%26 in a URL

The percent-encoded ampersand (&).

Short answer

%26 is the percent-encoded ampersand (&). In a query string, & separates one parameter from the next, so an ampersand that belongs to a value, such as Tom & Jerry, must be written as %26 or the value is cut short.

Character: &
Percent-encoded: %26
Byte value: 0x26 = 38
RFC 3986 class: sub-delim
UTF-8 bytes: 1

Where you will see it

Names containing ampersands in search terms: q=AT%26T.
A query string nested inside a value: next=%2Fsearch%3Fa%3D1%26b%3D2.
Output of encodeURIComponent; encodeURI leaves & alone.

What goes wrong

Using encodeURI on a parameter value leaves & untouched, so the server sees the value end at the ampersand. Use encodeURIComponent for values.
In HTML source, a literal ampersand is written &. That is an HTML entity, not percent-encoding: the HTML parser turns & into & before the browser reads the URL. Use the HTML encoder for entities.

Decoded examples

Encoded	Decodes to	What it is	Open in the decoder
q=AT%26T	q=AT&T	A search for AT&T.	Open in decoder
next=%2Fsearch%3Fa%3D1%26b%3D2	next=/search?a=1&b=2	A URL with its own query string, nested in a parameter.	Open in decoder

How each language encodes `&`

Outputs below come from running each function, not from documentation. “Kept” means the function leaves the character as it is. Compare every character across every function.

Language	Function	Output for &
JavaScript	encodeURIComponent	%26
JavaScript	encodeURI	kept
JavaScript	URLSearchParams	%26
JavaScript	escape (deprecated)	%26
Python	quote (default safe='/')	%26
Python	quote (safe='')	%26
Python	quote_plus	%26
C#	Uri.EscapeDataString	%26
C#	WebUtility.UrlEncode	%26
C#	HttpUtility.UrlEncode	%26

Questions

How do I put an ampersand in a URL parameter?

Encode it as %26. With JavaScript, encodeURIComponent('Tom & Jerry') returns Tom%20%26%20Jerry. Building the URL with URLSearchParams does it for you.

Is %26 the same as &?

No. %26 is percent-encoding for URLs. & is an HTML entity for the ampersand in HTML text and attributes. They solve different problems and are decoded by different parsers.

Decode or encode your own text

Paste anything containing %26. It runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

URL Decoder URL Encoder

Related characters

%3D

equals sign

%3D is the percent-encoded equals sign (=).

%3F

question mark

%3F is the percent-encoded question mark (?).

%23

hash sign

%23 is the percent-encoded hash sign (#).

All percent-encoded characters · Full percent-encoding table · What is URL encoding?

Behaviour checked against RFC 3986, the WHATWG URL Standard and MDN. Updated November 4, 2026

URL Encoder

Percent-encode a value, a full URL or form data, with strict RFC 3986 and +/%20 options.

URL Parser

Split a URL into scheme, host, port, path, query and fragment, with checks for common problems.

Query String Parser

Edit query parameters as a table, rebuild the string, or export it as JSON.

Base64 Encode/Decode

Convert text to Base64 and back, including the URL-safe Base64URL alphabet.

HTML Encode/Decode

Escape text to HTML entities and decode entities back to text.

JWT Decoder

Read a JSON Web Token's header and payload and check its expiry.