Consumer price inflation, UK: January 2026

• The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 3.2% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 3.6% in the 12 months to December 2025.
• On a monthly basis, CPIH fell by 0.3% in January 2026, while it was little changed in January 2025.

• The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 3.0% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 3.4% in the 12 months to December 2025.

• On a monthly basis, CPI fell by 0.5% in January 2026, compared with a fall of 0.1% in January 2025.

• Transport, and food and non-alcoholic beverages made the largest downward contributions to the monthly change in both CPIH and CPI annual rates.

• Core CPIH (CPIH excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 3.3% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 3.5% in the 12 months to December 2025; the CPIH goods annual rate fell from 2.2% to 1.6%, while the CPIH services annual rate fell from 4.5% to 4.3%.

• Core CPI (CPI excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 3.1% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 3.2% in the 12 months to December 2025; the CPI goods annual rate fell from 2.2% to 1.6%, while the CPI services annual rate fell from 4.5% to 4.4%.

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) rose by 3.2% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 3.6% in the 12 months to December 2025 (Figure 1).

On a monthly basis, CPIH fell by 0.3% in January 2026, while it was little changed in January 2025.

The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 3.0% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 3.4% in the 12 months to December 2025.

On a monthly basis, CPI fell by 0.5% in January 2026, compared with a fall of 0.1% in January 2025.

The main drivers of the annual inflation rate for CPIH and CPI are the same where they are common to both measures. However, the OOH costs component accounts for approximately 18% of the CPIH and is the main driver for differences between the CPIH and CPI inflation rates. This makes CPIH our most comprehensive measure of inflation. We cover this in more detail in Section 4: Latest movements in CPIH inflation and provide a commentary on the CPI in Section 5: Latest movements in CPI inflation. We also cover both CPIH and CPI in Section 3: Notable movements in prices, though the figures reflect CPIH.

Figure 2 shows the contributions from the 12 divisions to the change in the annual Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) inflation rate between December 2025 and January 2026. These sum to the change in the annual rate between the latest two months, that is, the fall from 3.6% to 3.2%.

The fall in the rate into January 2026 reflected downward contributions from six divisions, partially offset by upward contributions from five divisions. The largest downward contributions were from the transport, food and non-alcoholic beverages, and housing and household services divisions.

Transport

Prices in the transport division rose overall by 2.7% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 4.0% in the 12 months to December. On a monthly basis, prices fell by 1.8% in January 2026, compared with a fall of 0.5% a year ago.

The largest downward effect came from motor fuels, where the average price of petrol fell by 3.1 pence per litre between December 2025 and January 2026, compared with a rise of 0.8 pence per litre between December 2024 and January 2025. The average price stood at 133.2 pence per litre in January 2026, down from 137.1 pence per litre a year earlier.

Similarly, diesel prices fell by 3.2 pence per litre in January 2026, compared with a rise of 1.5 pence per litre in January 2025. The average price stood at 142.5 pence per litre in January 2026, up from 144.1 pence per litre a year earlier. These movements resulted in overall motor fuel prices falling by 2.2% in the 12 months to January 2026, compared with a rise of 0.9% in the 12 months to December 2025.

The second-largest downward effect came from air fares, which tend to rise into December and fall into January (Figure 3). However, in December 2024 and January 2025, this pattern was less pronounced than in previous years. The monthly rise in December 2024 was the third-lowest December rise since monthly price collection began in 2001, and part of the reason for this lower-than-usual growth may have been because the return date for the European flights in December 2024's index was Christmas Eve, and the return date for long-haul flights was New Year's Eve. The weaker growth into December 2024 led to a smaller fall than normal into January 2025.

Whereas the pattern of air fares rising into December and falling into January was less pronounced last year, the index this year followed a more conventional pattern, perhaps because the return flights in December did not fall on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. The more pronounced rise into December 2025 and fall into January 2026 led to a large upward contribution to the change in the annual rate in December 2025 and a large downward contribution in January 2026.  

Food and non-alcoholic beverages

Food and non-alcoholic beverages prices rose by 3.6% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 4.5% in the 12 months to December 2025 (Figure 4). On a monthly basis, food and non-alcoholic beverages prices fell by 0.1% in January 2026, compared with a rise of 0.9% a year ago.

