Forex Spreads During News Events: What to Expect (2026)

Updated Apr 2026 • 12 min read • News impact analysis

News events are the single biggest cause of temporary spread widening in forex markets. Understanding how different types of economic releases affect spreads, and which brokers handle these conditions best, can save you from costly trades executed at inflated prices. This analysis uses real spread data from Q1 2026 to quantify the exact impact of major news events on your trading costs.

News Impact Rankings by Spread Widening

How Brokers Handle News Spreads

Not all brokers manage news events equally. During our testing, we observed significant differences in both the peak spread widening and the recovery time across different platforms.

Exness consistently showed the most controlled spread behavior during news events. Their EUR/USD peak spread during NFP averaged 3.2 pips compared to 5.8 pips at XM and 4.1 pips at IC Markets. More importantly, Exness spreads returned to normal within 15 seconds of the initial spike, while other brokers took 30-45 seconds to normalize.

This faster recovery matters because many news traders want to enter after the initial spike rather than trying to predict direction. A broker that normalizes spreads in 15 seconds gives you a significantly better entry than one that stays wide for 45 seconds.

Pre-News vs Post-News Trading

Spreads begin widening 30-60 seconds before scheduled news releases as liquidity providers pull their quotes in anticipation of volatility. This pre-news widening is often more gradual than the post-news spike and can catch traders who place orders too close to the release time.

Our recommendation is to avoid placing any new market orders within 2 minutes before and 1 minute after high-impact news releases. If you must trade news, use limit orders set at levels that only fill if the market moves significantly in your predicted direction, bypassing the spread issue entirely.

Strategies for News Trading with Spread Awareness

• Straddle orders: Place buy-stop above and sell-stop below current price before the news. Spreads affect both entries, so use wide enough offsets to account for the spike.
• Fade the spike: Wait 30-60 seconds after the release for spreads to normalize, then trade the retracement. This avoids paying the worst spreads entirely.
• Use higher timeframes: On 1H or 4H charts, a 5-pip spread spike is noise. Swing traders can hold through news events without worrying about spread cost.
• Monitor the calendar: Use our spread widening schedule to plan your trading around known events.

Methodology

News spread data captured from live accounts during all high-impact events in Q1 2026. Peak spread is the maximum observed spread within 60 seconds of the release. Duration is the time for spreads to return to within 0.3 pips of pre-news levels.

Frequently Asked Questions