Pannage 2026: Where to spot the New Forest pigs

Autumn in Hampshire comes with a peculiar tradition: a few hundred pigs trotting through the New Forest. Pannage is back for 2026, and this year the season runs from Monday 14 September to Sunday 29 November. It is an ancient right known as 'Common of mast', which lets commoners turn their domestic pigs into the forest to feast on fallen acorns, beech mast and chestnuts. The pigs are not wild, though they act it; they belong to commoners and are nicknamed 'punk pigs', each marked with an ear tag and a nose ring to show who owns it and to stop them doing too much damage when they root. They can wander up to seven miles a day and sleep out in the forest until they are brought in at the end of the season, and the resulting pannage pork is well known for its flavour.

If you are heading out to find them, the best places to look are among the ancient oak trees, with Bolderwood and Knightwood being reliable spots. They have been known to forage through local villages too, and in Brockenhurst they have turned up along the roadside near a hotel. The season usually lasts around 60 days between September and November, but the start and end dates are decided by the Verderers of the New Forest and Forestry England's Deputy Surveyor. If there is a 'mast year' with a huge crop of acorns, pannage can be extended; in autumn 2020 it was stretched by 36 days, and one exceptional year it ran right through to 4 January. A single native oak can produce something like 10 million acorns over its life, though a young one can take up to 40 years before it drops its first.

There are a few rules to follow for everyone's sake. Keep your distance and do not stroke, pet or feed the pigs. Feeding is the one thing to be firm on, because there is a risk of African Swine Fever reaching the UK, which can be spread to pigs through infected meat. Raw acorns are also toxic to humans and poisonous to the ponies, cattle and dogs that roam the forest, so keep dogs under close control and on a lead. Green acorns are vital food for birds and squirrels, but they are poisonous to the livestock and to dogs.

It is worth taking in the wider picture while you are there. The New Forest is one of Europe's most important sites for nature and conservation, the largest remaining stretch of unfenced grassland, scrub and woodland in southern England, covering the southwest of Hampshire and the southeast of Wiltshire. The National Park area is 566 square kilometres, with the New Forest SSSI making up 289 of that. It was proclaimed a royal forest by William the Conqueror around 1079 and is recorded in the Domesday Book, and it became a National Park on 1 March 2005. The Verderers, the ancient body that manages the forest's traditional rights, landscape and ecology, hold their court in public at the Verderers Hall in Lyndhurst. With about 146 kilometres of broadleaf woodland and 118 kilometres of scrub and meadow, the walking trails suit all ages and abilities, and you do not even need a map to get around.