Estonia to raise pension age to 65 years, 4 months in 2029
The Ministry of Social Affairs has proposed setting the old‑age pension age at 65 years and four months from 2029 — a rise of four months on the current benchmark.
Under a new system taking effect from next year, the pension age will be set annually based on life expectancy, rather than a person's year of birth.
Estonian law requires the legal retirement age for each year to be established by regulation two years in advance. The old‑age pension age is calculated on the basis of a five‑year average of life expectancy at 65 in Estonia — for 2029, this is based on the years 2021–2025.
The 2029 pension age applies to people born between October 1963 and August 1964. For those born from September 1964 onwards, the pension age will depend on the pension age established for 2030.
The Ministry says regularly hiking the legal retirement age is a widely used EU measure to ease demographic pressure on state pension systems. Nearly half of EU member states link rises in the retirement age to increases in life expectancy. In Denmark, for example, the old‑age pension age is 67 now and is set to rise to 70 by 2040.
As of January 1, 2026, there were 331,000 pensioners in Estonia, including 315,000 old‑age pensioners. According to a Ministry of Finance forecast, the number of pensioners will increase to around 340,000 by 2060.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Urmet Kook
