Will there be food shortages this Christmas?

What is being shared

Most autumns the same headline comes round. Last year’s version ran on 22 November 2025: “Turkey shortages possible this Christmas after outbreak of bird flu ‘super strain’”, from LBC. In 2023 it was roast potatoes and broccoli; in 2022, turkeys and eggs; in 2021, lorry drivers and carbon dioxide. Read together, they suggest a Christmas without something is normal. The record says otherwise.

This year, as of 22 September 2026, the headlines are about prices rather than empty shelves: “Food inflation forecast slashed to 3.9 per cent by Christmas” (Grocery Gazette, 9 September 2026) and “Cost of Christmas 2026 for UK households revealed after price rises” (The Independent, via Yahoo Finance UK, 17 September 2026). We could find no 2026 headline warning of a food shortage this Christmas, and no supermarket, trade body or government department has issued one. The most recent Christmas shortage headline we found is last year’s.

Where things stand, as of 22 September 2026

Start with the birds, because turkeys are what the headline is usually about. On 18 May 2026 the UK self-declared Great Britain free of highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry, and on 4 June 2026 the Avian Influenza Prevention Zone covering England, Wales and Scotland was lifted. The government’s latest update, dated 20 August 2026, still records the zone as lifted and assesses the risk to poultry as low, or very low where biosecurity is stringent. Northern Ireland’s rules are set separately by DAERA: compulsory housing there ended on 5 May 2026 and its prevention zone on 15 May 2026, after the UK’s self-declaration of freedom for Northern Ireland was published on 7 May. Bird flu is seasonal, though: the 2025–26 season’s first UK case came in Northern Ireland on 9 October 2025, and England’s on 11 October. The honest position on turkeys is not “no risk” but “no warning yet, and the time to look is from October”.

On prices, the official measure is calmer than the headlines. The ONS put food and non-alcoholic drink inflation at 1.3 per cent in the year to August 2026, unchanged from July and its lowest since September 2021; overall inflation was 3.1 per cent (published 16 September 2026). The retailers’ BRC-NIQ Shop Price Index, which tracks shelf prices rather than the whole basket, had food at 2.8 per cent in August (published 1 September 2026); the two are different measures. The Food and Drink Federation, which represents manufacturers, forecast on 9 September 2026 that food and non-alcoholic drink inflation would reach 3.9 per cent in December. In April it had forecast at least 9 per cent by the end of the year, so its forecast has come down since spring, though it still expects food prices to rise as energy, transport and packaging costs work through.

We found no statement from the BRC, the FDF, Defra or any supermarket about food availability this Christmas; the FDF’s report is about prices, not supply.

What actually happened in past Christmases

2021 set the formula. A lorry-driver shortage the Road Haulage Association put at more than 100,000 in June 2021 met a carbon dioxide crisis: in September 2021 CF Fertilisers halted production at two UK plants because of the price of gas, taking with it around 60 per cent of the UK’s carbon dioxide, used primarily by the food sector, for example to stun pigs and poultry before slaughter and in food packaging. On 21 September 2021 the government agreed three weeks of “limited financial support” so that CF could restart its Billingham plant. The same autumn the driver shortage reached fuel deliveries, and a rush to fill up left forecourts in some areas short. The fuel industry said on 26 September 2021 that the problems were “due to temporary spikes in customer demand, not a national shortage of fuel”.

2022 came closest of recent Christmases to a genuine shortage, and it was specific. The British Poultry Council told MPs on 29 November 2022 that around 600,000 of the 1.2 to 1.3 million free-range birds usually reared for Christmas, about half, had been directly affected by the UK’s largest bird flu outbreak to that point, and that just over one million of the 8.5 to 9 million turkeys produced for Christmas had died or been culled. A poultry farmer told the same committee there would be “a big, big shortage of free range British turkeys on the shelves this year”. In November 2022 Lidl limited shoppers to three boxes of eggs and Asda to two. But Sainsbury’s ordered extra turkeys as a buffer, and Tesco said it expected to have enough. Free-range was short; turkey was not.

2023’s worry was weather. October 2023 brought around twice the month’s average rainfall to parts of eastern England and eastern Scotland, and about one and a half times the average across the UK as a whole (Met Office). On 27 November 2023 LBC reported that the potato crop could be the lowest on record and quoted a Lincolnshire grower: “There won’t be enough broccoli to supply the Christmas dinner demand”. Sprouts, said Chris Gedney, chief executive of T H Clements, one of the UK’s largest sprout suppliers, were likely to be smaller. The British Poultry Council had said on 23 October 2023: “We do not foresee a turkey shortage this year.” Retailers might have to draw on potatoes from cold storage, LBC said. Christmas dinner happened.

