Heating Winter 2026: What Gas, Heating Oil and Electricity Will Cost Europe's Households

Europe enters the heating season in a weak position. The EU's gas stores were only about 75% full at the end of October, after sinking in early October to the lowest level for the time of year since records began in 2011, and so missed the already-lowered 80% goal for 1 November. The Dutch TTF gas benchmark climbed above €100 per megawatt-hour on 28 October for the first time since December 2022, more than three times its pre-war level, heating oil costs around €1.70-1.80 a litre in Germany, the most since March 2022, and in our own hourly data wholesale electricity has averaged €194/MWh in Germany over the last 30 days, —% more than in July.

The cause is the same supply shock that has pushed fuel prices to records: the war around the Strait of Hormuz has cut liquefied natural gas from Qatar, drone strikes and export bans have tightened oil products, and every extra euro on gas feeds through into the price of power. How much a household ends up paying depends on three things: where it lives, how it heats, and how cold the winter turns out to be.

This is a living report: the price figures below are read live from our database, and we revise the analysis as the winter unfolds. For the fuel side of the same crisis, see our report on fuel prices.

Gas heats more European homes than any other fuel and sets the price of much of Europe's electricity, so the storage level matters twice.

• Storage: the EU's facilities were only about 75% full at the end of October — below the five-year average of around 86% for the date and the lowest level for the season since 2011 — so the 80% target for 1 November, already cut from the usual 90%, has been missed. Germany, the biggest consumer, stood at 61.2% on 1 November, against a national target of around 70%. The head of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, calls the risk of a shortage low, but says gas has become considerably more expensive.
• LNG: QatarEnergy has extended force majeure on its liquefied-gas shipments to the end of December — for Europe some 38 cargoes, about 5 billion cubic metres, between April and December. Qatar normally supplies roughly an eighth of Europe's LNG, all of it through the Strait of Hormuz. Europe competes with Asia for every other cargo: spot prices there reached a four-year high of about $31.7 per million British thermal units in late October.
• Price: the Dutch TTF benchmark traded at around €72-80 per megawatt-hour in early October, rose above €90 on 20 October and passed €100 on 28 October for the first time since December 2022; on 30 October it stood at around €103 — more than three times its pre-war level of about €30.

The risk is not that the heating stops — grid operators say the system can meet winter demand — but that a cold spell late in the season drains the stores quickly, pushes prices up and forces Europe to buy expensive gas next summer to refill them. Analysts had named €100 as the level a cold snap combined with renewed disruption in the Gulf could bring; the market reached it in a mild October, so a long cold spell in January or February would start from a much higher base.

Because gas-fired plants usually set the price in the hours when demand is highest, the gas shock lands directly in the power market. Over the 30 days to 9 November 2026, day-ahead prices in our data averaged:

• Hungary €268/MWh, Romania €265 and Greece €243 — when we published, south-eastern Europe, short of cheap baseload power, was paying the most.
• Austria €247 — —% above its July average of €—.
• Germany €194, France €186, the Netherlands €194, Poland €197 and Spain €179.
• Sweden (Stockholm) €26, Finland €46 and Norway (Oslo) €144 — hydro and nuclear power keep Sweden and Finland far below the rest, while southern Norway, whose market is tied to the continent by subsea cables, has moved much closer to continental prices this autumn.

Wholesale prices reach household bills with a delay of months, through supplier tariffs and regulated price caps, so this autumn's rise is mostly still ahead of consumers. You can follow every zone hour by hour on our wholesale electricity pages.

Millions of German homes, and many rural households across Europe, still heat with oil — and they are hit by the same diesel squeeze that has driven pump prices to records, because heating oil and diesel are near-identical middle distillates. In Germany a litre of heating oil costs around €1.70-1.80 — €171.35 per 100 litres on 30 October according to the price portal esyoil and €172.10 according to HeizOel24 — close to its mid-September peak and the highest level since March 2022, when the start of the war in Ukraine pushed it to almost €2.

