Budget 2026 Interactive: Winners and losers - and every dollar the government spends

It might not have been a lolly scramble but some government departments are still winners and some are losers in the annual tussle for Budget funding. Head of data Chris Knox has created two interactive graphics, showing where the Government is spending more or less money and how the cuts and increases compare.

The Budget details over 1000 individual spending categories, called appropriations, by the Treasury - ranging from the $26.5 billion NZ super bill to a $10,000 appropriation for “costs related to the statutory management of the Du Val Group entities“.

You can use the first Herald interactive below to see where the Government is spending money and how that has changed since last year.

There are a few cautionary notes. Changes in funding in some areas are due to changes in the way the government accounts for its spending. For instance, some of the decrease in transport spending is due to the creation of the new Cities, Environment, Regions, and Transport spending category.

The Government often talks about changes in funding across a four-year period, which differs from the year-on-year changes shown here.

The second interactive below lists every increase and decrease in funding in order, from the largest to the smallest. Decreases are lined up next to similar sized increases.

For example, the $41 million decrease in funding for the Best Start Tax Credit is the same size as the $41m increase in funding for ACC’s Public Health Acute Services.

Some changes are simply due to a change in the appropriation name, which is why there is both a $3.1b decrease and a $3.1b increase in early childhood-related funding.

The biggest increase in education is $6.7b more for teacher funding and the biggest decrease is $4.9b in a similar category.

Spending for the 2026 financial year is based on the estimated actual spending provided in today’s budget, not the estimates from Budget 2025.

A $32 billion “non‑departmental capital expenditure mainly comprising the transfer of school property assets from the Ministry of Education to the New Zealand School Property Agency” appropriation has been excluded from this analysis.

Chris Knox is a scientist turned data-journalist who investigates the stories behind the numbers, and creates interactives for Herald readers to explore them.