EURIBOR 2026: how the rate has moved and what it means for your loan

If you have, or are considering, a loan with a variable interest rate, you’re likely wondering where EURIBOR is heading. This article doesn’t forecast the future. Instead, it shows what the published data from the Bank of Slovenia and the ECB actually say about how the rate moved in 2026, and what that means for your monthly payment. You’ll find the live chart and full detail on our macro overview page, and you can check the impact on your own loan in the loan calculator.

How EURIBOR moved in 2026

6-month EURIBOR started 2026 at around 2.14% (January) and had risen to roughly 2.71% by August 2026, an increase of just over 0.5 percentage points in seven months. 3-month EURIBOR stood at around 2.51% in August 2026. This is an upward turn after roughly two years of decline, not a return to the levels seen during the highest-rate period: 6-month EURIBOR peaked at around 4.11% in October 2023, almost 1.4 percentage points above today’s level. The data is published by the ECB through its Data Portal, which also holds longer historical series.

Bank margin over EURIBOR: where does the increase actually go

EURIBOR is only part of the story. The bank adds its own margin on top, and that margin changes over time. The Bank of Slovenia publishes a monthly average interest rate for new household loans (with roughly a 2-month lag), which makes it possible to calculate the actual margin: the average rate for new mortgage loans minus 6-month EURIBOR in the same month.

For mortgages, that margin was around 0.77 pp in February 2026 and around 0.55 pp in June 2026 (the latest available figure). The margin narrowed, even though EURIBOR rose over the same period. For consumer loans, the margin fell from around 3.54 pp to 3.26 pp over the same period. In other words, based on the available data, the average new interest rate for both loan types did not rise as fast as EURIBOR did. The full monthly margin chart, going back to 2013, is available in the “Bank margin over EURIBOR” section on the macro page.

An important caveat: the Bank of Slovenia figure is an average across all new business in the market, not a specific bank or a specific offer, so it shows direction and range rather than the exact margin you would get.

How EURIBOR feeds through to your monthly payment (and when)

A change in EURIBOR does not flow into your payment right away. For a variable-rate loan, the interest rate is only reset on predetermined dates, known as fixing dates. For loans tied to 6-month EURIBOR, this happens every 6 months, usually on a date linked to when the loan was disbursed. Until the next fixing date, the rate set at the previous one applies, regardless of where EURIBOR moves in between.

This creates an important difference between new and existing loans. A new loan immediately gets the current EURIBOR value plus the bank’s agreed margin. An existing loan keeps its rate until the next fixing date, even if EURIBOR changes by half a percentage point or more in the meantime.

A concrete example: for a €150,000 loan over 20 years (240 months) with a starting rate of 3.9%, the monthly payment is roughly 901 €. If EURIBOR rises by 0.5 percentage points by the next fixing and the new rate is 4.4%, the payment rises to roughly 941 €, an increase of about 40 € a month, or nearly 480 € a year. That new rate applies until the next fixing, when the calculation repeats. You can run the same calculation for your own amount and term in the loan calculator.

What this means for fixed vs. variable rates

This isn’t data you can turn into a “pick this one” recommendation. That decision depends on your risk tolerance and financial buffer, which is covered in more detail in Loan 2026: how to choose the right mortgage. What the data does give you are two concrete inputs. First, EURIBOR is lower than its 2023 peak, but it rose through 2026 rather than falling. Second, banks on average did not pass the full EURIBOR increase through to new loans, which partly explains why the gap between fixed and variable rates has stayed relatively narrow. If you’re considering a variable rate, use the loan calculator to check how your payment would react to a EURIBOR increase of, say, 1 percentage point. That’s the same stress test used in the Loan 2026 article.

What to watch next: the indicators, not predictions

FinPortal does not produce its own forecasts of where EURIBOR is headed. EURIBOR depends mainly on future ECB interest-rate decisions and on the market’s inflation expectations, neither of which can be reliably predicted from past data.

Instead of a forecast, you can track the same indicators analysts do: ECB decisions on its key interest rates (published after every Governing Council meeting), euro-area inflation trends, and EURIBOR forward curves, which show what level the market currently expects in the coming months.

The macro page refreshes every night and always shows the latest known state of EURIBOR and bank margins, which makes it a good starting point for tracking. If you have a variable-rate loan, it’s worth rechecking your payment in the loan calculator at each fixing date, or at least whenever the Bank of Slovenia publishes new statistics, which happens roughly monthly.

Sources

The data in this article comes from the Bank of Slovenia (px.bsi.si, MFI interest rates for new household loans) and the ECB Data Portal (EURIBOR). The full methodology and sources are listed on the Methodology page.