Key takeaways
- Bank Rate is 4% from 5 November 2026, raised by 0.25 percentage points on an 8 to 1 vote, and the next announcement is 17 December.
- A quarter point either way moves a £250,000 repayment mortgage over 25 years by about £36 a month, which is £431.49 a year.
- The market curve the Bank conditioned its November projections on averages 4.9% for Bank Rate in 2027 Q4, against 4.2% on the July curve.
- Four of the nine members wrote in November that a further increase was likely or arguable, and one of them voted for 0.5 percentage points.
- CPI inflation was 3.5% in September 2026, with direct energy effects contributing around 1 percentage point of it.
Where interest rates in December 2026 start, and what 17 December can change
Bank Rate is 4%. It has been 4% since 5 November 2026, and the next announcement is on 17 December.
That is the whole answer to the question most people are typing, and it is worth separating from everything that is still open. The Bank of England raised Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points on 5 November, by a majority of 8 to 1. Its own rate page carries the level and the date of the next decision: "Current Bank Rate 4%" and "Next due: 17 December 2026". Nothing about 17 December has been settled. The November summary says "Monetary policy is not on a pre-set path", and the Governor's own line on the day was that the increase "shouldn't be seen as the first in an inevitable long sequence of hikes".
What has been settled is the calendar. The Bank of England interest rate decision dates run to eight announcements a year, and 17 December is the eighth and last of 2026. It arrives without a Monetary Policy Report. Four of the 2026 announcements carried one, in February, April, July and November, and December isn't among them. The next report comes with the 4 February 2027 decision. So the newest published projections a reader can check before 17 December are the ones dated 5 November, and there won't be a fresh set until February.
The committee's previous six decisions of 2026 all held Bank Rate at 3.75%, where it had sat since 18 December 2025. The arithmetic of that run, and what the curve was pricing beforehand, is in our piece on will interest rates go up in November 2026.
What a quarter point either way costs on a 25-year repayment mortgage
Interest rates in December 2026 reach a household through the rate on its own loan, and that rate isn't Bank Rate. The Bank publishes the one that is: the effective interest rate on newly drawn mortgages was 4.63% in September 2026, up from 4.60% in August. That is the actual interest paid on new lending, averaged across every loan drawn that month. Here is what 4.63% costs each month on a 25-year repayment mortgage, with a quarter point taken off it and added to it.
| Loan, 25-year repayment | 4.38% | 4.63% | 4.88% |
|---|---|---|---|
| £150,000 | £823.56 | £844.86 | £866.43 |
| £200,000 | £1,098.09 | £1,126.47 | £1,155.24 |
| £250,000 | £1,372.61 | £1,408.09 | £1,444.05 |
| £300,000 | £1,647.13 | £1,689.71 | £1,732.86 |
| £350,000 | £1,921.65 | £1,971.33 | £2,021.67 |
Find your balance and read across. The middle column is the September average; the outer two are what a quarter point in either direction does to it. Nothing in that table depends on the 17 December vote, because a quarter point on your rate and a quarter point on Bank Rate are not the same event.
A quarter point is about £14 a month for every £100,000 borrowed
On a 25-year repayment term, the step from 4.38% to 4.63% costs £14.19 a month per £100,000, and the step from 4.63% to 4.88% costs £14.38. That is the scaling rule behind the table. It also tells you how small a single decision is against the size of the debt.
On £250,000 the quarter point is £35.96 a month, or £431.49 over a year. Carried for the full 25 years without any further change, it adds £10,787.16 in interest. The monthly figure is the one people feel and the 25-year figure is the one that matters, and they sit two orders of magnitude apart.
The stock of existing mortgages is paying far less than the new-lending rate. The effective rate on the outstanding stock was 4.03% in September, against 4.63% on newly drawn loans. At 4.03% that same £250,000 costs £1,323.74 a month. The gap is the queue: borrowers on fixes signed at lower rates haven't repriced yet. The Bank's November report puts the end point at average annual mortgage payments "around £1,500 higher than before the conflict in the Middle East" by the end of 2029, which is £125 a month.
The two Bank Rate paths published on 5 November disagree by more than a point
Searches for predicted interest rates in December 2026 are looking for a number the Bank doesn't publish. It never states a probability for its own next meeting. What it does publish is two different paths, and on 5 November they disagreed.
The first is the market curve. The November projections were conditioned on it, and Table 3.B gives Bank Rate averaging 3.9% in 2026 Q4, 4.9% in 2027 Q4, 4.9% in 2028 Q4 and 4.7% in 2029 Q4. The July Report's equivalents were 3.9%, 4.2% and 4.1%. So the curve added about 0.7 percentage points to where it expected Bank Rate to be at the end of 2027, in the three months between the two reports.
The second is the Bank's Market Participants Survey. The report records that the median response "expected Bank Rate to increase to 4% in November and to 4.25% in February, and for Bank Rate to be 3.5% two and three years ahead". Read against the curve, that median puts the next quarter point at the 4 February meeting rather than at 17 December, and then takes Bank Rate back down.
The Bank referees the disagreement itself: "The difference between the market curve and market participants' expected path for Bank Rate suggests that risk premia continue to contribute to the upward slope of the market curve." A risk premium is the extra yield investors want for carrying the chance of being wrong, not a forecast. So part of the curve's upward slope is compensation for risk rather than an expectation of higher rates.
