Bank of Canada Rate Schedule 2027 Full Dates and Outlook

Bank of Canada Rate Schedule 2027: The Bank of Canada has locked in its full calendar of interest rate decisions for 2027, giving households, businesses, and mortgage holders a clear picture of when the next moves on borrowing costs will land. The central bank released the schedule on July 27, 2026, confirming eight fixed announcement dates for next year, starting January 27 and running through December 8. It also reconfirmed the three remaining decisions left on this year’s calendar, on September 2, October 28, and December 9.

The timing matters because the Bank’s policy rate has now sat at 2.25 percent through six straight decisions, its longest stretch without a change since the cutting cycle that began in 2024. Governor Tiff Macklem held the rate again on July 15, pointing to an economy that is picking up after a soft start to the year, even as inflation ran hotter than expected through the spring on the back of gasoline prices tied to the Middle East conflict. With growth expected to firm up and price pressures forecast to ease back to the 2 percent target by early 2027, most bank economists now say the next move is more likely to be a hike than a cut, though they disagree sharply on when. We will be updating this article monthly as new Bank of Canada data and bank forecasts come in.

Bank of Canada 2027 Interest Rate Announcement Dates

Every decision will be released at 9:45 a.m. Eastern Time on a Wednesday, matching the Bank’s usual pattern of eight fixed dates a year. Four of the eight are paired with a full Monetary Policy Report, the quarterly document that lays out the Bank’s updated forecasts for growth, inflation, and the labour market.

Remaining 2026 Rate Decisions

Before the new calendar begins, three more decisions are still on the books for this year. These were reconfirmed alongside the 2027 release and give markets one more full cycle of data to digest before the Bank turns the page.

The Bank of Canada interest rate schedule also comes with two related release calendars. The Business Outlook Survey and the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations will publish four times in 2027, on January 18, April 19, July 12, and October 18, each at 11:30 a.m. Eastern. The annual Financial Stability Report is set for May 18, 2027, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern.

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Where the Policy Rate Stands Right Now

To understand why 2027 is being watched so closely, it helps to look at where things stood going into it. Here is a quick snapshot of the economic backdrop as of the July 2026 decision.

Canada’s last rate move was a cut of 25 basis points in October 2025, which brought the policy rate down to its current level. Every decision since then, five in total before the July hold, has kept the rate parked at 2.25 percent, a level the Bank considers to be at the lower end of its estimated neutral range of roughly 2.25 percent to 3.25 percent.

Why Inflation Spiked and What the Bank Expects Next

The headline number that grabbed attention this year was the jump in CPI inflation to 3.2 percent in May, driven almost entirely by gasoline prices connected to the war in the Middle East. Strip out gas, and inflation was sitting closer to 2.2 percent, with the Bank’s preferred core measures, CPI-trim and CPI-median, holding near 2 percent through the same period. By June, headline inflation had already eased to 2.8 percent as a temporary ceasefire pushed pump prices back down.

The Bank’s own projection, published in the July Monetary Policy Report, expects inflation to ease further through the second half of 2026 and settle back at the 2 percent target by early 2027. That forecast leans on an assumption that oil prices moderate and stabilize in the range of 70 to 75 US dollars a barrel. The Bank has flagged that oil futures have already moved higher than that assumption since the forecast was finalized, which is one reason officials describe the outlook as still carrying elevated uncertainty.

On growth, the story is one of a slow start followed by a pickup. After GDP growth of just 0.7 percent for all of 2026, the Bank expects the economy to grow by 1.8 percent in both 2027 and 2028, with global growth also picking up from about 2.75 percent this year to roughly 3.25 percent next year, helped in part by a wave of AI-related investment in the United States.

What Bank Economists Expect for 2027

This is where the real disagreement shows up. A Reuters poll of 36 economists taken just before the July decision found unanimous agreement that the Bank would hold in July, but a split on what comes after. Nineteen of 30 economists surveyed on the longer horizon expected rates to stay unchanged until at least July 2027, while the poll median pointed to a hike sometime in the second half of next year.

Canada’s six largest banks are even further apart on where the rate ends up by the close of 2027.

Scotiabank is the clear outlier on timing. Economists Derek Holt, Olivier Gervais, Patrick Perrier, and Farah Omran have argued the Bank could begin raising rates as soon as the fourth quarter of 2026 if oil-driven inflation proves stickier than the Bank’s base case, with further hikes carrying the rate to 3.00 percent by the end of 2027. National Bank strikes a middle position, holding through 2026 but warning that what its economists call inflation-related anxiety could force the Bank’s hand in early 2027. RBC’s Claire Fan has framed a 2027 hike as, on balance, a good sign, since it would only happen if the economic backdrop were firmer than it is today. TD and BMO remain the most patient of the group, pointing to trade uncertainty with the United States and weak productivity growth as reasons the Bank could hold at 2.25 percent well into 2028.

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What a 2027 Rate Hike Would Mean for Borrowers

For anyone with a variable-rate mortgage or line of credit, the prime rate is the number that matters day to day. It has sat at 4.45 percent since the October 2025 cut, with some lenders quoting a slightly higher mortgage-specific prime near 4.60 percent. Under the more common bank forecast of two 25-basis-point hikes through 2027, prime would move up to roughly 4.95 percent by the end of the year, adding somewhere in the range of 30 dollars a month for every 100,000 dollars of outstanding variable-rate mortgage balance. Under RBC’s more aggressive 3.25 percent call, the increase would be larger again.

Fixed mortgage rates move differently, tracking Government of Canada bond yields rather than the policy rate directly. Bond yields have already climbed since the Middle East conflict escalated cost pressures earlier this year, and several forecasters expect fixed rates to hold firm or edge higher through the back half of 2026 regardless of what the Bank does at its next few meetings.

Official Bank of Canada Resources

FAQs

People Also Ask

Is the Bank of Canada going to cut rates again? Most economists surveyed do not expect another cut in the near term. With growth picking up and inflation forecast to ease back toward target, the debate has shifted from whether the Bank cuts further to when it might start raising rates instead.

What is the difference between the policy rate and the prime rate? The policy interest rate, also called the overnight rate, is the rate the Bank of Canada sets for the financial system. The prime rate is what commercial banks then set for their own customers, typically the policy rate plus about 2.2 percentage points, and it is prime that directly determines variable mortgage and line of credit costs.

Why does the Bank of Canada only meet eight times a year? The Bank moved to a fixed eight-date annual schedule to give households, businesses, and financial markets predictability, rather than making unscheduled changes outside those set dates except in extraordinary circumstances.

How is Canada’s inflation different from core inflation? Headline CPI includes every category, including volatile items like gasoline. Core inflation measures, such as CPI-trim and CPI-median, strip out the most volatile components to show the underlying trend the Bank of Canada relies on most heavily for policy decisions.

Conclusion

The 2027 announcement calendar itself does not change anything about monetary policy today, but it hands mortgage brokers, borrowers, and businesses a full 18-month planning window at a moment when the direction of the next move is genuinely uncertain. The policy rate has now held at 2.25 percent for six straight decisions, inflation is expected to settle back near 2 percent by early next year, and growth is projected to firm up to 1.8 percent through 2027 and 2028. Where economists disagree is on timing and scale, with forecasts for the end of 2027 ranging from an unchanged 2.25 percent to as high as 3.25 percent. Anyone with a variable-rate mortgage or a renewal coming up in the next year should keep an eye on the October and December 2026 decisions in particular, since those two meetings will carry the clearest signal of which camp turns out to be right.

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