There were downward effects to the change in the rate from 6 of the 11 food and non-alcoholic beverages classes. These were,

• bread and cereals – down 0.04 percentage points
• meat – down 0.02 percentage points
• milk, cheese and eggs – down 0.01 percentage points
• food products not elsewhere classified – down 0.01 percentage points
• coffee, tea and cocoa – down 0.01 percentage points
• mineral waters, soft drinks and juices – down 0.01 percentage points

Housing and household services

The 12-month inflation rate for housing and household services was 4.2% in January 2026, down from 4.6% in December 2025. On a monthly basis, prices rose by 0.2% in January 2026, compared with a rise of 0.5% a year ago.

The easing in the 12-month rate between December 2025 and January 2026 mainly reflected a downward effect from owner occupiers’ housing (OOH) costs. These rose by 3.9% in the 12 months to January 2026, compared with a rise of 4.2% in the 12 months to December 2025. The rate has slowed for 12 consecutive months and is at its lowest since February 2023, when it was also 3.9%. Monthly OOH costs rose by 0.1% in January 2026, compared with a 0.4% increase a year ago.

The easing in the 12-month rate between December 2025 and January 2026 also reflected a downward effect from gas, where prices fell by 2.7% in the 12 months to January 2026, compared with a rise of 2.1% in December 2025. Monthly gas prices fell by 3.4%, compared with a rise of 1.3% a year ago.

There was a counteracting upward effect from electricity, where prices rose by 5.3% in the 12 months to January 2026, compared with a rise of 2.7% in December 2025. Monthly electricity prices rose by 3.7% compared with a rise of 1.2% a year ago.

This resulted from a change in the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) energy price cap in January 2026, described on the Ofgem website. Ofgem estimated that for an average household paying by direct debit for dual fuel, this equates to an annual bill of £1,758, which is a rise of £3.

Education

Prices in the education division rose by 5.1% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 7.6% in the 12 months to December 2025. On a monthly basis, prices were unchanged in January 2026, compared with a rise of 2.4% a year ago.

The downward contribution came entirely from private school fees, which rose by 12.7% a year ago after they became subject to Value Added Tax (VAT), and there was no change in price in January 2026.

Restaurants and hotels

Prices in the restaurants and hotels division rose by 4.1% in the 12 months to January 2026, up from 3.8% in the 12 months to December 2025. On a monthly basis, prices fell by 0.7% in January 2026, compared with a fall of 1.0% a year ago.

The largest upward contribution came from the hotel item where prices are collected the night before the stay, with prices falling by 8.8% in January 2026 compared with a fall of 12.2% a year ago.

Figure 5 shows the 12-month inflation rates for the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) series for all goods and all services, together with CPIH excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco (often referred to as core CPIH). The CPIH inflation rate is added for comparison.

The core CPIH annual inflation rate was 3.3% in January 2026, down from 3.5% in December 2025. This is the lowest rate since October 2021, when it was 3.1%.

The CPIH all-goods index rose by 1.6% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 2.2% in the 12 months to December 2025. The largest downward contribution to the change in the annual rate came from energy, particularly from motor fuels.

The CPIH all-services index rose by 4.3% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 4.5% in December 2025. The is the joint-lowest rate since May 2022, when it was 4.3%. The largest downward contribution to the change in the annual rate came from transport, particularly air fares.

Figure 6 shows the extent to which the distinct categories of goods and services have contributed to the overall annual CPIH inflation rate over the last two years. The contribution of each category to the annual rate depends on the price movement in that category and its weight, which is updated annually.

The largest positive contribution to the CPIH annual inflation rate came from housing and household services. This contributed 1.28 percentage points in January 2026, down from 1.37 percentage points in December 2025. The division has made the largest contribution for the last 19 months, starting from July 2024.

Figure 7 shows the contributions from owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs and Council Tax to the annual CPIH inflation rate in the context of wider housing-related costs. The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) differs from the CPIH because it does not include these two components.

The annual contribution from OOH costs continued to slow, and was 0.67 percentage points in January 2026. This contribution was the smallest since April 2023, having decreased for 12 consecutive months from a recent high of 1.31 percentage points in January 2025.

The annual contribution from rents also continued to slow, and was 0.20 percentage points in January 2026. This contribution was last lower in March 2022, having decreased from a recent high of 0.49 percentage points in January 2025.

