Q1 2026 CBAM Certificate Price: EU Commission Publishes First Official Quarterly Average

The EU Commission has published the first official quarterly average CBAM certificate price for Q1 2026: €75.36 per tonne of CO₂e, calculated in accordance with Article 1 of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2548.

What this price means

This is the official reference price used to calculate CBAM certificate obligations for goods imported into the EU from January 1, 2026. EU authorised declarants must use this price when calculating the value of certificates they are required to surrender.

For non-EU exporters, this price directly determines the financial advantage of providing verified actual emissions data versus allowing EU buyers to use default values:

• An exporter of iron and steel with a verified SEE of 1.615 tCO₂e/t versus the EU default of 4.395 tCO₂e/t saves their EU buyer approximately €209 per tonne at the Q1 2026 price.
• At 25,000 tonnes annual export volume, this represents a saving of approximately €130,900 per year — growing to over €5.2 million per year by 2034 at full phase-in.

How the price is calculated

Under Article 1(1) of IR 2025/2548, the price for each quarter of 2026 is the quarterly average of the auction clearing prices of EU ETS allowances — the prices struck in the EU ETS primary auctions, not prices quoted on a secondary exchange.

Article 1(3) sets out which auctions count: those held under Articles 10 and 11 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2830 on the common auction platform and on the opt-out auction platforms, with cancelled auctions left out of the average. Each auction's clearing price is weighted by the volume of allowances auctioned (Art. 1(4)), and the result is expressed in euro and rounded to the nearest cent (Art. 1(5)).

The Q1 2026 average therefore covers the qualifying auctions held between January 1 and March 31, 2026. The Commission publishes each quarterly price on its website in the working week after it is calculated (Art. 1(2) and Art. 4(1)).

What exporters should do now

Exporters whose EU buyers have not yet requested verified emissions data should use this price to calculate the financial benefit of getting verified. Use the sector calculator to see your specific exposure at this official price.

Regulatory source: Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2548, Article 1.