dealing customers (same eligibility rules as the cashback offer).
• Account opened and funded by 31 May 2026 with the free shares offer selected at sign-up.
• At least £1,000 invested in shares or ETFs.
• W-8BEN form submitted within the IG platform.
• Position held until 31 August 2026.

Free shares vs cashback — which is the better bet?

If you can deposit £10,000 or more, the cashback offer is the better deal. Guaranteed £200 in cash beats a likely £75–£150 in random shares, and you don’t need a W-8BEN. If you’re depositing closer to £1,000–£3,000, the maths flips slightly — on a £1,000 deposit, cashback only pays £20, so even a bottom-end £50 share allocation matches it, and a mid-range allocation easily beats it. The free shares offer has higher upside but more variance.

One non-financial point: free shares are a bit more fun if you’re newer to investing. You don’t know what you’ll get, you get to learn about the company you’ve been given, and there’s a small thrill to it. Cashback is just money. Make of that what you will.

What if I’m bringing a portfolio across?

The transfer offer is for anyone moving an existing portfolio to IG from another broker. Different structure to the other three — instead of a percentage of new money invested, you get a fixed cashback amount based on which tier your transfer lands in. The maximum is £5,000, but you need to transfer over £1 million to hit it. Minimum to qualify is £10,000.

Worth saying upfront: for transfers between roughly £20,000 and £500,000, the new fixed-tier structure pays less than IG’s previous flat-1% transfer offer would have done. A £100,000 transfer would have paid £1,000 under the old terms; under the new fixed tiers it pays £500. Still real money, but worth doing the maths before pulling the trigger if you remember the old deal.

The terms in short

• Promo code: TRANSFER5000
• £10,000 minimum transfer
• Account opened and transfer form submitted by 23:59 on 31 May 2026
• Transfer itself must 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 ISA and GIA accounts (SIPPs may be excluded under the current terms — check at sign-up)

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 form is in — and the cashback won’t apply. I’ve seen people do exactly this on similar offers and it’s a nightmare to unpick afterwards.

Transfer timelines also catch people out. Modern brokers (Hargreaves, AJ Bell, Trading 212) usually clear a transfer in 2–4 weeks. SIPP transfers from older legacy schemes can take 6–8 weeks because of the verification work on their end. With the 31 July transfer-completion deadline and the form due in by 31 May, you’ve got 8 weeks of headroom — tight but workable if you start now. Leave it until late May and you risk the transfer not completing in time.

What you’d actually earn

Seven fixed cashback tiers based on what you transfer in:

Same fixed-amount logic as IG’s previous cashback offers: 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.

One genuine advantage of the transfer route: you don’t need to add any new money. IG pays you to bring across what you already own, and the tax wrapper (ISA or GIA) comes with you intact.

Hold on, who actually are IG?

IG has 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 used to fall short was small, passive portfolios — the £24 quarterly custody charge made the platform expensive for buy-and-hold investors with smaller pots. That charge was removed in January 2026. Combined with the existing zero-commission UK and US share trading, IG is now genuinely cost-competitive for passive index investors too, not just active traders. Our best investment platforms UK ranking moved IG to #1 for 2026 on the back of that change.

Where IG genuinely shines: anyone wanting share dealing alongside spread betting and CFDs from one login, anyone investing across international markets, and anyone who wants both an ISA and SIPP at zero platform cost. For a fuller take, the IG review covers where it works and where it doesn’t.

Right, what do I actually have to do?

In order, because the order matters here. Steps are written for the cashback and free shares offers — the transfer offer has its own minor variation noted at the end.

1. Check the offer’s still live on the IG investments page before you start.
2. Open the account. Pick your wrapper — GIA, ISA or SIPP.
3. Select your offer at sign-up — you’ll see them listed during the application. You can only pick one, so think about which suits you (cashback for guaranteed money, free shares for upside).
4. Get through the ID checks. Name, address, NI number, the usual.
5. If you picked free shares, complete the W-8BEN form when prompted — it’s a few clicks within the platform.
6. Fund the account by 31 May 2026. Bank transfer, debit card, or Apple Pay — all free. No credit cards.
7. Use the money to buy shares or ETFs totalling at least £1,000. Anything left as cash doesn’t count.
8. Don’t withdraw below the £1,000 threshold before the hold period ends (30 September for cashback, 31 August for free shares).
9. Wait. Cashback lands in your GIA after 30 September. Free shares land after 31 August.

Transfer offer variation: open the account, request the transfer (don’t trade first), wait for it to complete, then trade. Hold the transferred assets until 31 May 2027.

So which one should I take?

Quick rule of thumb based on what I’d say to a mate asking:

Quick worked example. A £40,000 transfer under the current TRANSFER5000 tiers lands in the £20,001–£50,000 band, paying £250. The same £40,000 split as new money into the cashback offer would only pay the £200 cap. So for anyone with an existing £20k+ portfolio elsewhere, the transfer offer almost always wins — and your ISA tax wrapper comes across with you instead of being lost.

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 occasionally runs comparable transfer deals, and Trading 212 hands out free shares of similar size with a far lower entry threshold. 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.

On a total-cost basis (the offer plus the platform itself), IG’s January 2026 fee restructure also tilts the comparison further in its favour for buy-and-hold investors. Hargreaves Lansdown still charges 0.35% per year on shares; IG charges nothing. Even after HL’s March 2026 fee cuts, the gap on a £50,000 portfolio is meaningful over a decade.

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 before 30 September (cashback) or 31 August (free shares) and you risk losing the reward. The transfer offer needs the £10,000 minimum held all the way to 31 May 2027 — almost a full year.
• The free shares offer needs a W-8BEN. Five-minute job inside the platform, but if you skip it, no shares.
• Cashback is taxable. Paid as cash into a GIA, which means HMRC sees it. Sits outside any ISA wrapper even if you used the offer to open one. Tax treatment depends on your circumstances.
• Self-directed only. Smart Portfolios and any managed service is out across all three offers.
• Markets fall. If your £10,000 portfolio is worth £8,000 by September, the £200 cashback doesn’t help much. Standard caveat but worth saying out loud.
• You select the offer at sign-up, once. There’s no retrofitting it on the phone afterwards. Check you’ve picked the right one 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 any of these offers to recover from a planning mistake on a six-figure pot.

Is it worth it?

Quick decision tree, in plain terms.

If IG was already on your shortlist and you can deposit £10,000 or more by 31 May, take the 2% cashback offer. The terms are unusually clean — no trading volume hurdles, no quarterly review traps, just hold and get paid. Guaranteed £200 in cash with no W-8BEN to bother with.

If you’re depositing £1,000–£3,000, take the free shares offer. The maths leans toward shares at smaller deposit sizes, where the 2% cap badly underperforms. You’ll get a randomly allocated bundle worth somewhere in the £50–£200 range most of the time, with a small chance of significantly more.

If you’re moving an existing portfolio worth £10,000 or more across from another broker, take the transfer cashback. The new fixed-tier structure is less generous than IG’s previous flat-1% offer (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. The reason IG now sits at #1 in our best investment platforms ranking is the platform itself, not the welcome offers — zero commission across UK and US shares, no platform fee, both ISA and SIPP, 17,000+ instruments. The offers are a useful bonus on top. If IG doesn’t suit how you invest, no welcome bonus changes that. For more on whether IG fits your investing style, our full IG review and is IG good for beginners breakdown both cover where it fits.