When Is the Next ECB Meeting? 2026 Rate Decision Schedule

The European Central Bank’s Governing Council holds 8 monetary policy meetings each year, roughly every 6 weeks, and each one concludes with a decision on the 3 key interest rates that anchor borrowing costs across the 20 countries of the euro area. The deposit facility rate currently stands at 2.00%, where it has been held since June 2025, although markets now fully price a 25 basis point increase at the June 11 meeting after the Middle East energy shock pushed eurozone inflation projections higher. This page lists every confirmed ECB meeting date for 2026 and 2027, explains how the decision is made and announced, and tracks the full record of recent decisions.

ECB Meeting Schedule 2026

The ECB has confirmed 8 monetary policy meetings for 2026. Each is a 2-day meeting of the Governing Council, with the rate decision published at 2:15pm CET on the second day. The dates below are the decision days. Three meetings have already taken place in 2026, and the Governing Council held rates at all of them.

ECB Meeting Schedule 2027

The ECB has already published its Governing Council calendar for 2027, again with 8 monetary policy meetings. All dates below are decision days and remain subject to confirmation by the ECB.

What Time Is the ECB Decision Announced?

The ECB publishes its monetary policy decision at 2:15pm Central European Time on the second day of each monetary policy meeting. That is 1:15pm in London and 8:15am Eastern Time in New York. Because the euro area, the UK and the US all move their clocks within a few weeks of each other, these conversions hold for almost the entire year.

The written decision is a short press release stating the new levels of the 3 key interest rates and summarising the Governing Council’s reasoning. Thirty minutes later, at 2:45pm CET (1:45pm London, 8:45am ET), the ECB President, currently Christine Lagarde, holds a press conference in Frankfurt. She reads a prepared monetary policy statement and then takes questions from journalists for around an hour. Markets frequently move more on the press conference than on the decision itself, because the question-and-answer session is where unscripted signals about future policy tend to emerge.

Four meetings a year, in March, June, September and December, also come with new ECB staff macroeconomic projections for growth and inflation. These projection meetings carry extra weight, as the forecasts shape the policy path for the following quarters.

What Is the ECB Governing Council?

The Governing Council is the main decision-making body of the European Central Bank. It consists of the 6 members of the ECB’s Executive Board, including the President and Vice-President, plus the governors of the national central banks of the 20 euro area countries, making 26 members in total. The Executive Board is based in Frankfurt and runs the ECB day to day, while the national governors bring perspectives from each member economy, from the Bundesbank in Germany to the Bank of Greece.

Not every member votes at every meeting. Since 2015 the Governing Council has operated a rotation system. The 6 Executive Board members hold permanent voting rights. The 20 national governors share 15 votes: the governors of the 5 largest economies (Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands) share 4 votes between them, and the remaining 15 governors share 11 votes. Voting rights rotate monthly, although all members attend and participate in the discussion regardless of whether they vote. In practice the Council prefers to decide by consensus rather than formal vote.

The Council sets 3 key interest rates. The deposit facility rate is what banks earn on money parked overnight at the ECB, and in the current era of abundant liquidity it is the operative policy rate: the one that steers money market rates and the one analysts mean when they talk about “the ECB rate”. It stands at 2.00%. The main refinancing operations rate, at 2.15%, is what banks pay to borrow from the ECB for 1 week against collateral. The marginal lending facility rate, at 2.40%, is the cost of emergency overnight borrowing from the ECB.

The ECB’s primary mandate, set out in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, is price stability. The Governing Council defines this as inflation of 2% over the medium term, measured by the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), with deviations in either direction treated as equally undesirable. Unlike the US Federal Reserve, the ECB has no parallel employment mandate: it may support the EU’s broader economic objectives only insofar as doing so does not prejudice price stability.

How the ECB Makes Its Decision

Each decision rests on a large body of analysis prepared before the meeting. The centrepiece is the staff macroeconomic projection exercise, updated quarterly, which forecasts euro area growth, inflation and wages over a 3 year horizon. Projections published in March and September are produced by ECB staff alone, while the June and December rounds are compiled jointly with the national central banks. The June 2026 round is expected to lift the 2026 inflation forecast to around 2.9%, from 2.6% in March, after the rise in energy prices triggered by the war in the Middle East.

Alongside the projections, the Council examines 3 things it has explicitly tied its decisions to: the inflation outlook, the dynamics of underlying inflation (core measures, services prices and negotiated wages), and the strength of monetary policy transmission, meaning how fully past rate changes have fed through to bank lending rates and credit conditions. Wage data matter particularly in the euro area because collective bargaining covers a large share of the workforce, so pay settlements feed into services inflation with a long lag.

Since the 2022-2023 tightening cycle the Governing Council has repeatedly stated that it follows “a data-dependent and meeting-by-meeting approach” and is “not pre-committing to a particular rate path”, language it used again in its February 5, 2026 decision. In practice that means each meeting is live: the Council deliberately avoids forward guidance and lets incoming inflation, wage and activity data determine each step. The 2-day format gives time for an economic and monetary briefing from the ECB’s Chief Economist on day 1, followed by the policy discussion and decision on day 2.

What the ECB Decision Means for Your Money

For households in the euro area, the most direct channel is mortgages. Variable rate and tracker mortgages, which dominate in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, Finland and Ireland, are typically priced off Euribor, the interbank rate that closely follows the ECB’s deposit facility rate. When the ECB moves, monthly repayments on these loans follow within weeks or months as they reset. Fixed rate borrowers, more common in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, are insulated until they refinance, but new fixed rates are shaped by where markets expect the ECB to go over the coming years.

Savers feel the decision through deposit rates. When the deposit facility rate was negative between 2014 and 2022, euro area banks paid essentially nothing on savings. At 2.00% there is meaningful interest available, although banks pass rate rises to savers more slowly and less completely than they pass them to borrowers, so shopping around matters.

