The September 2026 fuel price increase was projected to land on Wednesday, 2 September 2026, with diesel rising far more steeply than petrol at the start of the new fuel price month.
Petrol grades 93 and 95, in both unleaded and lead replacement form, were expected to rise by between R0.90 and R1.01 a litre, as reported by BusinessTech.
Diesel was set to climb by between R2.88 and R3.09 a litre across the 0.05% and 0.005% sulphur grades.
What the September 2026 fuel price increase costs per tank
A 60-litre tank of petrol would cost between R54.00 and R60.60 more to fill than it did in August.
The same tank filled with diesel would cost between R172.80 and R185.40 more, a gap of roughly R120 between the two fuels on a single fill.
Inland 95 unleaded sold at R25.58 a litre through August, which put a full 60-litre tank at R1 534.80. At the top of the projected range, the same tank would cost about R1 595.40 in September, back above the level motorists paid in July.
What drove the September 2026 fuel price increase
Continued conflict in the Middle East kept pressure on global oil markets through the review period, lifting the cost of crude and the refined products South Africa imports.
Every cent of that movement fed into the basic fuel price, a figure calculated on import parity rather than local production cost.
Diesel moved further because the constraint sat on refined product rather than crude. Global supply of diesel tightened independently of the oil price, pushing the international diesel benchmark up harder than petrol and widening the under-recovery that the energy department must close each month.
The rand offered some cushioning. A firmer local currency lowered the rand cost of every imported litre over the review period, but the gain was not large enough to cancel out the movement in international product prices, which left both fuels facing an increase.
Who the September 2026 fuel price increase reaches
Diesel carried no regulated pump price, so the published figure was a wholesale movement rather than a forecourt price. Freight operators, farmers, mining companies and businesses running generators absorbed it first, and it reached households later through the transport cost built into food and other goods.
Swisher Post reported at the start of August that the slate levy dropped from R1.14 to R0.61 a litre, which turned a flat petrol outcome into a cut at the pumps. That cushion was already spent, leaving prices tracking global oil and the rand directly.
The Central Energy Fund releases the official figures for each cycle shortly before implementation, and those numbers were due in the days ahead of Wednesday, 2 September 2026.
In earlier months the confirmed adjustment landed some distance from the early projections on both fuels.
