Fed Dot Plot Explained: How to Read the September 2026 Dots

The Fed dot plot is the chart in the Federal Reserve’s Summary of Economic Projections where each Board governor and Reserve Bank president marks, without their name, the federal funds rate they judge appropriate at each year-end and in the longer run. In the round published on 16 September 2026, the median dot for end-2026 was 4.1%.

It is a set of individual projections, each built on its own assumption about what policy ought to do. Read as one path it says something the chart cannot support. Read as what it is, it says a good deal about how much the people setting policy disagree. This page stays with the structure first, then reports the round currently in circulation with the date it was published and the date it will be replaced.

What the Chart Actually Plots

Since January 2012 the projections each policymaker submits have included where they think the target federal funds rate should appropriately sit for the close of this year, for each of the several years that follow, and for the longer run. One dot per person, per year, stacked in columns, with nothing to say which dot belongs to whom.

The word policymaker is doing more work there than it looks. Projections are gathered from every member of the Board of Governors and from every Federal Reserve Bank president. It is also the published rate path a currency trades on, which is why the presidential cycle claim adds little to what this document already shows.

The committee that votes is smaller. It seats twelve: the seven governors, the president of the New York Reserve Bank, and four more presidents drawn from the other eleven Reserve Banks on a one-year rotation. Presidents who are not seated still attend and still take part in the discussion.

So the group writing the dots is wider than the group casting votes, and counting dots is not counting votes. That gap is invisible on the chart and it is the first thing most explanations skip. A remark made at a conference is a third object again, and the symposium that sets no policy produces no dot at all, because nothing is submitted there.

The charts and tables come out shortly after the meeting closes, at four of the eight meetings scheduled each year. Which materials each central bank publishes, and on what timetable, is compared across the Fed, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England in what a change in policy tone actually is. This page stays with the chart itself.

Every Dot Carries Its Own Assumption

One condition decides how the whole picture should be read, and none of the widely ranked explainers states it.

Each person forecasts growth, unemployment and inflation on the basis of their own judgement about what monetary policy would appropriately do. The rate dot is that judgement made explicit, not a prediction of what the committee will decide.

Two consequences follow. First, two dots at different heights need not disagree about the economy at all. They can describe the same economy and differ only on the policy response it deserves. Second, two dots at the same height can rest on completely different views about how fast prices are rising.

The chart is therefore a scatter of separate conditional scenarios laid over each other, not a distribution of opinions about one shared future. A sentence beginning “the Fed expects” is not something it can support.

Then there is when the dots are written. A first version has to be in by the close of the Friday that precedes the meeting, and it can be amended no later than the second morning of the meeting itself.

So the dots published after the meeting were, for the most part, set down before the meeting began. They are a snapshot of individual views carried into the room, not a summary of what came out of it.

The Horizon Changes Between March and September

The chart is not the same chart four times a year, and the difference is structural rather than cosmetic.

The March and June rounds cover the current year, the two years after it, and the longer run. The September and December rounds cover the current year, the three years after it, and the longer run.

A column that exists in the autumn chart therefore has no counterpart in the spring one. Anyone comparing a given future year across quarters may be comparing a column that only just came into existence with nothing at all.

The longer-run entry is a different kind of object again. It is where a policymaker expects the economy to settle once shocks have worked through, on a horizon they put at roughly five or six years, under policy they consider appropriate. For growth and unemployment those longer-run figures can be read as estimates of the economy’s potential and of its normal unemployment rate, rather than as forecasts of any particular year.

The Dot Plot Is One Page of a Longer Document

The dots are one exhibit inside the Summary of Economic Projections, and the rest of that document is what the dots are conditioned on.

It is also not the only document prepared for that meeting. The anecdotal report that precedes it arrives 13 days before the meeting opens and carries no projections at all.

Alongside the rate path, each policymaker submits projections for the change in real gross domestic product, the unemployment rate, inflation on the price index for personal consumption expenditures, and the same index excluding food and energy, which is core PCE.

The measurement conventions are specific and easy to misread. Growth and prices are stated fourth quarter on fourth quarter, setting one year’s final three months against the next year’s, and not as annual averages. Unemployment is the fourth-quarter average.

The summary table does not present those projections as one number each. It publishes them three ways, and the definitions are not interchangeable.

What the Median Does and Does Not Mean

The median dot is the number that travels. It is also the number that carries the least information on the chart.

Nothing is decided by taking it. There is no vote on the median, no commitment attached to it, and no mechanism by which it binds anyone who submitted a dot. It is arithmetic applied after the fact to a column of individual entries.

And because each entry rests on its author’s own policy assumption, the median sits in the middle of a set of scenarios rather than in the middle of a forecast. Its meaning depends entirely on the spread around it.

