Euribor forecast: implied forward rates

Euribor (Euro Interbank Offered Rate) is the reference rate behind most variable-rate mortgages in Spain, Italy, Portugal, Finland, the Netherlands and Austria. The five maturities below are the fixings of 4 September 2026: the 12-month rate is the one most household loans follow, the 3-month rate is common in Italy and Austria, and the 1-week and 1-month rates track ECB policy most closely.

All values are published one business day after the fixing, sourced from the Bank of Finland, and cross-checked monthly against the ECB Data Portal. Use the maturity pages for history, the monthly pages for revision averages, and the calculator to translate a change into euros per month.

Euribor is the rate at which euro-area banks lend to each other for a fixed term, published every TARGET2 business day by the European Money Markets Institute. This site republishes the Bank of Finland's copy of the fixings with a 24-hour delay, which is why the newest date is usually yesterday's.

Every number on this page is a published fixing, not an estimate: daily values come from the Bank of Finland's copy of the Euribor series, monthly averages are the arithmetic mean of those fixings and are cross-checked against the ECB Data Portal, and the tables are rebuilt each business day after the previous day's fixing appears. Tenors use the ACT/360 convention. Where a monthly average differs from the ECB figure by more than a hundredth of a point the methodology page lists the case.

What an implied forward rate is

Take two fixings from the same day: the 3-month rate and the 6-month rate. A bank that lends for six months at the 6-month rate should, in a consistent market, end up in roughly the same place as a bank that lends for three months at the 3-month rate and then lends the proceeds for a further three months at whatever the 3-month rate turns out to be. The 3-month rate three months from now that makes these two routes exactly equal is the implied forward rate. It is not observed anywhere; it is computed from the two rates that are.

The same logic gives a 6-month rate in six months from the 6-month and 12-month fixings. Two further rows need a point that Euribor does not publish: the 3-month rate in nine months uses a 9-month rate interpolated in a straight line between the 6-month and 12-month fixings, and the 1-month rate in one month uses a 2-month rate interpolated between the 1-month and 3-month fixings. Interpolation adds a further approximation to those two rows. The table on this page shows the four forwards that can be built this way; the 1-week fixing is not used.

The formula in words

The formula shown on the page is the standard money-market relationship for simple interest on an ACT/360 basis. In words: take one plus the longer rate multiplied by its number of days over 360; divide by one plus the shorter rate multiplied by its number of days over 360; subtract one; then annualise the result by multiplying by 360 and dividing by the number of days between the two maturities. The output is the simple annual rate for the period between the shorter and the longer maturity. All inputs are the fixings of 4 September 2026: 2.364 %, 2.679 %, 2.794 % and 3.108 % for the four maturities from one to twelve months.

Why forwards are not predictions

Two things stop an implied forward from being a forecast.

The term premium. A 12-month unsecured loan between banks carries more risk than a 3-month one, and lenders ask for extra return to make it. That premium is part of the 12-month fixing and therefore part of every forward derived from it. A forward rate is the expected future rate plus the premium for the period, and the two cannot be separated from the fixings alone. As a rule the premium pushes forwards above the rate that later materialises, but by an amount that is neither constant nor observable.

They move every day. The forwards are a function of one day's fixings. Tomorrow's fixings give tomorrow's forwards, and after an unexpected piece of news the whole table can shift. A forward rate is a snapshot of what today's curve implies, not a commitment by anyone about the future.

For those reasons the page carries a caveat rather than a headline, and this site does not publish predictions of any kind.

How to read the table

Each row names a future rate, for example "3-month rate in 3 months", and gives the value implied by the fixings of 4 September 2026. Reading the rows together tells you the shape of the curve: if the forwards step up with each row the market is pricing higher rates ahead, if they step down it is pricing cuts, and if they sit close to the current fixings it expects little change. The size of the step is a rough measure of how much change is priced; it is not a schedule.

For a mortgage holder the practical use is to compare the forward for your maturity at your next revision date against the current fixing. If your loan revises in six months, the "6-month rate in 6 months" row is the closest indication of the level today's market is pricing for around then; it is a 6-month rate, not the 12-month rate most contracts use, and the caveats above apply in full.

ECB meetings and the short end

The events that move the short end of the curve, and with it the forwards, are the ECB Governing Council's eight monetary-policy meetings a year, at which the deposit facility rate is set. The 1-week and 1-month fixings follow that rate closely; the longer fixings, and the forwards derived from them, move as expectations of the next meetings change. The ECB calendar page lists the meeting dates, which is where the forward table's assumptions are tested.