Four of the nine members wrote that a further increase was likely or arguable
The individual views in the November minutes are more informative than the 8 to 1 headline, because several members wrote about what comes next.
Huw Pill was the most direct: "a single 25-basis point hike is unlikely to be sufficient", and achieving the necessary level of Bank Rate "is likely to require more policy tightening, including in the near term". Clare Lombardelli wrote that "in the absence of evidence of weaker inflation pressures, there is likely to be a case for a further increase in rates in the near term". Megan Greene wrote that "additional hikes will likely be required going forward". Andrew Bailey wrote that absent news which softens the risks, "I can see the argument for a further increase in rates and thereafter taking a more conditional approach".
Catherine Mann didn't wait. She voted for 0.5 percentage points, to 4.25%, on the grounds that "projected CPI inflation reaches 4.9% by mid-2027". So one member wanted more on the day and four described more as likely or arguable, out of nine. That is the closest thing to a signal the November documents contain, and it is a long way short of a decision.
One member said plainly that this is not the start of a hiking cycle
The strongest case against another rise on 17 December comes from inside the committee. Alan Taylor voted for the quarter point and then described it as insurance: "as of now, this is not the start of a hiking cycle: policy isn't on a pre-set, unconditional path". He called it a "risk-management 'one-for-now' insurance hike", and on what follows he wrote that "the next move could be up, down, or sideways".
Two things support him. The first is that the evidence the committee says it needs hasn't appeared: the minutes record "limited evidence to date of second-round effects in wage and price-setting". The second is the survey median, which places the next move in February. Whether interest rates will go up in 2027 is a separate question from what happens on 17 December, and the two published paths answer it differently.
Domestic activity is also softening where rates bite first. Net mortgage approvals for house purchase fell to 53,400 in September, below a six-month average of around 58,800, and the Bank's report notes they "reached their lowest monthly level since 2023". Remortgage approvals went the other way, up to 42,600 in September from 34,000 in August, which is what you'd expect when fixes are expiring into higher rates.
Mortgage rates in December 2026 are priced off the two-year OIS, not the vote
Quoted fixed mortgage rates don't wait for the committee, and they don't follow it either. The Bank's own note on its quoted rate series is explicit: "The 75% and 90% LTV mortgage rates are for two-year fixed-rate products. The reference rate for these and fixed-rate savings bonds is the two-year OIS rate." An overnight index swap rate is the market's average expected overnight rate over a term, so a two-year fix is priced off two years of expectations rather than one meeting.
That is why fixed rates have already moved. Quoted rates on 75% and 90% loan-to-value mortgages "have increased by around 60 basis points on average" since the July Report, and benchmark two-year mortgage rates "had risen by nearly 50 basis points since the beginning of September", both before the November decision. Our October piece on mortgage rates in October 2026 has the monthly cost by loan size on the rates quoted then. Whether a fix or a tracker was the better bet across three decades is tested in our record of fixed vs variable mortgage outcomes since 1997.
Bank Rate has changed in December six times since 1997
December meetings aren't quiet by tradition. The official Bank Rate history records six December changes since the start of 1997: 10 December 1998, 6 December 2007, 4 December 2008, 16 December 2021, 15 December 2022 and 18 December 2025. Three of the six fall in the last five years, and the most recent December decision moved the rate.
The same table dates the current level. Bank Rate was last 4% between 7 August 2025 and 18 December 2025, so 5 November 2026 returned it to a level it held a year earlier. It was also the first increase since 3 August 2023, which ended a run of six consecutive cuts. For the longer series, and for how the UK compares, there is our central bank interest rate history.
What the published numbers cannot tell you about 17 December
Three limitations matter here, and none of them is cosmetic.
The market curve is a conditioning assumption, not a forecast. The Bank runs its projections on it because it needs a number, not because it endorses it, and the November report says risk premia are part of its slope. The survey median is a different object again: it samples market participants, and a median of opinions isn't a probability.
The 4.63% in the table is a September average across all new lending. It isn't a quote for your loan-to-value, your term or your credit file, and a 75% loan-to-value fix and a 90% one price differently. The payment figures assume a single rate held for the whole 25 years with no overpayments and no product change, which almost nobody experiences.
And the projections themselves rest on energy. Brent crude and UK gas futures "averaged $108 per barrel and 216 pence per therm" over the 15 working days to 27 October, 38% and 81% above the July Report. If that reverses, the inflation path the committee is reacting to gets smaller, and the case several members made for more tightening weakens with it.
What would change the answer before 17 December
Four things could move interest rates in December 2026, and three of them are datable.
Energy prices come first, because they are doing most of the work in the forecast. The Bank expects CPI inflation to reach "around 4½% in 2027 Q1" and around 5% in 2027 Q2, and direct energy effects contributed around 1 percentage point of September's 3.5%. A sustained fall in crude and gas would cut the top off that path.
Second, the wage and price data the committee named. The minutes say the committee would keep monitoring "the evolution of pay, pricing behaviour and slack". That puts the pay and inflation prints between now and mid-December in front of it.
Third, the Budget is already in the numbers. Budget 2026 was published on 28 October 2026, and the Bank has it reducing CPI inflation by "¼ of a percentage point in 2027 Q2", unwinding the year after. Nothing from 28 October is new information to the committee.
Fourth, and least predictable, the curve itself. If the two-year OIS keeps rising, quoted fixed rates have followed it quickly before, whatever the committee did at the meeting in between. The table above then shifts a column to the right without a vote being cast.