[PREVIEW] Norges Bank Policy Announcement at 09:00BST/ 04:00EDT on Thursday, 13th August 2026

• The Norges Bank is expected to leave rates unchanged at 4.25%, with recent inflation prints backing market consensus.
• June and July core inflation printed at 2.7% Y/Y, below the Norges Bank's 3.3% forecast.
• Verbal guidance is likely to remain unchanged, particularly as this is an interim meeting.

OVERVIEW: Policymakers at the Norges Bank are expected to leave rates unchanged at 4.25% at its confab on Thursday 13th. Although guiding at May's meeting that it “will likely be necessary to raise the policy rate further at one of the forthcoming monetary policy meetings”, cooler-than-expected inflation will make it harder for hawkish members to push for a hike. Analysts at SEB and Nordea both expect the Bank to hold rates and the door to be left open for a September hike.

RECENT INFLATION DATA REINFORCES A HOLD: June’s core inflation, the preferred inflation metric, printed at 2.7% Y/Y, cooler than the Norges Bank’s 3.3%. Backing the June figure was another cool July print, which held steady at 2.7% Y/Y and below SEB’s 2.8% consensus. Food and other goods remained to be the key driver behind the low inflation, with core goods pricing increasing 0.3ppts M/M, and food increasing 3.6ppts, below SEB’s forecast of 1.1% and 4.2% respectively. However, headline inflation did tick higher to 3.0% Y/Y, but this was in line with consensus and remains below the Norges Bank’s 3.1% projection.

TOO EARLY TO ALTER GUIDANCE: Despite the recent comforting inflation prints, analysts at SEB think it is too early to shift guidance from indicating a rate hike to a more neutral stance. The uncertainty regarding the underlying trends come from the magnitude of the easing inflation. Nordea are also unconvinced that underlying price pressures are as weak as suggested, citing the base effects from last year’s reduction in kindergarten fees to feed into core inflation, adding c. 0.4ppts.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The announcement by the Norges Bank is expected at 09:00BST, with a press conference by Governor Bache due 30 minutes later. No updated projections to be given at this meeting, so focus will be on a statement adjustment, or verbal guidance from Bache. Market pricing implies 2bps worth of tightening this month.

Interim meetings without fresh projections at smaller G10 central banks have a well-worn pattern: the statement carries the signal, and the press conference does the fine-tuning. With no rate path or forecasts published, the market's information set reduces to wording changes and the Governor's tone, which in past episodes of this kind has made the Q&A the more volatile leg than the decision itself. The tension here is between a formal hiking bias and incoming data running below the Bank's own forecasts, a configuration that has historically been resolved by keeping the hawkish language while pushing the timing out, rather than by capitulating on direction. Two large local houses being aligned on a hold with the door left open for the following meeting reduces the surprise risk on the rate itself; the live question is whether guidance still names forthcoming meetings or goes vague, since that distinction is what re-prices the front end of the NOK curve. With only marginal tightening priced, the asymmetry in precedent terms sits with a softening of language, which would unwind the residual hike premium in short-dated rates and weigh on the krone via the rate differential channel. Worth watching is whether the base-effects argument on core inflation gets acknowledged in the statement, as that determines how durable the hold looks beyond this meeting.