A median with the dots clustered tightly and a median with them scattered across a wide band are different situations that produce the same headline. That is precisely why the range and the central tendency are published next to it.

A median can also move without anyone changing their mind about the economy. The set of people submitting projections changes as governors join or leave and as Reserve Bank leadership changes, and a different set of authors can produce a different middle value on its own.

The Round in Circulation: 16 September 2026

Everything above describes how the chart is built. This section applies that to the round actually in circulation, dated so its expiry is visible rather than hidden.

The most recent projections were published on 16 September 2026, with a decision that raised the target range by a quarter point to 3.75 to 4.00 percent on a 12 to 0 vote. The setting in force now has a midpoint of 3.875 percent. The next projections arrive with the meeting of 8 and 9 December 2026; the meeting of 27 and 28 October carries none.

Below is the 2026 column as a count of participants at each level, set beside the June round so the move is visible. Eighteen projections were submitted each time.

In June the column split nine at or below the midpoint then in force and nine above it. In September only 2 of 18 sit at the new 3.875 percent midpoint; 12 place the end-2026 rate one step higher and 4 place it two steps higher. With two meetings left in the year, that is a picture of how many further quarter-point moves each participant judged appropriate, not a schedule.

The median path moved up in every period that both rounds share.

The 2029 row is the autumn column described earlier: it did not exist in June. Seventeen participants filled it, one fewer than the eighteen who took part, and their dots run from 2.875 to 3.875 percent.

Why the Median Moved Off the Boundary

With eighteen projections the median is the average of the ninth and tenth once they are ordered. In June those two sat one step apart, at 3.625 and 3.875, so the published 3.8 was really 3.75: the line between two target ranges, a position no participant submitted.

In September the ninth and tenth dots are both 4.125. The published 4.1 is therefore the midpoint of an actual range, 4.00 to 4.25 percent, and twelve participants wrote exactly that figure. Same chart, same arithmetic, but this time the headline number describes where most of the dots are.

Why the Figures on Most Explainer Pages Are Already Stale

Every release replaces the one before it, four times a year. Any explanation built around a level is describing one particular quarter, whether or not it says so.

That is not a hypothetical. Among the pages ranking for this question, the longest was published in June 2025 with no modified date, so its numeric core describes a round superseded several times over. A second states a median, a spread and a prior median citing nothing but its own chart labels. A third gives a count of officials and a quotation from the chair with no source for either.

The figures in the section above are tied to the round that produced them and to the day they were read, and the date on which the next round replaces them is stated beside them. The way the chart is built and conditioned does not change quarterly. The numbers on it do, and a page carrying them without saying which round they belong to is out of date the moment the next release lands.

What a Currency Trader Can Take From It

Not a level, and not a schedule. Three structural readings survive the quarterly turnover.

The first is dispersion rather than the middle. How widely the dots for a given year are spread is a measure of how much disagreement exists inside the committee, and disagreement is what leaves room for a surprise to be repriced.

The second is whether the horizon just changed. An autumn release adds a year that the previous chart did not contain, so an apparently new signal about a distant year may only be the arrival of a new column.

The third is what the rate path is conditioned on. Every dot sits on top of that person’s projections for growth, prices and unemployment, which is why the scheduled data releases that move those variables matter more than the chart itself. Two of them are what the inflation number measures and a figure revised after you have traded it. How the projections appear in a schedule at all is covered in how a scheduled release is listed.

Who This Page Is Not For

Anyone looking for a forecast of where the next round of dots will land will not find one here. What this page reports is the round already published, labelled with its date.

Anyone wanting a view on where rates are going is in the wrong place as well. This page explains a chart; it does not read one.

And anyone looking for the equivalent chart from another central bank should know that most do not publish one in this form. That difference, and when a central bank acts in the market itself, sit outside the projections entirely.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Fed dot plot?

It is a chart showing where each Federal Reserve policymaker thinks the target federal funds rate should appropriately sit for the close of this year, for each of the several years that follow, and for the longer run. Each dot is one person, the dots are anonymous, and the chart is published four times a year.

Does the dot plot commit the Fed to anything?

No. The dots are individual projections of what each person judges would be appropriate, not decisions, and nothing on the chart is voted on. The rate decision itself is taken separately and announced in the statement.

Why does the dot plot change every quarter?

Because it is collected fresh each time, from people whose views have moved and sometimes from a partly different group of people. The horizon also changes: the spring rounds reach two years ahead and the autumn rounds reach three.

Is the median dot the Fed forecast?

No. It is the middle value of a set of individual projections, each conditioned on its own author’s assumption about policy. It is not agreed by anyone and it carries no information about how far apart the dots around it are.

What should a currency trader look at instead of the level?

How spread out the dots are for a given year, whether the horizon just gained a column, and the growth, unemployment and inflation projections the rate path is conditioned on. Those survive the next release; a level does not.