Unlike petrol and diesel, heating oil gets no tax relief: Germany's 17-cent fuel rebate applies only at the pump, and no specific support for heating-oil customers has been decided so far; the release of 19.5 million barrels from Germany's strategic oil reserve, approved by the Bundesrat on 16 October, is meant to ease supply in general. Low water on the Rhine adds to the cost in south-western Germany, where barges normally deliver much of the supply. For oil-heated homes the usual advice applies more than ever: compare dealers, consider ordering together with neighbours, and avoid buying in a hurry during a cold spell, when prices tend to jump.

The latest official household prices from Eurostat (period 2026-S1) show how unevenly the shock lands. They already cover the first four months of the war, yet show almost no effect: according to Eurostat's release of 30 October, the consumption-weighted EU average for household gas fell by 10.2% compared with the second half of 2025, to 11.0 ct/kWh — the lowest level since the first half of 2022 — and electricity fell by 2.2%, to 28.3 ct/kWh. Household tariffs follow wholesale prices with a long delay; the exceptions so far include electricity in Finland (+20%), Sweden (+13%) and Poland (+11%). This winter's increases therefore still come on top of these figures.

Gas (ct/kWh, all taxes included, Eurostat's standard household band D2): Hungary 3.3, Spain 7.9, Belgium 8.5, Italy 11.4, Germany 11.6, Austria 12.4, France 13.5, the Netherlands 16.2 and Sweden 22.0, against a simple average of the EU member states of 9.7. No current household gas prices are available for Poland and Finland.

Electricity (ct/kWh, standard household band DC, 2,500-5,000 kWh a year): Hungary 11.4, the Netherlands 24.4, France 24.9, Spain 25.1, Poland 30.0, Sweden 30.6, Italy 31.4, Austria 32.6, Germany 36.2 and Ireland 38.7, against a simple average of the member states of 25.0.

For a typical household using 15,000 kWh of gas a year, that means around €1734 in Germany against €1456 at that average; 3,500 kWh of electricity cost around €1266 in Germany against €876. Most of the gap between countries is political: taxes, levies and network charges, plus regulated prices in countries such as Hungary and Spain, explain far more of it than the cost of the energy itself. Full rankings and their history are on our household electricity and household gas pages.

How quickly wholesale prices reach households depends on how each country sets its tariffs.

• In Great Britain the regulator Ofgem raised its price cap by 4% to £1,723 a year for a typical dual-fuel household from 1 October, and analysts at Cornwall Insight expect a further rise of about 16% in January, to around £1,999 — the biggest increase since early 2023. The January cap will be announced by 25 November.
• In Germany most households are on contracts that follow the market with a lag, and suppliers have to announce increases several weeks in advance, so higher purchasing costs will show up in tariffs over the winter rather than overnight. The comparison portal Verivox expects gas suppliers to raise prices widely by 10-20% at the turn of the year, which can mean up to €500 a year more for a typical household. Two cost items for 2027 are already known: the national CO₂ price stays within its corridor of €55-65 a tonne, because the EU's new emissions trading for buildings and transport has been postponed to 2028, while network charges rise slightly — by about 3% for gas and 1.9% for electricity, according to provisional figures from Verivox. Letters announcing changes to basic-supply tariffs on 1 January must reach customers by around 20 November.
• Countries with regulated or capped household prices, Hungary among them, shield consumers in the short run, but the cost moves to the state budget.

The pattern from the last crisis is instructive: wholesale gas peaked in August 2022, but household gas prices across the EU only peaked in the first half of 2023.

Governments are reacting, but far more modestly than in 2022, and mostly with targeted help rather than broad price brakes. The Bruegel think tank counts more than €11 billion of fiscal measures for this energy crisis so far, over half of it in Spain and Germany.

• Germany is paying no extra heating-cost allowance this winter: the one-off grants of 2022 and 2023 have not been repeated, and there is no gas or electricity price brake as in 2022-23. Housing benefit includes a heating-cost component that raises the housing costs taken into account by €96 a month for a single person (plus €14.40 for CO₂ costs); the government plans to halve it from 1 January 2027, and the Bundestag will hold a hearing on the bill on 4 November. Housing minister Verena Hubertz has said that around a third of the households concerned could lose their entitlement, and the Bundesrat has objected to the plan.
• France is sending energy vouchers of €48 to €277 to 5.8 million households three months earlier than usual, in January instead of April.
• The United Kingdom cut VAT on household electricity from 5% to zero on 1 October 2026 and, in its budget of 28 October, extended the cut to July 2027; the budget also brings a £100 payment from January for around 20 million homes in council-tax bands A to D in England and asks Ofgem to scrap standing charges on gas by the end of 2027.
• The Netherlands and Belgium support vulnerable households with heating costs, Sweden pays lump-sum electricity subsidies, and Greece is expanding its fuel and heating support.

