ENERGY PRICES
Natural Gas Price Today: Price, Trends and Forecast 2026 | Tacto
11.05.2026
Current natural gas price based on the ICE TTF front-month future, with trend analysis on the critical EU storage situation (34.3 percent on 8 May per GIE, 20.7 percentage points below the five-year seasonal norm), QatarEnergy's force majeure (17 percent of liquefaction), Hormuz volatility following the 5 May incidents, and the storage Regulation 2025/1733 with the 90 percent filling target between 1 October and 1 December. Scenarios and procurement recommendations for European industrial buyers.
AT A GLANCE
- TTF front-month around 44.21 EUR/MWh as of 8 May 2026, after the March high above 60 EUR/MWh. The Iran war has left a structural premium that has not faded.
- QatarEnergy declared force majeure in early March on around 17 percent of liquefaction capacity. Recovery is measured in years, not months, per Reuters and Bloomberg. Europe sourced 12 to 14 percent of its LNG from Qatar before the war.
- EU storage at 34.3 percent on 8 May per GIE, 20.7 percentage points below the five-year seasonal norm of 55 percent. Required injection pace to 1 November: around 3,462 GWh per day.
- Regulation 2025/1733 keeps the 90 percent filling target between 1 October and 1 December. Intermediate targets for February, May, July and September are now indicative.
Contents
What is moving the price right now?
TTF front-month trades around 44.21 EUR/MWh on 8 May 2026, well below the March high above 60 EUR/MWh, but around 40 percent above the year-ago level. The decline since the ceasefire of 8 April has taken some of the acute risk premium out of the market, but the structural gap remains. On 5 May the US military reported destroying six Iranian boats off Fujairah, the UAE reported Iranian missile and drone attacks, and TTF jumped around seven percent intraday. The Strait of Hormuz situation remains unstable.
QatarEnergy declared force majeure in early March on around 17 percent of its liquefaction capacity after shipping and facilities were hit during the Iran-US-Israel escalation. Repair of the damaged plants will take years, not months, per Reuters and Bloomberg. Europe sourced 12 to 14 percent of its LNG from Qatar before the war, with long-term contracts mainly supplying Belgium, Italy and Spain. The gap is being filled through US LNG and Norwegian pipeline volumes, both at noticeably higher spot prices.
Within this context, summer decides the winter. EU storage stood at 34.3 percent on 8 May per GIE, 20.7 percentage points below the five-year seasonal norm of 55 percent. Germany sits at around 28 percent, the Netherlands at around 22 percent. The current seven-day injection rate of around 2,088 GWh per day sits below the rate of 3,462 GWh per day that would be required to reach the 90 percent target by 1 November. Regulation 2025/1733 from August 2025 extends the storage rules to end-2027 and keeps the 90 percent target, but introduces flexibility: the target can be met any time between 1 October and 1 December, with a 10 percent flexibility margin and a possible further 5 percent margin. Intermediate targets for February, May, July and September are now indicative.
Brussels sells the reform as pragmatic adjustment, the market reads it as acknowledgement that the previous pace is not achievable under the changed supply conditions. The ECB raised its 2026 inflation forecast to 2.6 percent on 30 April, explicitly citing the Middle East conflict.
For the next four to eight weeks we expect TTF in a 40 to 55 EUR/MWh band, with high sensitivity to fresh Hormuz incidents. Summer injection pressure is high, LNG competition with Asia is intense, and any further shock lands in a tight market.
Energy prices in your inbox
Every two weeks: Price trends, market analysis, and negotiation tips — for procurement teams. Free and easy to cancel.
What does this mean for European procurement?
If you are contracting Q3 and Q4 volumes, you are buying into an active injection contest. A tranche split with clearly defined reference monthly averages is the clean negotiation basis. A single order on a fixed day finances the volatility the briefing describes without a corrective. Multi-stage hedging captures at least the base-scenario band.
Demand from suppliers a differentiated force majeure clause that distinguishes between supplier FM and upstream FM. The second clause is the costly one, because it covers Hormuz-related or Qatar-related supply interruptions. Standard contracts often pass that exposure flat to the buyer, which is a material risk in the current environment.
For industrial sites with own power generation, audit actively whether a summer switch to grid power via EEX is economic. EEX Cal-27 baseload sits around 92.40 EUR/MWh and breathes with TTF, while industrial power prices for mid-sized facilities sit around 16.0 ct/kWh per the BDEW April analysis, below the effective cost of own gas-fired generation at current TTF.
For contracts with indexed energy components, that is foundries, glass, paper, aluminium rolling mills, an index clause on a TTF quarterly average rather than spot is the better setup. Spot pegging gives suppliers room to add surcharges during Hormuz volatility, while a quarterly-average peg smooths the pass-through in both directions.
For the next two weeks, watch the GIE weekly storage updates and the outcomes of national auctions for strategic reserves that several member states must now hold under Regulation 2025/1733. Both move TTF more in the near term than the OPEC news flow.
Tacto Intelligence connects your ERP data with over 20,000 commodity and market indices — including steel, cold-rolled, galvanized, energy, and freight. Identify in real time which categories in your portfolio are affected by current market movements.
>20,000
Price indices integrated
75%
less preparation effort
>5,000
Price increases deflected with the Defender Agent
Natural Gas Price Outlook: Assessment from Our Procurement Intelligence Team
Base Scenario
For the next four to eight weeks we expect TTF in a 40 to 55 EUR/MWh band. (1) Hormuz traffic remains below pre-war levels, the risk premium stays visible. (2) Summer injection into EU storage runs at 2,088 GWh per day, well below the required 3,462 GWh per day. (3) QatarEnergy force majeure stays structural, repair runs over years. (4) Regulation 2025/1733 allows a more relaxed injection pace, but the market does not read this as the all-clear.
Risk Scenario
In the risk scenario TTF runs to 55 to 75 EUR/MWh. (1) Fresh Hormuz escalation or another attack on Gulf energy infrastructure. (2) A hot Asian summer pulls LNG spot cargoes out of the market. (3) Norwegian pipeline maintenance overruns, engineering incidents at Troll or Aasta Hansteen. (4) US liquefaction plants report unplanned outages. Probability over eight weeks: 25 to 30 percent.
Related Energy Prices
Related Procurement Glossary Topics
Frequently Asked Questions
Because the EU legally requires gas storage to be filled to at least 90% before winter. When fill levels drop or refilling is difficult, forward prices rise. Storage levels are therefore a leading indicator for procurement planning.
When the supplier operates a gas-intensive process and their procurement logic actually tracks wholesale markets. The surcharge must be traceable to TTF or equivalent benchmark movements, not to generic 'energy cost' claims.
No, the Federal Network Agency assesses the supply situation as stable and the risk of a strained situation as low. Storage levels and diversified LNG import infrastructure provide substantial buffers, though prices remain elevated compared to pre-crisis levels.
Germany does not source gas directly through the Strait of Hormuz, but is connected via the global LNG market. Disrupted shipments raise spot prices for LNG globally, which feeds through to European TTF pricing, especially when storage levels are not at comfortable levels.
Because TTF is the central wholesale benchmark for natural gas in Europe. End-customer prices include grid fees, taxes, and levies that obscure the actual market movement. For procurement, the wholesale benchmark is the relevant reference for evaluating supplier price claims.
