CPI Inflation October 2026 at 6.09%: Retail Inflation Crosses RBI's 6% Upper Limit
CPI inflation for October 2026 rose to 6.09 per cent, from 5.54 per cent in September, according to the press release on the Consumer Price Index (base 2024=100) for October 2026 issued by the National Statistics Office of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation at 4 pm on 12 November 2026. The reading is above the 6 per cent upper tolerance limit of the inflation target the RBI works under, and it arrives five weeks after the Monetary Policy Committee raised the repo rate to 5.50 per cent.
Rural inflation climbed to 6.63 per cent from 6.08 per cent, and urban inflation to 5.41 per cent from 4.88 per cent. The all-India combined index stood at 110.05, against 109.49 in September and 103.74 in October 2025. October figures are provisional; the September figures, now final, are unchanged from the provisional estimates published on 12 October. Headline inflation on the new series has risen every month this year, from 2.74 per cent in January to 3.48 per cent in April, 4.83 per cent in August and now 6.09 per cent.
Recomputing the year-on-year rate from the published indices gives 6.08 per cent (110.05 against 103.74). The release explains that rates are calculated from unrounded index values, so small gaps against rounded figures are expected, and 6.09 per cent is the official number. Month on month, the combined index rose about 0.51 per cent. Prices were collected weekly from 1,407 urban markets, including online markets, and 1,465 villages, with a 100 per cent response rate in October.
Food inflation at 8.94 per cent: onion, garlic and restaurant prices lead
The Consumer Food Price Index rose 8.94 per cent year on year, up from 7.74 per cent in September, with rural food inflation at 9.09 per cent and urban at 8.68 per cent. Food and beverages, which carry a weight of 36.75 in the new basket, rose 8.51 per cent. Two smaller divisions are running faster than food: restaurants and accommodation services at 10.06 per cent, and personal care, social protection and miscellaneous goods and services at 10.14 per cent, where the "other personal effects" group rose 25.44 per cent.
At item level, onion prices were 116.22 per cent higher than a year earlier, against 108.13 per cent in September. Garlic followed at 60.74 per cent, then silver jewellery at 52.39 per cent, ginger at 48.32 per cent and lemon at 47.30 per cent. Inflation eased for two of those five, silver jewellery from 87.82 per cent in September and ginger from 62.85 per cent. Prices fell year on year for potato (minus 14.24 per cent), cauliflower (minus 10.57 per cent), coconut (minus 5.60 per cent), brinjal (minus 3.34 per cent) and cabbage (minus 1.92 per cent).
Outside food, price pressure is milder. Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels, the second-largest division with a weight of 17.66, rose 2.90 per cent, with actual rentals up 2.36 per cent and electricity, gas and other fuels up 3.71 per cent. Transport rose 5.84 per cent, education services 4.02 per cent and health 2.05 per cent. For petrol, diesel and LPG, the NSO takes prices as on the 15th of each month.
State-wise CPI inflation for October 2026
Puducherry recorded the highest combined inflation at 7.96 per cent, followed by Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu at 7.59 per cent, Tamil Nadu at 7.29 per cent, Telangana at 7.26 per cent and Andhra Pradesh at 7.25 per cent. Mizoram (2.85 per cent), the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (3.46 per cent), Meghalaya (3.63 per cent), Nagaland (3.66 per cent) and Delhi (3.80 per cent) sit at the other end. The ten States with the largest weights in the all-India index compare as follows:
| State | Weight | Rural | Urban | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uttar Pradesh | 12.53 | 7.20% | 4.88% | 6.47% |
| Maharashtra | 10.59 | 6.86% | 5.20% | 5.85% |
| Tamil Nadu | 8.00 | 7.86% | 6.84% | 7.29% |
| West Bengal | 6.50 | 5.08% | 4.13% | 4.66% |
| Bihar | 6.37 | 5.79% | 5.18% | 5.71% |
| Karnataka | 6.29 | 7.54% | 6.60% | 7.07% |
| Rajasthan | 5.84 | 6.33% | 5.09% | 5.89% |
| Gujarat | 5.31 | 6.06% | 5.46% | 5.71% |
| Madhya Pradesh | 4.70 | 7.66% | 6.46% | 7.19% |
| Kerala | 4.37 | 7.01% | 5.58% | 6.22% |
Rural Telangana, at 8.05 per cent, has the steepest rural reading of any State, and the gap between rural and urban inflation is widest in Uttar Pradesh at 2.32 percentage points. The release cautions that some state-level item indices rest on thin price samples. Item and state indices are published on the eSankhyiki portal of MoSPI.
What 6.09 per cent means for the RBI's 6 per cent limit
Under section 45ZA of the RBI Act, 1934, the Central Government has set the inflation target at 4 per cent CPI inflation, with an upper tolerance limit of 6 per cent and a lower limit of 2 per cent, and has retained it for 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2031. A single monthly print above 6 per cent is not a missed target. As the RBI's overview of the monetary policy framework explains, failure arises only when average inflation stays above the upper tolerance level for any three consecutive quarters. In that event the RBI must report to the Government the reasons for the failure, the remedial action it proposes and the time within which it expects inflation to return to target.
An illustration using the release figures shows how tight the current quarter already is. The July-September quarter averaged 4.94 per cent: (4.45 + 4.83 + 5.54) / 3 = 14.82 / 3. For October-December to average no more than 6 per cent, November and December together can add up to at most 11.91 percentage points (6 x 3 = 18, minus October's 6.09), an average of about 5.96 per cent for the two months. Because July-September was well inside the band, the earliest three-quarter run that could count as a failure is October 2026 to June 2027.
The RBI's own path keeps the quarterly averages at or below the limit. In the MPC resolution of 7 October 2026, which raised the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.50 per cent and changed the stance to calibrated tightening, the committee projected CPI inflation at 6.0 per cent for October-December, 5.7 per cent for January-March and 5.6 per cent for April-June 2027, with 5.2 per cent for 2026-27 and core inflation at 4.4 per cent. October has come in just above the quarterly projection, and headline inflation now exceeds the 5.50 per cent repo rate by 0.59 percentage point.
December MPC: what economists expect after the October print
Next on the calendar is the MPC meeting of 2 to 4 December 2026, with the decision due on 4 December 2026. Economists quoted by Business Today on 12 November expect more tightening. Madan Sabnavis of Bank of Baroda sees a 25 or 50 basis point hike in December. Upasna Bhardwaj of Kotak Mahindra Bank expects readings to stay above 6 per cent and another 50 basis points of hikes in 2026-27, while Aditi Nayar of ICRA expects CPI inflation to average about 6.2 per cent in October-December, with November near 6.1 per cent.
Those expectations build on the October meeting, where, as our report on the RBI MPC minutes and the split over further hikes set out, all six members voted for the increase while two external members, Nagesh Kumar and Ram Singh, opposed the move away from a neutral stance. For borrowers, loans priced off the repo rate as the external benchmark reset when the repo changes, so a December hike would flow into working-capital and term-loan interest at the next reset date.
Dates to track: WPI on 16 November, CPI on 14 December
Wholesale price inflation for October is due on 16 November 2026; in September it was 11.39 per cent, with fuel and power up 25.85 per cent, as covered in our WPI September 2026 report. CPI for November 2026 will be released on 14 December 2026 (Monday), or the next working day if that is a holiday, ten days after the MPC decision. That November figure, and the December figure after it, will decide whether the October-December average stays at or under 6 per cent.
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