Croatia’s September 2026 flash estimate put annual inflation at 4.7% under the national consumer price index (CPI), not 4.6%. The 4.6% figure is the European Commission’s forecast for Croatia’s average inflation over the full 2026 calendar year. September’s harmonised European measure, HICP, was 4.3% year over year. These are different measures and time horizons, so the 4.6% annual forecast does not show that September’s reading was in line with market forecasts.
What Croatia’s September inflation figures show
On 2 October 2026, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics (CBS) published preliminary figures for September. National CPI inflation was 4.7% compared with September 2025, while prices rose 0.9% compared with August 2026. The harmonised index of consumer prices (HICP) was up 4.3% year over year and unchanged month over month. CBS September 2026 flash estimate
The year-over-year rate compares prices with the same month a year earlier; the monthly rate compares them with the previous month. The two figures answer different questions: 4.7% describes the change over twelve months, while 0.9% describes the change from August to September.
What the 4.6% forecast means
The European Commission’s Spring 2026 forecast, published on 21 May 2026, projected annual inflation of 4.6% for Croatia in 2026. It forecast 4.4% for 2025 and 2.7% for 2027. The 4.6% is a full-calendar-year forecast, not an observed September CPI or HICP rate. European Commission forecast for Croatia
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The Commission expected inflation to rise in 2026 as energy inflation accelerated amid the conflict in the Middle East. It also cited energy costs passing through to services, persistent wage pressures and fuel costs filtering into food supply chains. The available official figures do not establish that September’s specific result was in line with a September market consensus.
Why Croatia has both CPI and HICP rates
CBS’s national CPI measures price changes for consumption by private households in Croatia. HICP follows a harmonised European method for comparing inflation across countries. The indices use the same representative basket, but HICP also covers consumption by institutional households and non-residents within Croatia’s economic territory; national CPI does not. For comparisons with other EU countries, HICP is the relevant measure. For the national CPI measure, September’s annual rate was 4.7%.
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Which prices rose fastest in September?
In the September CPI flash estimate, energy had the largest annual increase, while food, beverages and tobacco prices were nearly unchanged from a year earlier. Monthly movements differed from those annual changes:
| CPI category | Year over year | Month over month |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 20.5% | 2.7% |
| Services | 7.6% | -0.7% |
| Food, beverages and tobacco | 0.2% | -0.2% |
| Non-food industrial goods excluding energy | -1.4% | 2.8% |
These are CBS’s preliminary special-aggregate estimates for Croatia, not the euro-area category rates. The contrast between the annual and monthly columns is important: for example, non-food industrial goods excluding energy were down 1.4% year over year but up 2.8% from August.
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Eurostat’s 2 October flash estimate put euro-area HICP inflation at 3.8% year over year and 0.6% month over month in September, up from 3.2% year over year in August. Croatia’s HICP estimate was 4.3% year over year and 0.0% month over month. Comparing HICP with HICP gives a like-for-like measure; Croatia’s national CPI should not be compared directly with the euro-area HICP. Eurostat September 2026 flash estimate
Eurostat’s euro-area component estimates were 18.8% for energy, 3.2% for services, 1.4% for food, alcohol and tobacco, and 1.1% for non-energy industrial goods. These figures describe the euro area as a whole, not Croatia’s categories.
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When the September figures become final
The CBS flash estimate drew on retail-price data covering about 80%–90% of the data received and processed by the end of September. The bureau scheduled final September CPI figures for 15 October 2026, with subsequently processed data incorporated into that release. Eurostat scheduled full September HICP data for 16 October 2026. Until then, the September numbers are preliminary estimates, not final readings.
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