The Fair Work Commission issued the Annual Wage Review 2026 decision on 2 June 2026.
Modern award wage rates shall be increased by 4.75 per cent, effective from 1 July 2026.
The National Minimum Wage, which is aligned to the C13 rate, will be increased to
$1004.90 per week, or $26.44 per hour. This will also take effect from 1 July 2026.
In accordance with s.286(5) of the Fair Work Act 2009 this determination does not take effect in relation to a particular employee until the start of the employee’s first full pay period that starts on or after 1 July 2026.
Fair Work Commission Annual Wage Review 2026 summary of decision
The HIGA Award 2020 update pdl file for use in WageEasy contains changes to Payrates, Allowances and Superannuation effective from 1 July 2026.
Important: Any custom changes you have made to your Award settings, will be lost if you apply the Award update pdl. Instead of applying this update to the Awards make the changes manually to each Award.
Allowances:
Payrates: Base Pay Rates: Including Junior rates
There is a separate updated PDL file for the Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 Juniors available. This update contains many rates, 70 in total. If you only pay one or two junior rates you may find it easier to manually add or update these rates yourself.
Awards:
Shift Loadings: Casual, Full Time, Part Time Awards
Script: Full Time and Part Time Awards only
For the payment of Split Shift Allowances (HIGA Broken Work day allowances)
Ensure allowances for payment of Split Shift loadings have Allowance No: entered
HIGA Broken Work Day Up to 3 Hours – Allowance No: HIGASPREAD2
HIGA Broken Work Day 3+ Hours – Allowance No: HIGASPREAD3
Superannuation changes effective 1 July 2026, in each Award:
The statutory Superannuation Guarantee remains the same at 12%
The Superannuation Guarantee quarterly contribution cap changes to a yearly
contribution cap of $270,830.
The Superannuation Guarantee (SG) minimum monthly pay threshold ($450 per month) has been removed from the SGL Monthly Gross Pay calculation which means this value needs to be changed to $0 in all awards.
Other items to check
General | General | Pay Rate Decimal Places
By default, “Pay Rate Decimal Places” are now set to 2.
See Fair Work Act 2009 with regards to rounding to 2 decimal places. All Fair Work Base payrates are set to 2 decimal places in WageEasy however where this Award setting is higher than 2, loadings will pay to this set number of decimal places. To meet with Fair Work requirements, this setting has been changed to 2 decimal places.
Note: Consider also the setup of any Period Overtime if it is being calculated over multiple pay periods. The date entered for Period Start will be removed with the Award upgrade.
If you need further information on how to apply these changes or about booking a consultant, contact the WageEasy Help Desk by logging into MyAccess
Access WageEasy is not able to provide advice relating to the interpretation of these Awards.
Access WageEasy is also not able to provide clients with business or industrial relations advice.
Access WageEasy does not configure State based transitional arrangements; these will need to be manually configured.
Update Instructions (for Desktop only):
Download the above file to C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\Wage Easy Payroll\Association Data\Australia.
If it downloaded to your DOWNLOADS folder, copy the file into the default location as shown above.
Go to WageEasy, Setup, Association, select the Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 icon, Edit.
Select the Internet tab.
Within the Internet tab, tick the items you want to update i.e. Allowances, Awards, and Base Pay Rates, then select Update Now.
Note: Do not tick Tax Tables and Rebates.
Select Next.
Load from Disk File. Click on the 3 dots (Ellipsis) to navigate to the location (i.e. C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\Wage Easy Payroll\Association Data\Australia) where you saved your Hospitality Industry General Award 2020_2026-27_UPDATE.Pdl file to. Once you have located the file, select Open, Next, Finish.
Close using the close door icon (NOT the red cross) and select Close in the Edit Association Details box.
Repeat this process for each company file.
You are now ready to pay your employees.