Publication date:
Feb 25, 2026
IMF Data Brief: World and Regional Inflation
Global Inflation Stabilized in Late 2025 Despite Underlying Shifts
World and Country Group CPI Aggregates, December 2025
Contributors: Abdulrahman Gweder and Ragnhild Nygaard
Global inflation stabilized at 3.5 percent in the last quarter of 2025, down from 4.8 percent at the beginning of the year.
Beneath this overall stability, however, underlying dynamics point to a gradual divergence across country groups. Inflation trends in advanced economies (AEs) and emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) initially converged over the course of 2025, before diverging again in the final quarter.
In EMDEs, annual inflation averaged 4.0 percent in December 2025, following a modest uptick in recent months driven largely by rising price pressures in Asia. In contrast, inflation in Africa continued to ease, declining steadily from 14.4 percent in January 2025 to 6.8 percent by December.
In AEs, annual inflation declined from 2.8 percent in January 2025 to 2.4 percent at year-end, reflecting a moderation in price pressures toward the end of the year. Europe was a key contributor to this trend, with a sustained decline in inflation over recent months, bringing the inflation rate down to 3.1 percent in December 2025.
Notes: The inflation estimates are published approximately 2 months after the reference period (latest release: December 2025) and cover the end-of-period 12-month change in consumer prices across all economies. The regional averages can hide substantial country divergence. The aggregated annual inflation is calculated using a geometrically weighted average of officially disseminated indexes, with annual PPP-adjusted GDP lagged by one year as weights. Coverage includes 165 economies worldwide, 46 in Africa, 33 in the Americas, 39 in Asia, 41 in Europe and 6 in Oceania. All aggregates are benchmarked to the WEO annual rates for 2024 and prior years, except for regional and G20 estimates since WEO does not produce those.
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