What has actually been announced
So far, only the date and the process. The Chancellor, John Healey, confirmed on 31 July that he will deliver the Budget on 28 October, and has commissioned the Office for Budget Responsibility to produce its full economic and fiscal forecast to be presented to Parliament alongside it. It will be the earliest Autumn Budget since 2021, and the first since the change of government in July, when Andy Burnham became Prime Minister and appointed Healey — previously Defence Secretary — to the Treasury.
Nothing has been said about fuel duty specifically. No Chancellor trails duty decisions in advance, so the honest position is that the outcome is unknown until the despatch box. What is knowable is the timetable, and the timetable is unusually tight this year.
Why the date matters more than usual
Under the current schedule, the 5p cut expires at the end of December and the first staged rise falls in January 2027. That timetable is itself a revision — the rise that drivers originally expected on 1 September was cancelled earlier this year and the cut extended to the end of 2026. We covered that announcement in government scraps the September fuel duty rise and set out the revised timetable in September fuel duty rise cancelled: 5p cut extended to the end of 2026.
A Budget on 28 October sits squarely inside the window where that decision has to be made. In previous years, extensions have arrived at a Budget or Spring Statement a few weeks before the deadline, so the pattern points to 28 October being the moment. If the cut is extended again, the January rise moves. If it isn't, the expiry stands and pump prices carry the increase from the new year.
One detail is worth being precise about, because it is often reported as settled: the Treasury has never confirmed how the rise will be staged from January 2027. The original sequence was 1p in September 2026, 2p in December and 2p in March 2027. When that was scrapped, industry expectation was that the same 1p / 2p / 2p phasing would simply shift back — 1p in January 2027, 2p in April, 2p in July — but that is an assumption, not policy. So 28 October is likely to settle two questions at once: whether the 5p survives at all, and, if it doesn't, how quickly it comes off.
What 5p actually costs you: Fuel duty is charged per litre, and VAT is then charged on top of the duty — so a 5p duty change works out closer to 6p at the pump. On a 55-litre family car that's about £3.30 a fill-up, or roughly £85 a year for someone filling up every fortnight. We break the tax down in full in how much fuel is taxed in the UK.
The backdrop the decision sits in
Two things are worth noting without reading anything into either. First, the new government has announced a series of spending commitments in its early weeks, including a £2 bus fare cap, social care reform and the temporary removal of VAT from domestic energy bills. Second, independent analysts and think tanks have said meeting the government's fiscal rules alongside those commitments will require additional revenue, with fuel duty routinely named among the areas under discussion — as it has been before every Budget for well over a decade.
Against that, fuel duty has been frozen since 2011 and the 5p cut has now been extended four times by three different Chancellors, which tells you something about how politically difficult removing it is. Both pressures are real and they point in opposite directions. Anyone claiming to know the outcome in August is guessing.
The dates to keep in view:
- 31 July 2026 — Budget date announced, OBR forecast commissioned.
- 28 October 2026 — Budget delivered. Fuel duty position for 2027 becomes clear.
- 31 December 2026 — 5p cut due to expire under the current timetable.
- January 2027 — first staged rise due, unless changed at the Budget.
You can put something in writing
This is the part that tends not to get reported. The Treasury has opened a Budget Representation Portal, through which businesses, organisations and members of the public can submit views on existing policy for consideration ahead of 28 October. Representations are a long-standing part of the Budget process and are mostly used by trade bodies, but they are open to individuals. If fuel duty matters to your household or your business, that is the formal route for saying so, rather than after the fact.
What this means for you
Practically, nothing changes at the pump before January, so there is no reason to alter how you buy fuel now. Two things are worth doing, though.
- Don't budget on the 5p surviving. If you run a van, a small fleet, or high mileage, plan on the basis that fuel costs about 6p a litre more from January and treat any extension as a bonus. That's roughly £60 a year per 1,000 litres.
- Keep the duty question in proportion. 6p is real money, but the gap between the cheapest and dearest forecourt near you is frequently 10 to 20p a litre — two or three times larger, available today, and entirely within your control. You can see the cheapest and most expensive forecourts in the UK right now on our live tracker.
- Note the wider direction. Duty is only one part of how motoring is taxed, and the shift toward charging by distance is already legislated for electric vehicles from April 2028 — see what the new pay-per-mile electric car tax means.
We'll cover the fuel duty outcome on the day. In the meantime, current pump prices are doing more to your monthly costs than any duty change will: petrol reached a new crisis high earlier this month, as we reported in petrol hits 160.85p and diesel passes 180p. You can follow the national averages on our UK Fuel Price Index, and for background on how duty has been handled over the years, see fuel duty freeze 2026: will UK drivers finally pay more at the pump?