In a year where news coverage was dominated by Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the on-going conflict between Russia and Ukraine, geopolitical events played a key role in dictating the movements of the energy markets. In this article we take a look back at 2025, revisiting the stories that impacted energy prices, and look at what is likely to shape the gas and electricity markets in 2026.
February 2026 Review When writing monthly reviews, I research and make notes throughout the month that allow the final writing process to be straightforward, with all key points already in place. For this month, almost all of my notes had to be torn up and thrown away on the final day of February when the US declared war on Iran. It is rare that one story has the ability to cause a seismic shift of such magnitude that all other news affecting energy prices seem irrelevant by comparison, but – for the first time since the Russia-Ukraine conflict began – we have a geopolitical event of that level. Electricity prices for the Summer’26 season had dropped as low as £65.66/MWh in mid-February, but opened up at £79.70/MWh this morning, showing an over 20% increase from this low point. Meanwhile, wholesale UK gas prices are trading 25% higher than when the market closed on Friday. For a business set to consume 10,000MWh of electricity during the summer, this represents a price increase of over £140,000 when comparing today’s price to the February low point.
