JET underwent a transformation from a full carbon-dominated tokamak to a fully metallic device with beryllium in the main chamber and a tungsten divertor. This material combination is foreseen for the activated phase of ITER. The ITER-Like Wall (ILW) experiment at JET shall demonstrate the plasma compatibility with metallic walls and the reduction in fuel retention. We report on a set of experiments (Ip = 2.0 MA, Bt = 2.0–2.4 T, δ = 0.2–0.4) in different confinement and plasma conditions with global gas balance analysis demonstrating a strong reduction in the long-term retention rate by more than a factor of 10 with respect to carbon-wall reference discharges. All experiments are executed in a series of identical plasma discharges in order to achieve maximum plasma duration until the analysis limit of the active gas handling system is reached. The composition analysis shows high purity of the recovered gas, typically 99% D. For typical L-mode discharges (Paux = 0.5 MW), type III (Paux = 5.0 MW) and type-I ELMy H-mode plasmas (Paux = 12.0 MW) a drop of the deuterium retention rate normalized to the operational time in divertor configuration is measured from 1.27 × 1021, 1.37 × 1021 and 1.97 × 1021 D s−1 down to 4.8 × 1019, 7.2 × 1019 and 16 × 1019 D s−1, respectively. The dynamic retention increases in the limiter phase in comparison with carbon-fibre composite, but also the outgassing after the discharge has risen in the same manner and overcompensates this transient retention. Overall an upper limit of the long-term retention rate of 1.5 × 1020 D s−1 is obtained with the ILW. The observed reduction by one order of magnitude confirms the expected predictions concerning the plasma-facing material change in ITER and is in line with identification of fuel co-deposition with Be as the main mechanism for the residual long-term retention. The reduction widens the operational space without active cleaning in the DT phase in comparison with a full carbon device.