2025 followed the template. Bird flu was confirmed in English poultry on 11 October 2025, and by the government’s update of 20 August 2026 England had recorded 79 cases in the 2025–26 season. By 22 November LBC was reporting about 300,000 birds culled, which it put at around 5 per cent of the UK Christmas poultry flock, and the British Poultry Council’s chief executive called it “a bad season, much worse than last year”. The UK produces around eight million turkeys a year. A Defra spokesperson said: “We do not anticipate any overall impact on the availability of Christmas turkeys or other seasonal poultry for consumers.” What the BRC then recorded for December 2025 was food inflation of 3.3 per cent, up from 3.0 per cent in November: a price story. Four Christmases, one pattern: a real, narrow problem in one supply chain, a headline that widens it to “Christmas dinner”, and a December in which the thing is dearer or the choice narrower, but there.

The pressures that are real this year

None of this means 2026 is free of strain. Three things are pushing on the food system. The first is drought. In its report for 11 to 17 September 2026 the Environment Agency said ten areas of England remained in drought, that reservoir storage in England was 56.1 per cent in the week ending 15 September, which it put at “19.7% below average for the time of year”, and that cereals in the east and south-east had been “substantially impacted” by heat and drought, with smaller apple crops expected. Those are England’s figures. Natural Resources Wales extended drought status to the whole of Wales on 30 July 2026 and said on 14 September that Wales remained in drought; SEPA’s water scarcity report of 17 September 2026 had five Scottish areas at significant scarcity, with dry conditions persisting in the east; we could not confirm Northern Ireland’s position. GB Potatoes, the industry body, said in August that it was not expecting as much crop as in recent years, but as of 28 August 2026 the scale of the loss was still uncertain. Estimated daily milk deliveries in Great Britain were 3.2 per cent lower in July 2026 than a year earlier; as of 22 September 2026 no retailer was rationing milk, as our milk page sets out. The NFU noted on 12 August 2026 that the UK grows 56 per cent of the vegetables it eats and 14 per cent of its fruit, so December’s shelves also depend on other countries’ harvests. Our drought tracker follows the weekly reports.

The second is energy and transport. The FDF said on 9 September 2026 that the conflict in the Middle East had pushed gas prices to more than double their February 2026 level. As of 22 September 2026 the average price of diesel was within a few pence of its UK record, for reasons our diesel page explains; there is no UK diesel shortage, and our fuel price tracker has the current figure. These costs reach food as price, slowly. The FDF’s chief executive, Karen Betts, said on 9 September 2026 that manufacturers had kept prices as low as possible “during the energy shock since the closure of the Strait of Hormuz”, adding: “But they can’t do this indefinitely.” The FDF expects the rise to run into 2027 and peak at 6.4 per cent in July 2027.

The third is the cumulative bill. The FDF said on 9 September 2026 that a grocery shop costing £100 at the start of 2020 would cost around £138.60 now. That is the number behind this year’s headlines, and it is not a shortage.

What this means for your household

Plan for a dearer Christmas, not an empty one. The useful move is the boring one: spread the long-life parts of the Christmas shop across October and November as part of normal shopping, rather than buying it all in the last week when everyone else does. That is how much food to keep in anyway, and it costs nothing extra because you eat it.

If you want a particular turkey, free-range, a certain size or from a local farm, order it early: in 2022 it was free-range birds that ran short, not turkey. If bird flu returns this autumn, GOV.UK will confirm it for England, with the Scottish and Welsh governments and DAERA in Northern Ireland publishing their own updates, and this page will change with it.

Check dates before you throw anything out: use-by is the safety date, best-before is about quality. Food safety guidance comes from the Food Standards Agency in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and from Food Standards Scotland in Scotland. If the cost of food this winter is the problem, help differs by nation: in England it is the Crisis and Resilience Fund, in Scotland the Scottish Welfare Fund, in Wales the Discretionary Assistance Fund and in Northern Ireland Discretionary Support, all covered on our Crisis and Resilience Fund page. Why British shelves gap briefly but rarely empty is on our food shortages guide.

What not to do

Don’t buy ahead of need because of a headline. The petrol queues of September 2021 came from people filling up at the same time, when there was no national shortage of fuel. Shelves can empty in hours when everyone decides to be early. A quiet extra tin a week from October is a plan; a trolley of them in December is the problem.

Don’t treat a price forecast as a supply warning. Food inflation of 3.9 per cent means a shop that cost £100 a year earlier costs about £104; it does not mean the shop is empty. And don’t treat last year’s headline as this year’s news: the most recent turkey shortage stories are dated November 2025, about last winter’s bird flu outbreak; the UK self-declared Great Britain free of the disease in poultry in May 2026, and Northern Ireland lifted its last restrictions the same month.