The euro itself responds to the gap between ECB rates and rates elsewhere. Higher ECB rates relative to the Federal Reserve tend to strengthen the euro, which cuts the cost of imports and foreign holidays for eurozone residents but makes eurozone exports dearer abroad.

Readers outside the euro area are not bystanders. The euro area is the world’s second-largest economy and the euro is the second most traded currency, so ECB decisions move global bond yields, the EUR/USD and EUR/GBP exchange rates, and the relative pricing of every major central bank’s path. For UK readers, a more hawkish ECB tends to weaken sterling against the euro, raising the cost of European travel and imports. For US readers, ECB policy shifts feed into Treasury yields and the dollar, and a narrowing rate gap between Frankfurt and Washington is often a headwind for the greenback.

How Markets React to ECB Decisions

The first reaction comes in the euro and in short-dated government bonds. A decision or statement that is more hawkish than expected (rates higher, or guidance pointing that way) typically lifts EUR/USD and pushes 2 year German Schatz yields higher within seconds of the 2:15pm CET release. A dovish surprise does the opposite. Because markets price probabilities in advance through euro short-term rate (ESTR) swaps, the size of the move depends on the surprise, not the decision itself: a fully expected change can pass with barely a ripple, which is why the anticipated June 11, 2026 increase to 2.25% may matter less than what President Lagarde signals about a possible second move.

German Bunds serve as the euro area’s benchmark, but traders also watch peripheral spreads: the gap between Italian, Spanish, Portuguese or Greek 10 year yields and their German equivalents. Tighter policy or any hint that the ECB is less willing to backstop weaker sovereigns tends to widen these spreads, while supportive language narrows them. The ECB’s Transmission Protection Instrument, created in 2022, exists precisely to cap unwarranted spread widening.

Equities react mainly through banks and rate-sensitive sectors. Higher rates generally support eurozone bank margins, lifting lenders, while weighing on utilities, property and other bond-like sectors. The sharpest intraday swings usually arrive during the 2:45pm CET press conference: a single unscripted phrase in the question-and-answer session can reverse the initial market move, as traders parse Lagarde’s wording for clues the written statement deliberately leaves out.

Recent ECB Decisions

The table below shows the last 16 ECB monetary policy decisions and the deposit facility rate that applied after each one. It captures the full easing cycle of June 2024 to June 2025, when the ECB cut rates 8 times from 4.00% to 2.00%, followed by the extended hold through to mid-2026. Source: European Central Bank.

The pattern is clear: a steady, quarterly-then-consecutive easing cycle through 2024 and the first half of 2025, then a full year on hold at 2.00%, a level the ECB has described as broadly neutral. The question for the remainder of 2026 is whether the energy-driven rise in inflation forces the Council into a short tightening phase, beginning with the move markets expect on June 11.

Related Economic Events

Central bank decisions are best read side by side, since currency markets trade the gaps between them.

• FOMC Meetings: the US Federal Reserve’s 8 annual rate decisions, the single biggest counterweight to ECB policy in global markets.
• Bank of England MPC Meetings: the UK’s 8 annual Bank Rate decisions, announced at 12:00pm London time.
• Bank of Japan Rate Decisions: the BoJ’s 8 annual policy meetings, which set the tone for the yen and global bond yields.
• US CPI Report: the monthly US inflation print that moves rate expectations on both sides of the Atlantic.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often does the ECB meet to set interest rates?

The Governing Council holds 8 monetary policy meetings per year, roughly every 6 weeks. Each is a 2-day meeting ending on a Thursday, with the decision announced on the second day. The Council also holds separate non-monetary policy meetings between rate meetings, but these do not set interest rates.

What time is the ECB interest rate announcement?

The decision is published at 2:15pm CET, which is 1:15pm in London and 8:15am Eastern Time. The President’s press conference follows at 2:45pm CET (1:45pm London, 8:45am ET) and usually lasts about an hour.

What is the current ECB interest rate?

As of June 7, 2026 the deposit facility rate is 2.00%, the main refinancing operations rate is 2.15% and the marginal lending facility rate is 2.40%. All 3 have been unchanged since June 2025, when the ECB completed its 8th consecutive cut of the easing cycle.

Which ECB rate matters most?

The deposit facility rate. Because euro area banks hold abundant excess liquidity, the rate they earn on overnight deposits at the ECB is the floor that anchors money market rates, Euribor and, through them, mortgage and savings rates. When headlines refer to “the ECB rate”, they almost always mean the deposit facility rate.

When will the ECB raise or cut rates next?

Market pricing in early June 2026, measured through euro short-term rate swaps, fully prices a 25 basis point increase in the deposit facility rate to 2.25% at the June 11 meeting, after the Middle East conflict pushed energy prices and the 2026 inflation outlook higher. Analysts at banks including ING expect President Lagarde to leave the door open to a further increase later in the summer while stressing the meeting-by-meeting approach. The ECB itself has not pre-committed to any path, so expectations can shift with each inflation and wage release.

How does the ECB differ from the Federal Reserve?

The ECB sets policy for 20 sovereign countries sharing one currency, whereas the Fed sets policy for a single nation. The ECB has one primary mandate, price stability at 2% inflation, while the Fed has a dual mandate covering both stable prices and maximum employment. Their announcement rituals differ too: the ECB decides on a Thursday at 2:15pm CET with a press conference after every meeting, while the Fed announces on a Wednesday at 2:00pm ET. The two banks’ diverging paths are a primary driver of the EUR/USD exchange rate.

Meeting dates and decisions sourced from the European Central Bank’s official Governing Council calendar and ECB monetary policy press releases. Schedule last verified June 7, 2026.