PBoC Loan Prime Rate: 2026 Schedule, Dates and What to Expect

The Loan Prime Rate (LPR) is China’s main benchmark for bank lending. It is published monthly by the National Interbank Funding Centre under the authority of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), the country’s central bank, and it sets the reference point for most new corporate loans and household mortgages in the world’s second largest economy. The next fixing is due on Monday, September 21, 2026 at 09:00 China Standard Time, which is 9:00 pm ET on Sunday, September 20 and 2:00 am London on Monday, September 21. Full schedule and background: PBoC Loan Prime Rate dates. Every date on this page is available as an ICS download and a Google Calendar feed, so the monthly fixing lands in your own diary without you having to check back.

Two tenors are published each month: the one-year LPR, which anchors the pricing of most new and outstanding business and consumer loans, and the five-year-plus LPR, which is the reference rate for residential mortgages. Because China is a large buyer of commodities and a central link in global supply chains, changes to these two numbers are watched in London, Frankfurt, Sydney and Wall Street as well as in Beijing.

2026 and 2027 schedule

The LPR is fixed on the 20th of each month, or on the next business day when the 20th falls at a weekend or during a public holiday. The table below lists every scheduled fixing currently in the calendar. Times are 09:00 China Standard Time throughout, equivalent to 2:00 am London and 9:00 pm ET the previous evening (the ET offset shifts by an hour when US and UK clocks change).

Unlike the US Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank, the PBoC does not publish a calendar of policy meetings with fixed press conferences. The LPR fixing is a monthly administrative publication, so the date is highly predictable but the outcome is announced in a short statement rather than debated in public.

What is the Loan Prime Rate?

The LPR is the average lending rate that a panel of Chinese banks says it charges its best corporate customers, collected and published as a benchmark. It replaced the old administratively fixed benchmark lending rate in August 2019 as part of a reform designed to make bank loan pricing respond more closely to market conditions and to the PBoC’s own policy rates.

In practice the LPR sits at the centre of China’s credit system. Banks price loans as the LPR plus or minus a spread, so a 10 basis point move in the benchmark feeds through to millions of contracts. A basis point, usually written bp, is one hundredth of a percentage point, so 10bp is 0.10 percentage points. Chinese cuts are typically small and frequent by Western standards: 10bp or 15bp steps rather than the 25bp increments favoured by the Fed, the Bank of England and the ECB.

The five-year-plus LPR matters most for households. Mortgage rates in China are quoted as a spread to it, and local authorities can adjust the minimum spread in their own city. That makes the five-year rate the main lever Beijing has used to try to stabilise a property market that has been contracting since 2021. The one-year rate matters more for firms, working capital loans and consumer credit.

Although the LPR is described as market-based, nobody treats it as independent of the state. The PBoC guides it through its policy rates and through direct signals to the banks on the panel, which is why economists read every fixing as a monetary policy decision in all but name.

How is the rate decided?

A panel of 20 commercial banks, including the large state lenders, joint-stock banks, city and rural banks, foreign banks and private banks, submits its quoted best-customer lending rate each month. Submissions are made in increments of 0.05 percentage points. The National Interbank Funding Centre trims the highest and lowest quotes, averages the rest and publishes the result at 09:00 Beijing time.

The anchor for those submissions is the PBoC’s seven-day reverse repurchase rate, its main short-term policy rate. When the PBoC cuts the seven-day reverse repo rate, banks normally follow with an equivalent cut to the LPR within days. When the policy rate is unchanged, the LPR is almost always unchanged too, which is why a run of identical monthly fixings is common. Two other tools frequently move alongside it: the reserve requirement ratio (RRR), which is the share of deposits banks must hold at the central bank, and deposit rate guidance, which protects bank profit margins when lending rates fall.

The LPR is not revised after publication. There is no vote tally, no minutes and no dissent record, so there is nothing equivalent to the Fed’s dot plot or the Bank of England’s voting split for markets to parse. Guidance instead arrives through the PBoC’s quarterly monetary policy report, statements from the governor and the annual Central Economic Work Conference in December, which frames the following year’s policy stance.

What time is it released and where?

The fixing is published at 09:00 China Standard Time. In other centres that is:

• 2:00 am London (British Summer Time; 1:00 am GMT in the winter months)
• 9:00 pm ET the previous evening during US daylight saving time, 8:00 pm ET in winter
• 3:00 am Central European Summer Time, 11:00 am Sydney (AEST)

The rate appears on the PBoC website and on the National Interbank Funding Centre’s platform, and is redistributed instantly by Reuters, Bloomberg and the state news agency Xinhua. The official page is the People’s Bank of China statistics and data section. There is no embargoed lock-up for journalists and no press conference, so the number simply appears and the market reacts within seconds.

Because the release lands in the middle of the European night and during the US evening, the first genuine price reaction usually comes from onshore Chinese equities and bonds, then from the offshore yuan and Australian dollar, and only later from London and New York when those sessions open.

Recent decisions

The LPR was last reduced in May 2025, when both tenors were cut by 10bp to 3.00% and 3.50%. Every fixing since has left the two rates unchanged, a run that reached 15 consecutive months at the August 20, 2026 fixing.

Source: People’s Bank of China and National Interbank Funding Centre fixings, as reported by Xinhua, Reuters and CNBC.