While the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) is our most comprehensive measure of consumer price inflation, the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) is based on a harmonised methodology developed by Eurostat. This enables international comparisons to be drawn. More information on the use cases for our consumer price inflation statistics can be found in our Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households: December 2023 article.

Figure 8 shows annual CPI inflation for the UK compared with the EU average and selected G7 countries. While the UK CPI is produced on a comparable basis with EU countries, the United States Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) differs in some respects. More information is available in Note 1 to Figure 8.

The UK’s CPI inflation rate of 3.0% was higher than that of Germany (2.1%) and France (0.4%) in January. The last time the UK rate was lower than the rate in Germany was December 2024.

Figure 9 shows the 12-month inflation rates for the CPI all-goods and all-services series, together with CPI excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco (often referred to as core CPI). The headline CPI inflation rate is added for comparison.

Core CPI rose by 3.1% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 3.2% in December 2025. This is the lowest rate since September 2021, when it was 2.9%.

The CPI all-goods index rose by 1.6% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 2.2% in the 12 months to December 2025.

The CPI all-services index rose by 4.4% in the 12 months to January 2026, down from 4.5% in the 12 months to December 2025.

As with the all-items annual inflation rates, the drivers of CPIH and CPI goods and services inflation are the same (except for owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs and Council Tax, which are excluded from CPI). The drivers are discussed in more detail in Section 4: Latest movements in CPIH inflation.

Figure 10 shows how each of the main groups of goods and services contributed to the change in the CPI annual inflation rate between December 2025 and January 2026.

The fall in the rate into January 2026 reflected downward contributions from six divisions, partially offset by upward contributions from four divisions. The largest downward contributions came from the transport, food and non-alcoholic beverages, and education divisions.

Though the sizes of the contributions differ from CPIH, the main drivers to the change are the same where they are common to both measures.

Figure 11 shows the extent to which the distinct categories of goods and services have contributed to the overall annual CPI inflation rate over the last two years.

The CPIH includes extra housing components not included in the CPI. This can sometimes result in the largest contributions to the annual CPI and CPIH inflation rates coming from different divisions. However, the housing and household services division made the largest contribution to both measures in January 2026, with a 0.58 percentage point contribution to the CPI rate and a 1.28 percentage point contribution to the CPIH rate. OOH costs made a large upward contribution to housing and household services in the CPIH, but are excluded from the CPI.

Annual inflation rate

The most common approach to measuring inflation is the 12-month or annual inflation rate, which compares prices for the latest month with the same month a year ago. In any given month, the annual rate is determined by the balance between upward and downward price movements across the range of goods and services included in the index.

Consumer price inflation

Consumer price inflation is the rate at which the prices of goods and services bought by households rise or fall. It is estimated by using price indices. For an overview of the range of indices available and their uses, please see our Consumer price indices, a brief guide: 2017 and our Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households: December 2023 article.

CPIH

The Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) is the most comprehensive measure of inflation. It extends the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) to include a measure of the costs associated with owning, maintaining and living in one's own home, known as owner occupiers' housing (OOH) costs, along with Council Tax. Both are substantial expenses for many households and are not included in the CPI.

CPI

The CPI is a measure of consumer price inflation produced to international standards, and is based on European regulations for the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices. The CPI is the inflation measure used in the government's target for inflation.

The CPI is produced at the same level of detail as the CPIH in our accompanying Consumer price inflation dataset and in our accompanying Consumer price inflation time series.

Owner occupiers' housing costs

OOH costs are the costs of housing services associated with owning, maintaining and living in one's own home.

RPI

The Retail Prices Index (RPI) and its subcomponents do not meet the required standard for designation as accredited official statistics. In recognition that the index continues to be widely used in contracts, we continue to publish the RPI, its subcomponents, and RPI excluding mortgage interest payments (RPIX). To view the all-items RPI, please see the data time series section of the Inflation and price indices area of our website. The annual RPI inflation rate was 3.8% in January 2026.

The UK Statistics Authority (The Authority) and HM Treasury launched a consultation in 2020 on The Authority's proposal to address the shortcomings of the RPI. From 2030 (at the earliest), as outlined in The Authority's response to the joint consultation on reforming the methodology of the Retail Prices Index, the CPIH methods and data sources will be introduced into the RPI. Additionally, the supplementary and lower-level indices of the RPI will be discontinued.

