The Vote Health package for Budget 2026 provides funding to improve New Zealanders’ access to healthcare and strengthen hospital and digital infrastructure.
The package provides more than $5.8 billion in new Vote Health operating funding over the forecast period, including a $1.370 billion annual uplift to help meet frontline cost pressures, and targeted initiatives to improve care. It also includes more than $680 million of capital funding for the health system.
Read Minister of Health Hon Simeon Brown’s press release: Record health funding with patients at the centre.
Initiatives
Targeted initiatives to improve care for communities across New Zealand include:
- Establishing a nationally coordinated specialist paediatric palliative care service.
Find out more.
- Lowering the eligibility age for the National Bowel Screening Programme to 56. Find out more.
- Funding to give mothers the option of staying up to three days at a hospital or primary maternity unit following birth. Find out more.
- Investing in high-priority initiatives for road ambulance services to support effective delivery and increased capacity. Find out more.
- Strengthening digital services to ensure increased security for patient information and to safeguard the health system from cyber threats. This sits alongside investment by Health New Zealand in priority digital projects through the Health Digital Investment Plan. Find out more.
- Supporting Pharmac to respond to pressures and increase access to medicines.
- The previously announced increase in mileage rates for home and community support workers, providing critical fuel relief in response to impacts from the Middle East conflict. Find out more.
Health infrastructure
Budget 2026 also includes more than $680 million in capital funding for new infrastructure initiatives and earlier commitments. Find out more.
New infrastructure initiatives include
- A 158-bed ward tower at Whangārei Hospital (second phase of the Project Pihi Kaha at the Hospital)
- Design and initial work for redevelopments at Tauranga, Hawke’s Bay, and Palmerston North regional hospitals through Tranche 2 of the Regional Hospital Redevelopment Programme. Alongside this, Health New Zealand will fund a new, temporary intensive care unit at Palmerston North Hospital and the fit-out of an inpatient unit at Tauranga Hospital.
- Acquisition of land south of Auckland, to support development of a future hospital for the region. Find out more.
- Infrastructure upgrades at Auckland’s Mason Clinic, New Zealand’s largest forensic psychiatric service.
- Support for addressing demand pressures on adult forensic mental health service capacity, alongside operating funding prioritised from within the mental health and addiction ringfence to support increased service capacity.
Earlier commitments include:
- Funding to enable Health New Zealand to enter a construction contract for the Inpatient Building of the New Dunedin Hospital as part of the implementation business case.
- Establishment costs for the new medical school at the University of Waikato, helping to increase the future number of New Zealand-trained doctors with a focus on primary and rural health care. Find out more.
The investments support the next stage of the 10-year Health Infrastructure Plan announced in April 2025, which phases major developments alongside smaller investments.
Funding for the new infrastructure initiatives is placed into tagged capital contingencies. Contingency funding can be drawn down by Ministers, subject to business cases being completed and other necessary conditions being met.
In addition to the initiatives listed above, Health New Zealand will invest a further $930 million over the coming year to support new clinical equipment, improvements to key facilities and investments in new technologies to support clinical teams.
This includes new mobile diagnostic units, radiology upgrades, and refurbishments to better support frontline clinical teams. A key part of this is planning and design work to expand the network of linear accelerator machines in Christchurch, South Auckland, and Nelson, helping to increase radiation treatment capacity, meet growing demand, and improve access to care for cancer patients.
Funding for Health New Zealand’s frontline services
At Budget 2024, a multi-year arrangement was put in place to meet cost pressures for frontline health services, with funding of $16.680 billion committed across three Budgets. The cost pressure funding supports Health New Zealand to keep pace with demographic changes (as New Zealand’s population increases and ages) and increasing costs (inflation).
The multi-year funding arrangement has already delivered an uplift of $1.430 billion in annual funding for Health New Zealand in 2024/25 and all future years (equivalent to $5.720 billion across the Budget 2024 forecast period), and a further uplift of $1.370 billion in 2025/26 and all future years (equivalent to $5.480 billion across the Budget 2025 forecast period).
Building on these two previous uplifts, Budget 2026 delivers an additional $1.370 billion uplift in 2026/27 and all future years (equivalent to $5.480 billion across the Budget 2026 forecast period).
Annual uplifts are built into Health New Zealand’s baseline funding, meaning that the uplifts across the three Budgets are cumulative.
