UK energy bills in autumn 2026: seven dates that explain the rise

Bills in Great Britain are rising into winter for the second quarter running, and most of the reason is thousands of miles away. These are the events since late May that explain the number on your October bill, in date order.

27 May: the July cap jumps 13%

Ofgem set the July to September cap at £1,663 for a typical dual-fuel Direct Debit home, a 13% rise, with gas up 24% and electricity 5%. The regulator named the cause directly: higher wholesale gas prices “caused by the ongoing conflict in the Middle East”. The capped gas rate went from 5.74p to 7.33p per kWh in one quarter. Households that had signed a fixed deal in spring were untouched, which is the whole point of a fix.

1 July: “typical” gets smaller

From 1 July the Typical Domestic Consumption Values used in every headline cap figure fell to 2,500 kWh of electricity and 9,500 kWh of gas a year, from 2,700 and 11,500. Energy UK gives the reasons as warmer weather, more efficient homes and people cutting back because bills are high.

This matters when you read headlines. A cap of £1,723 on the new values is roughly £1,940 on the old ones, so figures from before and after July are not comparable. Your own bill depends on your own kWh; the cap limits unit rates and standing charges, not the total.

21 July: VAT on electricity cut to zero

One day after taking office, Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Chancellor John Healey announced that the 5% VAT on domestic electricity in Great Britain would go from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, at a cost of around £850 million, paid for by cancelling the Digital ID programme. HMRC guidance of 8 September confirmed the detail: electricity only, gas stays at 5%, Northern Ireland excluded. It is worth about £45 a year on typical use and applies to fixed deals as well as the cap, so nobody has to do anything to get it. Whether it continues after March is a Budget question.

26 August: October cap set at £1,723

Ofgem’s October to December cap rose £60 a year, or 4%, to £1,723. Gas rose 8%, the second quarterly rise in a row; electricity was “broadly stable” because the VAT cut offset its wholesale increase. From 1 October the capped Direct Debit rates are 26.32p per kWh and 54.83p a day for electricity, 7.97p per kWh and 29.68p a day for gas. Ofgem added that fixed tariffs were then available £100 or more below the cap and that around 11 million households, about 35%, were on fixes and unaffected.

If your fix ends this autumn, the 49 days before its end date are exit-fee-free, which makes them the time to compare.

10 September: wholesale gas back above 200p a therm

Catalyst Commercial’s market report of 11 September recorded the NBP day-ahead gas price settling at 205.25p per therm on 10 September, with the Winter 2026 contract at 205.97p and day-ahead baseload power at £176 per MWh. The drivers it listed: the Iran conflict and Houthi action in the Red Sea, Norwegian maintenance, weak wind, and storage well below normal (67% across Europe, 49% in Britain). The market was pricing Winter 2026 as a crisis period and Winter 2027 as near normal.

Wholesale energy is over 40% of the cap, and Ofgem’s November decision rests on prices through the autumn. If the Strait of Hormuz reopens, as late-September reports about US-Iran talks suggested it might, January could land lower than forecast.

17 September: Ofgem goes after the battery queue

Ofgem proposed a commitment fee of £3,000 per MW, rising to as much as £25,000 per MW, for battery projects waiting in the grid connection queue. It said Britain has around 90 GW of batteries queuing against 29 GW expected to be needed by 2035. This followed a similar proposal for data centres on 29 July. Nothing changes on the next bill, but network costs added £66 to the April cap and are set to keep rising to 2031, and clearing speculative projects is meant to stop households paying for grid nobody uses.

23 September: the January forecasts diverge

Cornwall Insight published its forecast for the January to March 2027 cap: £1,872 for a typical dual-fuel Direct Debit home, about 9% above October, including the VAT cut. The consultancy’s own page says the figure was calculated from prices at the close of 25 August, before gas climbed back above 200p. Supplier forecasts from EDF, British Gas and E.ON Next, averaged by MoneySavingExpert for the week of 21 September, put January at about £2,117, around 23% higher than now.

Fixes are being priced against these expectations, which is why the cheapest ones now sit only a little below the October cap. Our 2027 outlook walks through the fix-or-wait decision.

Also in the background

ECO4, the supplier-funded insulation scheme, ends on 31 December 2026 with no successor; the Warm Homes Plan’s council-run grants take over. The £150 Warm Home Discount reopens in October with a qualifying date of 23 August 2026. And on 25 September Ofgem opened a consultation on the Last Resort Supply Payment for Rebel Energy’s former customers, the cost of the most recent supplier failure, which every bill payer ends up covering.

Where that leaves your bill

Two quarterly rises driven by gas, one tax cut on electricity, and a January figure that depends on a shipping lane. Know your usage in kWh (our bill guide shows where to find it), decide whether a fix priced near the October cap is worth its certainty, and if you are on the capped variable rate, compare before November’s announcement rather than after it. We will update this page when Ofgem publishes the January cap.