Only an exceptionally strong El Niño will meaningfully ease Europe's LNG needs this winter, and forecasters currently rate that outcome as a long shot.

Rystad Energy's analysis indicates that European winter temperatures would need to be at least 2 degrees Celsius above the historical average before the region's LNG demand could fall to or below last winter's level. Current forecasts point to a strong El Niño event forming through the winter of 2026-2027, potentially the most intense since 2015, however a strong El Niño event exceeding historical trends would be required to flip Europe's import math. Given the uncertainty of weather forecasts, the statistically probable outcome is that Europe still needs meaningfully more LNG than it did last winter, even with El Niño working in its favor.

That matters because the stakes this winter are higher than usual. Hostilities in the Middle East have pushed LNG prices up and cut deliveries from the Persian Gulf, a key production hub. A milder winter would be a welcome offset. The question is whether El Niño can deliver one large enough to count.

A strong El Niño looks likely, but strength is not certainty

El Niño is a recurring warm phase of the El Niño Southern Oscillation, tracked through ocean temperature anomalies in the Pacific. As of forecasts issued in July 2026, the probability of an El Niño event materializing over the next nine months stands at 100%, easing only slightly to 97% by March 2027. The odds also favor a strong event: forecasts show an 81% probability that the relevant temperature index rises by at least 2.0 degrees Celsius, and a 97% probability it clears 1.5 degrees. The higher the relative temperature index, the more likely we will see a higher magnitude temperature anomaly.

The coming El Niño is forecast to be the strongest on record in over a decade since the 2015-2016 El Niño, and most events have registered more modestly in the last decade. A repeated high-magnitude event would have wide-reaching impacts for the market, but forecasts this far out carry real uncertainty, and El Niño's effects vary by region even when the event itself is strong. In January 2016, for example, a very strong El Niño coincided with an unusually severe cold-air outbreak across East Asia, a reminder that a global pattern does not guarantee a uniform local outcome.

Asia warms more consistently than Europe

Looking at winter temperature data from 2001 to 2025, El Niño winters tend to run warmer than average across most of the regions Rystad Energy tracks, but the strength and consistency of that effect differ by geography.

Europe is one example of this, where Western Europe tends to see a larger warming effect than Southern Europe, likely tied to how El Niño interacts with the North Atlantic Oscillation, which governs the distribution of wind, precipitation and temperature across the continent. The historical data suggest that a temperature index reading near 2.0 degrees Celsius is associated with roughly a 1-degree Celsius rise in European winter temperatures. There have only been two prior instances, in December 2015 and February 2024, where the temperature anomaly was a 2 degree increase outright even with a high temperature index.

What would it take to increase gas demand

Rystad Energy's base case has European storage reaching 76% full by 1 November, which implies the region needs to lift LNG imports by about 15.15 million tonnes year-on-year through June 2027 to offset lower storage and reduced 2026 LNG imports tied to the US-Iran war.

Under a moderate El Niño scenario, a 1-degree Celsius increase across the winter months, LNG demand is brought down but Europe would still need about at least 7 Million tonnes (Mt) more than it imported in the prior winter. That outcome would be mildly supportive of gas prices, since it keeps import demand on an upward trajectory.

A 2-degree Celsius scenario tells a different story. That level of warming, matched historically only in December 2015 and February 2024, would displace enough demand to bring Europe's LNG imports to almost be the same as Winter 2025/2026. That outcome would be bearish for gas markets, as it would alleviate upward pressure on import volumes. We continue to include the 2-degree Celsius scenario because as mentioned in the paragraphs above, forecasts indicating a strong El Nino event are currently at its highest probability and severity since 2015.

The takeaway for market participants

A strong El Niño is now a high probability, if not certain, feature of the coming winter, and it should exert some downward pressure on European gas demand. But the market-moving scenario, a full 2-degree Celsius warming across the winter months, has occurred only twice in the historical record. Rystad Energy's base case is currently considering a more moderate warming effect, one that reduces the size of Europe's import increase without eliminating it. Should forecasts continue trending toward the higher end of the strength range as winter approaches, as they did in the build-up to the 2023-2024 event, that calculus could shift further. Market participants should treat the moderate scenario as the working assumption, while watching forecast revisions that could tilt outcomes toward the more bearish extreme.