A consensus forecast for the September 21, 2026 fixing has not yet been published. Ahead of the August fixing, all 25 market participants in a Reuters survey expected both tenors to be held, and the outcome matched that expectation. Analysts in a January 2026 Reuters poll expected further easing during the year, noting that the PBoC has pledged to cut the reserve requirement ratio and interest rates in 2026 while keeping what it calls an appropriately loose stance. Whether that easing arrives through the LPR or through liquidity tools is the open question each month.

How do markets react?

Because the LPR follows the seven-day reverse repo rate so mechanically, the fixing itself is rarely a surprise. The reaction function is therefore asymmetric: a hold that everyone expected barely moves prices, while an unexpected cut, or an expected cut that fails to appear, can move several markets at once.

• Chinese equities. Property developers, banks and construction-linked names are the most rate-sensitive. A cut to the five-year rate lowers mortgage costs and is read as support for housing demand, though it also compresses bank net interest margins, which is why bank shares sometimes fall on the same headline that lifts developers.
• Government bonds. Chinese government bond yields have generally drifted lower through the easing cycle. A surprise cut tends to push short-dated yields down; a hold when a cut was priced can trigger a modest sell-off.
• The yuan. Lower Chinese rates widen the interest rate gap with the US and can weaken the yuan, both onshore (CNY) and offshore (CNH). The PBoC manages this through its daily fixing, so moves are usually contained.
• Commodity-linked currencies. The Australian dollar, the New Zealand dollar and to a lesser extent the Chilean peso often act as liquid proxies for Chinese growth expectations. Easing that markets read as pro-growth tends to support them.
• Europe and the UK. Luxury goods, carmakers, miners and industrial groups listed in London, Paris and Frankfurt derive a large share of revenue from China, so the FTSE 100’s mining and luxury exposure makes it one of the more China-sensitive Western indices.

Context matters more than the number. When the September 2026 fixing left rates unchanged, Chinese stocks still edged higher because Beijing simultaneously loosened rules on withdrawals from housing provident fund savings, a reminder that Chinese policy often arrives as a bundle of measures rather than a single rate move. Analysts typically read the LPR alongside the same week’s activity data on industrial production, retail sales and new home prices.

What It Means for Your Money

If you live in China, the link is direct. The five-year-plus LPR is the reference rate for mortgages, so a cut lowers the interest on new home loans and, for most existing borrowers, feeds through at the annual repricing date written into the contract. The one-year rate affects business loans, car finance and other consumer credit. Deposit rates tend to fall alongside lending rates, so savers usually receive less when borrowers pay less.

If you live outside China, the effects are indirect but real:

• Prices in the shops. China exports goods and, at present, disinflation. Weak Chinese demand keeps factory-gate prices low, which helps hold down the cost of imported goods in the UK, the euro area and the US. That in turn takes a little pressure off the Bank of England, the ECB and the Fed.
• Your mortgage and savings rate. There is no mechanical link between the LPR and a UK tracker mortgage or a US 30-year fixed rate. The channel runs through global inflation and commodity prices, which shape what the Bank of England and the Fed decide, which is what actually moves your repayments and your savings interest.
• Pensions and investments. Most diversified global funds hold Chinese equities through emerging market allocations, and many developed market companies earn heavily in China. Sustained Chinese easing that succeeds in reviving demand supports mining, energy, luxury and industrial shares held inside ordinary workplace pensions.
• Currencies. A weaker yuan makes Chinese goods cheaper for buyers paying in pounds, dollars or euros, and can pressure other Asian currencies. Holiday money and the cost of imported electronics both sit at the end of that chain.
• Jobs. Exporters in Germany, Australia, Brazil and the UK employ people whose order books depend on Chinese construction and consumption. Chinese credit policy is one input into those order books.

For most readers the sensible approach is to treat the LPR as a monthly temperature check on Chinese demand rather than as a reason to change anything in a long-term portfolio.

Related economic events

• FOMC Meeting Dates: the US Federal Reserve’s decisions set the interest rate gap that constrains how far the PBoC can cut without pressuring the yuan.
• Bank of Japan Rate Decisions: the other major Asian policy meeting, and a key driver of regional currency and bond moves.
• ECB Rate Decisions: euro area policy, where Chinese export prices and demand feed directly into the inflation outlook.
• US CPI Report: the monthly inflation reading that shapes Fed expectations and, through them, global rate differentials.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the next PBoC Loan Prime Rate announcement?

The next fixing is on Monday, September 21, 2026 at 09:00 China Standard Time, which is 9:00 pm ET on Sunday, September 20 and 2:00 am London on Monday, September 21. The following fixing is October 20, 2026.

What time is the LPR published in my time zone?

Always 09:00 Beijing time, equal to 2:00 am London during British Summer Time and 9:00 pm ET the previous evening during US daylight saving time. The ET and London equivalents shift by an hour when clocks change.

How often is the Loan Prime Rate set?

Monthly, on the 20th, or the next business day if the 20th falls at a weekend or on a public holiday. There is no additional policy meeting cycle to follow.

Where can I find the official release?

On the People’s Bank of China website and the National Interbank Funding Centre platform, with immediate coverage from Reuters, Bloomberg and Xinhua.

How does the LPR affect interest rates and mortgages?

Chinese banks price loans as a spread over the LPR, so the five-year-plus rate determines mortgage costs and the one-year rate determines most business and consumer loan costs. Outside China the effect is indirect, working through global growth, commodity prices and inflation.

What are the current LPR levels?

The one-year LPR stands at 3.00% and the five-year-plus LPR at 3.50%, both unchanged since the 10bp cut in May 2025 and held for a 15th consecutive month on August 20, 2026.