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The UK government yesterday revealed the time and date for its next major nationwide test of the Emergency Alerts service by mobile network operators, which will take place at “around” 3pm on 7th September 2025. This is normally only intended to be used if there’s a “danger to life nearby” (e.g. severe flooding, fires and extreme weather).
Systems like this need to be tested on a regular basis to ensure they’re working properly and to help familiarise the population with their function. For example, the last major UK wide test occurred on 23rd April 2023, which revealed some problems with customers on Three UK’s network that were later rectified.
Since then, the live system has been used on a number of occasions, in a more localised way, to warn of some major storms and floods (e.g. Storm Éowyn in Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland during January 2025). You can see a Summary of Past Emergency Alerts on the government’s official website.
Recipients (most of us) can expect to experience 10 seconds of an annoyingly loud siren sound blaring out at you while your phone vibrates and displays a message to say that it’s just a test of the Emergency Alerts system. The exact structure of the message for the September 2025 test is not yet known, but the original one in April 2023 looked like this:
Message Sent for April 2023 Emergency Alert Test (English)
This is a test of Emergency Alerts, a new UK government service that will warn you if there’s a life-threatening emergency nearby.
In a real emergency, follow the instructions in the alert to keep yourself and others safe.
Visit gov.uk/alerts for more information.
This is a test. You do not need to take any action.
The alerts themselves are broadcast from cell towers in the vicinity of an emergency (they don’t need your phone number for this to work) and will only ever come from the Government or emergency services. Such alerts are a free one-way secure communication and do NOT reveal anyone’s location or collect personal data.
However, some people may wish to opt out of the emergency alerts system (e.g. victims of domestic abuse or those likely to be driving on the day), which can be done by going into your phone’s settings – search this section for “emergency alerts“, “wireless emergency alerts” or “emergency broadcasts” – and then turning off “severe alerts“, “operator alerts“, “test alerts” and or “extreme alerts“. But we have found that these specific options don’t always exist, and Android users could also try this method (further details):
- Open your phone calling app
- Use the keypad to enter *#*#2627#*#*
- Search your settings for ‘emergency alerts’ and turn off ‘test alerts’, ‘exercise alerts’, ‘operator defined’ and ‘operator alerts’
Hopefully it goes without saying that you should NOT read or respond to an emergency alert when you are driving or riding a vehicle (this is illegal). Find somewhere safe and legal to stop before picking up your phone and reading the message.