Quality improvement

We are undertaking a programme of quality improvement across our consumer price statistics, including identifying new sources, improving methods and developing modern automated systems. More information about the project and our ongoing plans is in our Transformation of consumer price statistics: August 2024 article. We also outline the rationale for our priorities and their potential impact in our Consumer prices development plan: updated September 2025 article.

The next planned improvement is the introduction of grocery scanner data into our consumer price statistics from February 2026, with the first publication scheduled for March 2026. We outlined this change in our series of research articles, including our Research and developments in the transformation of UK consumer price statistics: April 2025 article.

As usual, we welcome your feedback on our work. To contact us, please email cpi@ons.gov.uk.

Moving from sample items to broader consumption segments

The "All items" Consumer Prices Index (CPI) and Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) series incorporate price information from a wide range of goods and services. From publication in March 2025, the process for aggregating this detailed information has changed, as a necessary step towards incorporating larger and more granular datasets into the consumer price indices.

Goods and services are allocated into "consumption segments" for different categories of expenditure. In some cases, we have defined these consumption segments to correspond to one "item" for which we track prices over time. However, in cases where more comprehensive source data are available, or are expected to be available in the future, a consumption segment typically includes much more than just one item. For simplicity, we continue to refer to "items" in the statistical bulletin and detailed briefing note.

More detailed methodological information on the new aggregation process and consumption segments is available in our Introducing alternative data into consumer price statistics: aggregation and weights article.

Please note that the move from sample items to broader consumption segments means there is an impact on the individual price quotes and lower-level indices published from March 2025 in our Consumer price inflation consumption segment indices and price quotes dataset. These outputs have been updated and presented in an improved format to help users transition to the use of consumption segments and other methodological changes.

We have published an updated glossary (XLSX, 28KB), which sets out the changes made from March 2025.

Households and the cost of living

To assist individuals in understanding how the rise in inflation affects their expenditure, we have produced a personal inflation calculator. The calculator allows users to enter the amount they spend across either a reduced or a wide range of categories, to produce an estimate of their personal inflation based on those spending patterns.

We have now updated the calculator to reflect the most recent available average expenditures for each category (based on household expenditure for 2022). 

Our Shopping prices comparison tool shows how the average prices of items have changed over time. Please note that the newly introduced consumption segments for food, drink and tobacco will not have data before 2025 in the tool. However, the historical average prices for food, drink and tobacco items, that were on the tool before the update in 2025, can be found in our Shopping prices comparison tool data download before the 2025 update.

Please also note that Table 55 in our historical Consumer price inflation dataset, which provided time series of prices for petrol and diesel, has not been published since 19 February 2025 and the two series have been discontinued. Historical average prices are still available from the time series explorer function on our website, using the four-character identifiers CZMK for petrol and CZML for diesel.

On 28 November 2025, we published our quarterly Household Costs Indices (HCIs) for UK household groups bulletin. The HCIs reflect how different types of households experience changing prices, and differ from CPIH and CPI. The CPIH and CPI are based on recognised economic principles, and provide an aggregate measure of inflation for household spending in the UK.

The HCIs are official statistics in development and this release included new estimates for July to September 2025. It was not possible for this latest release to update the weights for 2025 in line with the standard methodology for consumer prices. This is because of delays in processing the underlying survey data and the need for further, ongoing quality assurance. Instead, the most recent estimates have been compiled using the weights for February to December 2024. We aim to update the weights as soon as we can.

Passenger transport by air

We previously published a monthly index for passenger transport by air. We also began publishing Domestic, European and long-haul airfares consumer prices subindices and weights on an annual basis from 26 March 2025. These are being released in the user requested data section of our website.

Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP)

The Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) is the classification that underpins some of the main statistics that we produce. The classification saw an update (PDF, 1,286KB) in 2018, to reflect changes in household expenditure patterns since its inception in the late 1990s. The UK currently uses the version of COICOP introduced in 1999, which was updated in 2017 to add additional detail at the sub-class level, but we plan to have implemented the updated COICOP 2018 by 2029, as referenced in section B4 of our economic statistics plan and subsequent economic statistics progress report. We will also consider re-referencing the CPI as part of the move to the new classification and will provide users with full details of our plans, once finalised.

For further information, please email cpi@ons.gov.uk.

