For the first time since 2020, the annual average price of gas is projected to fall below $3 a gallon in 2026, the price tracking group GasBuddy said in a new report Tuesday.
At $2.97, GasBuddy’s projected average for the year is 13 cents below the average price per gallon nationwide in 2025, which was $3.10.
“The world has spent years recovering from the economic whiplash of the pandemic and the shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the situation has been improving quietly since 2022,” Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, said in a statement.
GasBuddy calculated the average by determining a monthly price range, averaging that and then taking the average of all 12 months. Full results were included in the group’s 2026 fuel price outlook report.
The last year that average annual gas prices nationwide were as low as GasBuddy projects for this year was 2020, when the Covid pandemic kept millions of Americans working from home and schools largely virtual.
That year, the average price of unleaded gas nationwide was $2.17 per gallon, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
GasBuddy also projects that U.S. households will spend less overall for gas, on average, this year than they did in the year that just ended. At $2,083, the annual projection is well below 2022’s average household gas price of $2,715.
“It’s not a return to ultra-cheap fuel, but for the first time in a long time, the wind is clearly behind drivers’ backs,” De Haan said. “If the market avoids major surprises, sustained averages below $3 per gallon could become commonplace in the year ahead.”
As of Tuesday, the average price of gas nationwide was $2.79 per gallon, according to GasBuddy’s real-time measure. This is slightly below the group’s projection for January’s average fuel prices.
Average nationwide diesel prices, on the other hand, are still projected to remain above the $3 per gallon mark this year. The group projects an average of $3.55 for diesel over the year, only slightly less than last year’s nationwide average of $3.62 per gallon, GasBuddy said.
Within the projected decline in year-over-year prices, there will still be variability owing to factors “tied to seasonal demand, refinery maintenance, hurricane season and ongoing geopolitical risks,” GasBuddy wrote in the release.
The recent U.S. attack on Venezuela, which has massive reserves of crude oil, exemplifies the kind of geopolitical risk factors that could impact gas prices later in the year.
After capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife and bringing them to the United States to face trial, President Donald Trump said U.S. oil companies would invest billions in rebuilding Venezuela’s crumbling oil infrastructure in order to tap the country’s reserves.
The events unfolding in Venezuela won’t immediately change anything for consumers at the pump, however.
“A lot of Americans may think there’s going to be some sort of overnight or even weekly or monthly improvement in Venezuela’s oil output, but this is really a clock that’s going to tick much slower,” De Haan told NBC News.
“Gas prices almost always start going up in the spring,” he added. “What’s happening in Venezuela is not going to stop that seasonal trend.”
