Economists are warning that a strong 2026-27 El Niño could send global food prices sharply higher and keep the pressure in place well into 2028. Goldman Sachs said the weather cycle could lift global food commodity prices by 15.8%, with the consequences not fully realised until the second half of 2028.
The warning comes as NOAA said last month that warming conditions were already taking hold in the Pacific, with a 63% chance that sea surface temperatures would rise more than 2C above normal later this year. That matters because the El Niño–Southern Oscillation works through changes in wind patterns that let warmer water spread across the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, disrupting harvests, rainfall and food supply networks far beyond the ocean itself.
For consumers, the numbers are not abstract. Goldman Sachs said food prices in the eurozone could rise by 1.3% if the event develops as expected. The bank’s forecast suggests the shock would be broad enough to filter through to grocery bills, but slow enough to keep showing up in inflation readings long after the weather pattern has moved on.
The backdrop is already unfriendly. UniCredit analysts said El Niño could add a new layer of pressure later this year as it amplifies the effects of global warming, while the Iran war has pushed world food prices to the highest level in three years. Together, those forces raise the odds that any fresh weather disruption lands on a market that is already strained.
Still, El Niño does not hit every region the same way. UBS analysts said it reshapes rainfall and temperature patterns, creating regional winners and losers, and a more severe version more than a century ago brought catastrophic droughts across China, southern Africa, Brazil, Egypt and India. That unevenness is part of the risk: some places can benefit from warmer conditions even as the wider effect is higher food prices.
The next big question is not whether the Pacific is warming, but whether the 2026-27 cycle becomes one of the very strong events seen in 1981-82, 1996-97, 2015-16 and 2023-24. If it does, the hit to food markets could be severe, broad and stubborn, with the final bill still arriving after the weather has changed again.