The difference from 2022 is deliberate: targeted help reaches those who need it while leaving the price signal intact — and every cubic metre of gas that is not burned helps the storage last through the winter.

Nobody can change the gas price, but a few steps reliably cut the bill:

• Turn the thermostat down a little: as a rule of thumb, each degree less saves around 6% of heating energy.
• Check your contract: compare your tariff with offers in your area, and read any price-change letter carefully — in most countries a price increase gives you the right to switch.
• Maintain the heating: bleed radiators, have the boiler serviced and insulate exposed pipes; small fixes add up over a long winter.
• Use cheap hours: with a dynamic electricity tariff, running appliances or a heat pump when wholesale prices are low saves real money — our hourly wholesale prices show when that is.
• Plan heating-oil orders: fill up when prices dip rather than in a cold snap, and ask about group orders.

And check what support you are entitled to: in Germany, for example, housing benefit includes a heating-cost component, yet many households that would qualify never apply for it.

• The weather: a mild winter lets Europe get through on low stores; a long cold spell in January or February would drain them and push gas and power prices up sharply.
• The Gulf: as long as Qatar's LNG is held back and tankers around Hormuz come under attack, Europe competes with Asia for every cargo from the US and elsewhere. A durable reopening of the strait would ease gas faster than anything else.
• The refill: the lower the stores are in spring, the more gas Europe has to buy next summer — which can keep prices high well into 2027.

Dates to watch: the Bundestag hearing on the housing-benefit changes on 4 November, the deadline for German suppliers' letters on basic-supply prices for 1 January around 20 November, Ofgem's January cap by 25 November and the end of Qatar's force majeure at the end of December — a date it has already been pushed to once. Eurostat's figures for the first half of 2026, published on 30 October, show no crisis effect on household bills yet; those for the second half, due in spring 2027, are likely to. We will update this report as the evidence changes.

This is a living report. The price figures above are read live from our database and refresh on their own as new data arrive; the analysis is reviewed and revised by hand as the winter unfolds.

• 1 November 2026 — TTF above €100/MWh for the first time since December 2022 (28 October; about €103 on 30 October); EU gas storage at about 75% and Germany at 61.2% on 1 November, so the 80% target was missed; Qatar extended its force majeure to the end of December; German heating oil at about €1.71-1.72 a litre (esyoil, HeizOel24, 30 October); Eurostat's official figures for the first half of 2026 (weighted EU averages: gas 11.0 ct/kWh, −10.2%; electricity 28.3 ct/kWh, −2.2%); UK electricity VAT relief extended to July 2027 plus a £100 payment; German CO₂ price unchanged in 2027, network charges slightly higher. Our household electricity prices now use Eurostat's standard band DC (2,500-5,000 kWh a year); until now we had mistakenly shown band DB (1,000-2,500 kWh), which put Germany at 41.7 instead of 36.2 ct/kWh.
• 22 October 2026 — Correction: an earlier version said Germany was paying a second heating-cost allowance this winter; that grant dates from 2022, and there is none in 2026. Our household gas prices now come from Eurostat's household dataset (band D2); until now we had mistakenly shown prices for small non-household consumers. Also new: Eurostat data for the first half of 2026 (unweighted EU averages: gas 9.7 ct/kWh, electricity 28.3 ct/kWh), TTF above €90/MWh for the first time since December 2022 (20 October), EU gas storage at about 75%, German heating oil at around €1.74 a litre, and Verivox expecting 10-20% higher gas tariffs at the turn of the year.
• 10 October 2026 — First published: EU gas storage at about 73% (8 October), TTF around €72-80/MWh, German heating oil around €1.70 a litre; wholesale power averaging €153/MWh in Germany over 30 days, 33% more than in July; household price comparison based on Eurostat data for 2025-S2.