Will energy prices keep rising, and by how much

The short answer

In the short term, yes. Every major forecaster now expects the energy price cap to rise again from January 2027, and the estimates have moved sharply higher since late August: an average forecast of around nine per cent in late August has been overtaken by supplier forecasts of twenty-two to twenty-four per cent by late September. Nobody, including Ofgem, has confirmed the real number yet. The January to March 2027 cap is announced around 25 November 2026, and every figure in circulation before then is a labelled forecast, not the cap.

The four forecasts on the table right now

Each figure is that supplier or analyst's own published prediction for a typical dual-fuel Direct Debit household, checked directly on the source's own page on the date shown. Ofgem has not confirmed the January to March 2027 cap and is not expected to until around 25 November 2026; none of the four numbers above is the cap.

All three suppliers have revised down since mid-September: EDF from £2,165 to £2,098, E.ON Next from £2,131 to £2,118, and British Gas from £2,160 to £2,135, all between 14 and 23 September 2026. Cornwall Insight, generally the most-cited independent forecaster, has stayed anchored near nine per cent since late August, which makes it the widest gap currently on the table: the difference between the lowest and highest published forecast is over £260 a year on the same typical household.

Why the estimates disagree so sharply

The gap is not a dispute about Ofgem's formula, which every forecaster applies the same way. It is a dispute about where wholesale gas prices go before Ofgem calculates the real cap. Gas is the dominant single driver of a typical dual-fuel bill: it makes up just over half of the total, and wholesale gas costs are more than 40 per cent of the cap itself. Between 9 and 15 September 2026, an escalation in the Middle East conflict disrupted Qatari and UAE LNG cargo shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, on top of a European heatwave pushing up demand and low Continental gas storage. That is what pushed the average forecast from roughly £1,948 in early September to over £2,150 within a fortnight. Cornwall Insight's forecast has moved far less because its last public methodology update sits closer to that escalation's edge than the others.

What is confirmed, and what is only forecast

The confirmed part is short. Ofgem's 1 October to 31 December 2026 cap sets electricity at 26.32p per kWh and 54.83p a day standing charge, gas at 7.97p per kWh and 29.68p a day, and the typical dual-fuel Direct Debit bill at £1,723 a year, announced 26 August 2026. Everything above about January is a forecast, dated to the day it was checked, made by a supplier or an independent analyst rather than by the regulator. Ofgem's own confirmation lands around 25 November 2026, roughly nine to ten weeks ahead of the quarter it covers, which is Ofgem's usual cadence rather than a fixed statutory date. Kept current on the price cap tracker.

That distinction is worth holding onto whichever way the eventual number lands. A forecast published in September, however carefully sourced, is describing wholesale gas markets that still have two more months to move before Ofgem locks the number in.

Is solar and a battery a real hedge, or just a comforting story

Genuinely a hedge, with an honest limit attached. Every kWh a solar system generates and a household uses itself is a kWh it does not buy at whatever the cap says that quarter, present or future. That protection scales with the size of a rise: a bigger January cap makes self-consumed solar worth more, not less, because the thing it displaces has become more expensive. A battery adds a second lever, shifting units bought cheaply off-peak into the hours the cap prices highest, which works whatever the cap does because it is arbitrage against your own tariff structure, not a bet on the cap's direction.

• It is a hedge, not a guarantee. Solar generates least in December and January, the exact months a rise would land hardest, so the protection is real but partial through the depths of winter.
• It protects the unit-rate piece of the bill, not the standing charge. At 54.83p a day, the standing charge is paid whether a panel is installed or not, and no forecast changes that arithmetic.
• The size of the January rise changes the payback sum, not the decision logic. A bigger cap shortens payback on the same system; it does not turn a system that did not stack up at today's rates into one that suddenly does.
• Fixed-tariff households are largely unaffected either way. Around 11 million accounts, roughly a third of the market, sit on a fixed tariff outside the cap altogether; the cap itself protects the other roughly 22 million accounts on a default tariff, and it is that larger group the whole forecast conversation is aimed at.

What that means for the actual arithmetic, worked against the confirmed cap and against Cornwall Insight's own forecast, is set out properly in our companion guide to what the January cap means for solar, which separates the whole-bill, gas-led headline from the smaller electricity-only figure solar and battery households should actually be watching.

Will prices keep rising after January

Nobody has published a credible forecast for April to June 2027 yet, and anyone offering one with confidence is guessing further ahead than the industry itself is willing to. What can be said is the underlying pattern of the last four years: the cap has moved in both directions since the 2022 crisis peak of roughly £2,500, driven overwhelmingly by wholesale gas rather than by a one-way structural trend, and the current escalation is a specific, datable event, a Middle East supply disruption, rather than a permanent repricing of the market. That argues against treating either the price only goes up or this spike will pass quickly as a safe assumption, and for treating each quarter's confirmed cap, not September's forecast, as the number your own decisions should be built on.