EU gas storage: price risk in winter 2026/27

Only a few months ago, winter 2025/26 was seen on the European gas market as likely the last winter with serious upside risk for prices. Massive global LNG expansion was expected to provide substantial relief for Europe from 2026 onward. Numerous new export projects in the United States, Canada, and Africa are already ramping up or will come online in the coming quarters. In 2025 and 2026 alone, more than 1,000 TWh per year of additional LNG capacity is expected to come onto the global market.

The escalation around the Strait of Hormuz has shaken that expectation. The market currently does not know when Qatari LNG volumes will again be fully and reliably available.

At the same time, Asian LNG demand is rising again. Chinese imports were recently around 15% above their April level, while South Korean imports were up by as much as 18%. If an El Niño pattern were also to emerge, Asian cooling demand in summer could rise significantly and further intensify competition for spot LNG.

At the same time, summer-winter spreads remain clearly negative: the market is signaling that injecting gas into storage is economically unattractive. Even so, regulatory pressure to meet Europe’s storage targets on time is increasing.

How critical the situation could become next winter depends above all on how quickly storage can be refilled over the coming months. Based on historical injection rates since 2015, three scenarios emerge for the end of September:

Low case: average of the three weakest injection years since 2015
Base case: average of all years since 2015
High case: average of the three strongest injection years since 2015

Under a strong scenario, storage levels would recover to around 960 TWh, or 85% full. Under the historical average, they would reach only around 870 TWh, or 77%, by the end of September. In a weak injection scenario, Europe would reach only around 744 TWh, or 66%.

These scenarios therefore point less to an immediate supply problem and more to the fact that prices would need to rise sharply in winter in order to attract additional LNG volumes to Europe. If storage levels were to fall significantly, European hub prices would likely rise strongly long before storage actually approached zero. That very price signal would redirect additional LNG cargoes to Europe. Europe’s security of supply now depends far more on its willingness to pay on the global LNG spot market than it did just a few years ago.

The European gas crisis that has been ongoing since 2021 is probably closer to its end than it was two years ago. But recent developments show that Europe now depends heavily on stable global LNG flows and on the geopolitical developments connected to them. Contrary to earlier market expectations, winter 2026/27 could therefore once again become a winter with considerable price risk. A physical supply shortage nevertheless remains unlikely.

Conclusion

Security of supply for the winter is intact, and a physical shortage remains unlikely. The real risk is price: low storage levels, competing Asian LNG demand, and geopolitical uncertainty could drive European hub prices up significantly this winter.

For industrial gas consumers, this means that procurement-side price risk is currently being underestimated. Negative summer-winter spreads and regulatory pressure to fill storage create a difficult tension around gas storage. There will be more clarity only once the Strait of Hormuz reopens and once storage levels at the start of winter are known. A strategy that combines fixed-price procurement with spot exposure is currently preferable to a pure spot strategy.

EU Gas Storage

Key takeaways

Conclusion