ECB Consumer Expectations Survey results – September 2026

The European Central Bank released results from its September 2026 Consumer Expectations Survey, which tracks households' expectations for inflation, growth, and unemployment over the coming year. Because the survey measures how consumers expect prices to evolve, it feeds directly into the ECB's assessment of inflation expectations, a key input in the Governing Council's policy deliberations. Any upward or downward revision to household inflation expectations can shift market pricing of the policy rate path through the rate differential channel, since expectations of tighter or looser monetary policy move euro-area government bond yields and the euro's exchange rate against major peers. Euro-area sovereign bonds, particularly short-dated maturities most sensitive to policy-rate repricing, and euro-denominated financial stocks, which tend to benefit from higher rate expectations, are the most directly exposed assets. Traders should watch the ECB's next monetary policy meeting and the accompanying staff projections, along with the flash eurozone HICP inflation estimate, for confirmation of whether household expectations are translating into official inflation forecasts.

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