Consumer price indices - Year 2026

In 2026 the main new development affecting the consumer price survey concerns the adoption of the new ECOICOP classification (European Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose, version 2), which incorporates the changes introduced by COICOP 2018. ECOICOP v2 is divided into four hierarchically ordered classification levels: 13 Divisions (there were twelve in the previous version of the classification), 47 Groups, 122 Classes and 234 Subclasses.

Istat further breaks down the expenditure groupings corresponding to the subclasses of the new ECOICOP into 392 Consumption Segments and 531 Product Aggregates for the NIC and FOI indices (for the HICP index, the number of Product Aggregates is 537). The index series for the period 1996–2025 have been reconstructed to obtain directly comparable data (“Focus”, see p. 9).

In addition to the change in classification, the base year of the consumer price indices has been updated: starting from 2026, the series are expressed with the new base year 2025=100 (the procedures for transitioning to the new base year are described in “Focus” (p. 9).

As every year the rebasing of consumer price indices provides an opportunity to undertake a comprehensive revision of the weighting structures, update the sampling design, and incorporate methodological improvements as well as new data sources.

Concerning the data sources, the main development concerns the use of the IVASS database for the two‑wheel sector. (Since 2024, this database has also been employed to collect information on the prices of motor third‑party liability insurance services).

Price quotations used to estimate Italian inflation come from different sources: more than 404,000 of them are collected locally by the Municipal Offices of Statistics (MOS) and concern 49.9% of the basket in terms of weight; around 188,000 are collected directly by Istat (25.6% of the basket) and about 27 million come from scanner data (13.3% of the basket). Then, around 203,000 quotes are collected from automotive fuels prices database of the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy (4.5% of the basket). In addition, tobacco prices are collected from Customs and Monopolies Agency for the detection of tobacco (3.8% of the basket) and one and half million house rent prices are available from the Real Estate Market Observatory of the Tax Office (2.9% of the basket).

Data coming from 80 municipalities are processed to estimate monthly inflation; the coverage of territorial survey, with reference to provincial population, is equal to 84.0%. An additional group of 10 municipalities participate in the territorial survey about a subset of products (local tariffs and some services) and for this subset, the territorial coverage is up to 89.1%.

In the municipalities, prices are collected for more than 45,000 statistical units (including outlets, enterprises and institutions) and rents are collected for more than 2,900 dwellings for social housing.

Price quotes collected through scanner data come from a sample of over 4,250 outlets including hypermarkets, supermarkets, discounts, small sales areas and specialist drugs, which are representative of the whole Italian national territory and of 19 large retail chains.

The consumer prices of automotive/motor fuels (petrol, gas oil, LPG and methane) for the whole national territory are collected through the data base of t Ministry of Economic Development. Istat uses information provided by around 20,700 petrol stations (92.7% of those in the data base).