United Kingdom inflation rate (CPI)
Headline CPI 12-month inflation rate published monthly by the Office for National Statistics; the measure against which the Government's 2% inflation target for the MPC is defined.
| Current value | 2.8 percent |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-05-01 |
| In force until | 2026-05-31 |
| Official source | Office for National Statistics, statistical bulletin 'Consumer price inflation, UK: May 2026', released 17 June 2026 (ONS series D7G7, CPI ANNUAL RATE 00: ALL ITEMS, 2015=100) |
| Last verified | 2026-07-20 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
CPI rose 2.8% in the 12 months to May 2026, unchanged from April 2026. Transport was the largest upward contributor (transport division prices up 6.8% over 12 months, the highest annual rate since December 2022), partly offset by a downward contribution from food and non-alcoholic beverages. Core CPI (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) was 2.6%, up from 2.5% in April. This is the HEADLINE CPI, not CPIH: CPIH (CPI including owner occupiers' housing costs and Council Tax) stood at 3.0% in May 2026 and is a different, broader measure — do not substitute one for the other. The MPC's 2% target is defined on CPI, so this is the target-relevant series. As of last_confirmed (20 July 2026) May 2026 is the latest published period; the June 2026 bulletin is scheduled for release at 07:00 on 22 July 2026 and will supersede this value almost immediately. ACCESS QUIRK: the ONS timeseries JSON endpoint (/economy/inflationandpriceindices/timeseries/d7g7/mm23/data) returned a stale tail ending March 2026 when fetched on 20 July 2026 — the bulletin HTML is authoritative and was used instead. ONS also publishes RPI (a legacy measure no longer a National Statistic, still used for some index-linked contracts) — excluded here.
Earlier values
| From | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-01-01 | 3 | — |
| 2026-02-01 | 3 | — |
| 2026-03-01 | 3.3 | — |
| 2026-04-01 | 2.8 | — |
Get it programmatically
curl https://euroref.dev/v1/gb/cpi
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://euroref.dev/v1/gb/cpi/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://euroref.dev/provenance/gb/cpiOther United Kingdom series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · corporate tax rate · income tax rates · late-payment interest rate