Weights for 2026 consumer price inflation statistics

In line with usual practice at the start of each year, the expenditure weights used in compiling the CPIH and CPI were updated using updated spending information. The first update of weights has been implemented in this month's indices. The second update will be introduced, along with the usual basket update, with the February indices released on 25 March 2026. We will publish an article explaining updates to CPI weights and an article explaining the update to the CPI basket of goods and services on 16 March 2026.

The 2026 weights for CPIH and CPI are calculated using national accounts household final consumption expenditure (HHFCE) data for 2024 and reflect our most comprehensive and complete estimate of latest household spending at the time of the weights update. This is in line with our standard methodology. More information is available in our Consumer price inflation, updating weights articles.

Introducing scanner data into consumer price inflation statistics

We will introduce "scanner data" for approximately 50% of the grocery market with the February 2026 index, which will be published on 25 March 2026. Instead of collecting 25,000 prices per month directly from shops by price collectors, we will use approximately 300 million price points derived from sales of over a billion units of products per month, collected directly from supermarket scanners at the checkouts or online. For the remaining 50% of the groceries market, we will continue to manually collect prices in-store and online.

You can find more about these changes and how they affect our headline measures of inflation, in our Impact analysis on transformation of UK consumer price inflation statistics article.

We have also published an Overview of how we use scanner data in consumer price inflation statistics and our How multilateral index methods help us understand grocery scanner data article, which aim to support user understanding of how we use the data.

These changes will be incorporated into the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) and CPI including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) from March 2026 (February publication), as well as the Household Costs Indices (HCIs) published on 28 May 2026. Following consultation with the Bank of England, required under the Statistics and Registration Services Act 2007, the changes will also be included in the Retail Prices Index (RPI).

Changes to published microdata

From March 2026, our transformation plans also necessitate changes to the individual price quotes and lower-level indices that we publish. These outputs have been updated and presented in an improved format to help users transition to the changes we are making in 2026.

We have published an updated glossary, which sets out the formatting changes made from March 2026 for our price quotes and consumption segment indices data. We will no longer be publishing separate classification frameworks for CPI and CPIH on the microdata landing page. Instead, the consumption segment indices file will include additional columns for the COICOP4 and COICOP5 levels, as well as the RPI section information.

Additionally, the published price quote microdataset will no longer include grocery categories (COICOP Divisions 1 and 2). More information on new outputs that we have developed to meet the needs of existing users of the microdata, is available in our article, Changes to the provision of microdata outputs for consumer price inflation statistics.  

Consumer price inflation historical estimates, UK, 1950 to 1988

On 18 May 2022, we published our Consumer price inflation, historical estimates, UK, 1950 to 1988 – methodology and our Consumer price inflation, historical estimates and recent trends, UK: 1950 to 2022 article. These include new estimates of CPIH and improved estimates of CPI for 1950 to 1988. These estimates (published in response to user need for a longer series) are indicative and are for analytical purposes only. They are not intended for official use and do not constitute part of the accredited official statistics series.

Previously, in December 2018, we published our Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers' housing costs (CPIH) historical series: 1988 to 2004 article. These series are also not classed as accredited official statistics, reflecting the historical uncertainty around the backcasts.

Methodology information

The consumer price indices are normally based on prices collected from outlets around the country, supplemented by information collected centrally over the internet and by phone. The figures in this release use data collected on or around 13 January 2026.

An overview of consumer price statistics is given in our Consumer price indices, a brief guide: 2017. The concepts and methodologies underpinning the indices in more detail are covered in our Consumer Prices Indices Technical Manual, 2019.

A comprehensive source of information on the CPIH, focusing on the approach to measuring owner occupiers' housing costs, is provided in our CPIH Compendium.

Information on the users and uses of these statistics, and the characteristics of the different measures of inflation related to potential use, is included in our Users and uses of consumer price inflation statistics: July 2018 update methodology.

Strengths and limitations

In our Measuring changing prices and costs for consumers and households article, we illustrated our approach to the process using three "use cases", and described how they relate to the measures published and under development.

The three cases refer firstly to the CPIH as our lead measure of inflation, based on economic principles. They also refer to the HCIs as a set of measures that reflect the change in costs and prices experienced by different households, and the RPI as a legacy measure that is required to meet existing user needs. The issues with the RPI are described in our Shortcomings of the Retail Prices Index as a measure of inflation article.

Accredited official statistics

These accredited official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation in July 2017. They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled "accredited official statistics".