How high will gas prices get in 2026? Kalshi predicts these high prices are here to stay and could rise even further.
The year's high is $4.564, set on May 21, and the prediction market board says it's a coin flip whether that number survives to December.
The market settles on the highest AAA national daily average printed in 2026, and it doesn't close for another 153 days. Getting contracts today looks like a good opportunity to lock in a great return. For example, the $4.60 line trades at 56%, the $4.80 line at 47%, and the $5.00 line at 41%.
Above that the ladder falls off. $5.20 sits at 23%, $5.40 at 16%, $6.00 at 13%.
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How High Will Gas Prices Get in 2026?
Spot is $4.12, up 15 cents in a week. So the board is calling 48 cents of upside slightly better than even money, with five months left to find it.
What's interesting is where the distribution is. Conditional on gas clearing $4.60 at all, the ladder gives it a 73% chance of running all the way to $5.00. Then between $5.00 and $5.20 the odds get cut nearly in half.
The market is saying the pump either stalls under the May record or breaks it and keeps going. $1,241,847 has traded on this yearly market which is five times the volume on the July monthly contract.
Brent closed at $90.74 on July 29, a 7.9% session, after Trump threatened to hit Iran hard. That's the first $90 handle since the spring. Iran spent July attacking tankers in Hormuz and has held control of the strait as a condition in talks with Washington.
Retail tracks crude with a week or two of lag, so a $90 barrel has not reached the pump yet. AAA's average went from $3.83 on July 2 to $4.12 on July 30 following crude that was cheaper than today's.
Working the other way is the calendar. After Labor Day, refiners switch to cheaper winter blend and driving demand drops off, which is why the annual high is usually already in by early September.
So the window is narrow. Gas has roughly six weeks to add 45 cents, or the 2026 high stays $4.564 and everything on this ladder settles No.
One other thing to keep in mind though, peak Atlantic hurricane season runs August into October, and a storm into Gulf Coast refiners takes gasoline up on its own, regardless of where crude trades.
For scale on what the upper ladder is pricing: the national average has cleared $5.00 exactly once, at $5.016 in June 2022. The board gives 2026 a 41% chance of matching the all-time high, and a 13% chance of clearing $6.00, a level no national average has ever printed.
It also lands somewhere other than the pump. A national average holding above $4.60 into the fall keeps the CPI energy line hot and hands Warsh's Fed the inflation case it has been running on since the spring and we almost certainly get a rate hike.
The Trade
The $4.60 Yes at 56¢ is roughly a fair price. Further up the ladder is the better opporunities: the $5.00 Yes at 43¢ has the same Hormuz escalation scenario for a cheaper entry than hormuz contracts themselves, because the board itself says $4.60 is not where the move stops, and $5.00 needs one bad supply event between now and Labor Day rather than a steady climb.
The $6.00 Yes at 14¢ is the hurricane lottery, priced about where a Gulf refinery outage combined with a closed strait would sit. The risk on every line is the same headline: an Iran deal that reopens Hormuz cracks Brent back under $70, and $4.564 stands as the 2026 high permanently.
Not financial advice.
