BERN. The first 13th old-age pension will be paid in early December to about 2.6 million people, the Federal Social Insurance Office said on Tuesday. It is paid once a year, as a supplement to the December old-age pension, and nobody has to apply. The office published the rules on the morning the compensation funds are already lining up the cash.
Only people entitled to an old-age pension in December receive it. Survivor pensions, for widows, widowers and orphans, stay on twelve payments a year. So do disability pensions. A widow who has no old-age pension of her own does not receive a 13th widow’s pension. The vote of 3 March 2024 was an old-age pension, and the administration has now said so in the operational detail.
Who is paid in December, and who is not
The amount is one twelfth of the old-age pensions actually paid during the year. It is not automatically equal to the December monthly pension. If the monthly amount never changed, the 13th payment matches one ordinary month. If the pension changed during the year, the fund adds up the months and divides by twelve. Child pensions, a complementary spouse pension, and the supplement for women in the transitional generation of the AHV 21 reform are left out of that sum.
The office is explicit that no precise personal figure can be calculated before December. The fund that pays the December pension is the fund that calculates the 13th. Questions go there, not to a new federal counter. People living abroad who draw a Swiss old-age pension are in the same rule: entitlement in December is what counts. Olaf Wolfensberger, director of the Medisuisse compensation fund, told the magazine Soziale Sicherheit that his fund will pay on 3 December, and that the systems are ready.
Death dates are part of the rule, and they are blunt. If the beneficiary dies on 1 December or later, the December pension and the 13th are both due. If the death is on 30 November, both fall away. There is no separate waiver for the 13th payment alone. The law allows someone to renounce the AHV pension as a whole. It does not allow them to decline the extra month and keep the other twelve.
Supplementary benefits are not cut
The 13th pension must not reduce or cancel supplementary benefits, the income-tested top-up known as Ergänzungsleistungen. It is excluded from the income that those benefits are calculated on. Compensation funds have to show the ordinary pension and the 13th separately on their statements, so cantonal offices can tell them apart. That line on the paper is the protection. Without it, a bonus month could push a low pension over a threshold and take the top-up away, which is the opposite of what the vote was for.
Most funds will send two payments on the same day, the December pension and the 13th, rather than one combined transfer. A few will combine them. Either way the beneficiary does not file a form. Wolfensberger’s account of the system-wide sum is about CHF 4 billion for roughly 2.7 million pensioners in Switzerland and abroad, inside a December payout that, with the ordinary pensions, is closer to CHF 10 billion. The money is spread across 74 compensation funds. Compenswiss, which manages the AHV fund, has to have the extra liquidity on the day, including by selling investments. The orders for December cash have already gone to the central compensation office in Geneva.
The VAT vote that is supposed to pay for it
The payment is settled. The funding is not. Both chambers of parliament agreed in June 2026 to raise value added tax by 0.4 of a point from 2028 to help pay for the extra month. Voters decide that rise on 29 November. Elisabeth Baume-Schneider has called the tax increase a moderate compromise, and has warned of an AHV deficit near CHF 5 billion a year by 2035 without new money. A No on 29 November would not cancel the December payment. It would leave the bill for a benefit the country has already promised.
For anyone opening the letter this winter, Tuesday’s notice answers the practical questions. It arrives with the December pension. It is not a second application. It does not, by itself, shrink a supplementary benefit. And it will not be the same franc amount for every pensioner, because it follows the year that person actually had, not a flat national bonus. The political argument continues at the end of the month. The transfer does not wait for it.