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), had risen to roughly 2.71% by August 2026 and to 2.92% in September (monthly average). The daily value, which some banks publish themselves, was around 3.10% on 1 October. 3-month EURIBOR averaged 2.64% in September 2026. The rise is linked to the ECB, which, after a year at 2.00%, raised its deposit facility rate twice in 2026 by 0.25 percentage points, to 2.25% in June and 2.50% in September, because of inflation driven by energy prices amid the conflict in the Middle East. On 29 October 2026 the ECB left rates unchanged, so the deposit facility rate stays at 2.50%. 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, about 1.2 percentage points above its September 2026 level. The data is published by the ECB through its Data Portal, which also holds longer historical series.

The chart below shows how 3-month (blue line) and 6-month EURIBOR (green line) have moved since the start of 2025. They fell to around 2% by June 2025, then barely moved for almost a year, and rose steadily from March to September 2026. The chart updates automatically, so it always shows the latest months too. The dashed vertical lines mark the ECB rate rises in June and September 2026. Also watch the gap between the lines: when 6-month EURIBOR is above 3-month EURIBOR, the market expects higher rates in the coming months. Until spring 2025 it was the other way round, while the market was still waiting for cuts, and in spring 2026 the gap widened to around 0.3 percentage points.

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 0.51 pp in August 2026 (the latest figure when the article was updated). The margin narrowed, even though EURIBOR rose over the same period. For consumer loans, the margin fell from around 3.54 pp to 3.17 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 and with the latest data, 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 the bank checks and how to run the test step by step is covered in Mortgage stress test.

What the market expects: EURIBOR in 2027 and 2028

FinPortal does not make its own forecasts. There is, however, a figure that shows what the market thinks about future EURIBOR today: futures contracts, which banks and investors use to lock in an interest rate in advance. The ECB uses these market prices as an assumption in its macroeconomic projections, most recently in September 2026 (market prices as of 19 August 2026).

The chart below shows this in one picture. The blue line is actual 3-month EURIBOR by month, up to the latest published month. The dashed orange line in the shaded area is the path the market expects: a rise to around 3.0% in 2027 and then levelling off at that rate in 2028. The ECB publishes annual averages, so the expected points are drawn in the middle of each year. The chart does not show that EURIBOR will follow this line exactly, but which way the market was leaning in August.

The exact figures from the ECB projections:

So in August the market expected EURIBOR to rise a little further and then settle at around 3%. That is about 0.4 percentage points above the September level of 3-month EURIBOR (2.64%). Compared with the June projections, the expectation was 0.2 percentage points higher for 2027 and 0.3 higher for 2028. Over the past year 6-month EURIBOR has been slightly above 3-month EURIBOR, so a similar move is a reasonable assumption.

What it would mean for your payment: if the rate on a variable-rate loan rose by 0.4 percentage points, the payment on a €150,000 loan over 20 years would go up by about €30 a month. With a fixed-rate loan the payment does not change, which makes comparing fixed and variable offers especially worthwhile whenever the market expects EURIBOR to rise. Current bank offers, updated daily, are in the mortgage comparison.

Why it could turn out differently: market expectations are not an ECB forecast. The ECB stresses that it decides meeting by meeting based on the data and does not pre-commit to any rate path. The biggest unknown is energy prices. ECB staff project euro area inflation at 3.0% in 2026, 2.5% in 2027 and 2.1% in 2028; in the less favourable scenarios with dearer oil and gas it would be higher, which could also mean higher interest rates. If the situation calmed down and energy prices fell, EURIBOR could end up lower than expected.

When the picture will change: the ECB Governing Council decides on interest rates roughly every six weeks and publishes new projections with updated market expectations four times a year, in March, June, September and December. At the meeting on 29 October rates stayed unchanged. The last meeting of 2026 is on 17 December, when new projections with updated market expectations will also be published. The meeting calendar is on the ECB website. In between, you can follow current EURIBOR and bank margins on the macro page, which refreshes every night, and both charts in this article update automatically. If you have a variable-rate loan, check your payment in the loan calculator at each fixing date and test what a rise in EURIBOR of 0.5 or 1 percentage point would mean for you.

How banks’ rates moved over the last month is summed up in our monthly review, for example interest rates in November 2026.

Sources

The data in this article comes from the Bank of Slovenia (px.bsi.si, MFI interest rates for new household loans), the ECB Data Portal (EURIBOR), the ECB monetary policy decisions of 10 September and 29 October 2026 and the ECB staff macroeconomic projections of September 2026 (technical assumptions on interest rates). The full methodology and sources are listed on the Methodology page.