ECB monetary policy meeting, 16-17 December 2026 (Frankfurt)

The European Central Bank’s Governing Council holds its last monetary policy meeting of 2026 on 16 and 17 December in Frankfurt, according to the ECB’s calendar of Governing Council meetings. The ECB interest rate decision in December comes on the second day and is followed by a press conference. It is also the meeting where new Eurosystem staff projections for inflation and growth are due, which makes it the one economists have been pointing to since early October.

Nothing about the outcome is known on 25 October 2026. Another meeting comes first, on 28 and 29 October, and whatever it decides will change the starting point for December.

When does the ECB decide in December?

The calendar lists 16 December as Day 1 and 17 December as Day 2, “followed by press conference”. The ECB has not yet published the hour for 17 December: on 25 October its weekly calendar only covered the last week of October, where it gives 14:15 CET for the publication of the decisions and 14:45 CET for the press conference. Those are the usual times, so the December decision is likely to land at about 14:15 in Frankfurt, Paris and Rome (13:15 UTC, since Europe is back on winter time by then). Treat that as expected until the ECB confirms it.

Day 1 is a closed session with no public agenda. Nobody needs to travel: the decision, the monetary policy statement and the press conference are free to follow on the ECB website, and the conference is streamed live. The calendar places the meeting in Frankfurt am Main, where the ECB’s main building stands on Sonnemannstrasse. September’s meeting was held in Berlin, one of the occasional sessions away from the city; December is back at home.

Euro rates on 25 October: where December starts from

The deposit facility rate stands at 2.50%, the main refinancing rate at 2.65% and the marginal lending rate at 2.90%, in force since 16 September 2026 after the 25-basis-point rise decided on 10 September. That was the second increase this year, after June. The run-up to the October meeting, and the details of the September decision, are on our page about the ECB meeting of 28-29 October.

Source: ECB key interest rates page, read 25 October 2026. The decision of 29 October, published at 14:15 CET that day, will fix the rates the December meeting starts from, whether it holds them or moves them again.

What the ECB will publish: decision and staff projections

The ECB publishes macroeconomic projections four times a year, in March, June, September and December. Its projections page shows a pattern: the March and September rounds are signed by ECB staff, while June and December are Eurosystem staff projections, prepared with the national central banks. The December 2025 round came out on 18 December 2025, alongside that month’s decision.

The figures December will replace are those of 10 September 2026. ECB staff then saw headline inflation at 3.0% in 2026, 2.5% in 2027 and 2.1% in 2028, with growth of 0.9%, 1.4% and 1.5% over the same years, according to the monetary policy statement of 10 September. The ECB said it expected inflation to come back to around its 2% target towards the end of 2027.

Inflation has moved since. Euro area annual inflation reached 3.8% in September 2026, up from 3.2% in August, according to Eurostat’s release of 16 October. Energy did most of the work: prices 18.9% higher than a year earlier, adding 1.71 percentage points to the headline rate. Italy stood at 4.2%.

Eurostat has scheduled its flash estimate for October on 4 November. The November flash should follow in early December and will be the last inflation print the Governing Council sees before it votes.

What economists polled in October expect

A Reuters poll of 73 economists taken from 5 to 8 October 2026, as relayed by Mitrade, found 70 expecting the ECB to hold at 2.50% on 29 October and 64 expecting a 25-basis-point rise in December. A majority, 58%, saw the deposit rate peaking at 2.75%; 24 economists saw 3.00%, against two in the September poll. Most of them had thought, only weeks earlier, that the ECB was done raising rates.

The ECB’s own account of its September meeting, published on 8 October, gives a less settled picture. Markets then priced about 84 basis points of increases by the end of 2027, up from 64 at the July meeting. The median respondent to the ECB’s Survey of Monetary Analysts saw September as the last rise, with the deposit rate staying at 2.50%.

Those forecasts are several weeks old and came before the September inflation figure. The ECB, for its part, says it is not pre-committing to a particular rate path and takes its decisions meeting by meeting, on the data.

Digital euro and euro stablecoins: the year-end deadline

For crypto readers in Europe, December sits next to a date the ECB set itself. In its statement to the IMFC on 17 October, Christine Lagarde said adopting the digital euro Regulation “by the end of 2026 is key” to running a 12-month internal pilot in the second half of 2027. The ECB’s digital euro progress page says the digital euro could be issued during 2029 if EU lawmakers adopt the regulation in the course of 2026. A decision to issue will only be considered once the legislative process is complete. At the September press conference, Lagarde said she hoped for a vote on the law before the end of the year.

So 17 December falls two weeks before that deadline. The legislation sits with the European Parliament and the Council, not with this meeting, and no trilogue dates for November or December were found. The pilot plans are covered in our piece on Lagarde’s 2027 digital euro pilot.

Euro rates also shape the setting for euro stablecoins and e-money, such as the bank-backed project described in our article on Qivalis and its Dutch licence. The ECB has not said anything about stablecoins in the documents read for this page, and no effect on crypto prices is implied here.

What to watch before 17 December

The October decision on 29 October sets the base. The account of that meeting should follow about four weeks later, around 26 November, if the ECB keeps the same gap as in September (our estimate, not an ECB date). The Governing Council also meets on 25 November for non-monetary business, and the General Council on 26 November.

Then come the October and November inflation figures, and the press conference itself on 17 December, where the new projections will show whether the 2027 return to target still holds. The next monetary policy meeting after December is on 3 and 4 February 2027, again in Frankfurt.

Newcomers can read our guides to how central banks manage the euro and to inflation and purchasing power.