When Do CD Rates Peak? The FOMC Calendar, Not the Season (2026)

Key Takeaways

There is no credible evidence of CD rates having a recurring calendar-based peak season, independent of the Fed. What looks like seasonality is usually the Fed's own meeting calendar, or a wave of CDs maturing from years earlier.
CD rates have tracked the Fed funds rate closely going back to 1964, per Federal Reserve economic data — the correlation is real, well-documented, and the actual mechanism behind rate moves.
As of August 2026, the standard "lock in before cuts" advice from 2024-2025 doesn't straightforwardly apply — the Fed has held for five straight meetings with a live hiking dissent, and the next move's direction is genuinely uncertain.

Quick answer

CD rates don't have a real seasonal peak tied to the calendar. What moves them is the Federal Reserve's target rate, set at eight scheduled FOMC meetings a year — a relationship that shows up in Fed data going back to 1964. If you're trying to time opening a CD, the FOMC meeting calendar is the thing to watch, not the time of year. And as of today, the direction of the Fed's next move is genuinely unclear, which is itself the useful, honest answer.

Why "CD rate season" isn't really a season

Search for "when do CD rates peak" and you'll find plenty of generic advice implying banks compete harder for deposits at certain times of year. Looking directly for evidence of that pattern turns up something different: a real phenomenon that gets mistaken for seasonality.

Industry coverage of the wave of CDs coming due in 2026 — a large share of the roughly $2.8 trillion in CDs maturing this year — explicitly separates this from seasonality. As one banking-industry publication put it, this maturity wave "is different than cycles of other banking products... it's not created by the seasonality of agriculture or rate movements tied to decisions by the FOMC." It's an echo of when those CDs were originally opened (largely late 2023, at the top of the last hiking cycle), not a recurring calendar pattern in how banks set new rates today.

The real driver: the Fed, not the calendar

The Federal Reserve's own economic data (FRED) tracks the 3-month CD rate back to 1964, and it has moved almost in lockstep with the effective Fed funds rate for that entire span. This is the actual mechanism:

The Fed sets its target rate at eight scheduled FOMC meetings a year — dates published well in advance at federalreserve.gov.
Banks adjust deposit pricing, including CD rates, in response to that target — sometimes ahead of the official decision, based on Fed communications and speeches, not just the announcement itself.
The pass-through tends to be asymmetric: banks are often quicker to cut CD rates after a Fed cut than to raise them after a hike, since they're less eager to pay more for deposits they don't urgently need.

That's the entire "seasonality." It isn't tied to a month — it's tied to a meeting.

The last two cycles prove it

2022-2023 hiking cycle → November 2023 peak. The Fed raised rates eleven times across 2022 and 2023. Top CD rates followed, peaking in November 2023 at over 5.00% to 5.30% APY on 1-year CDs at leading online banks — not because November is a special month for CDs, but because that's when the hiking cycle topped out.

2024-2025 cutting cycle → decline from that peak. The Fed cut rates three times in 2024 and three more times in late 2025, bringing the target range down to where it sits today. Top CD rates fell in step, dropping from that 2023 peak to just under 4.00% APY by late 2025.

Both moves tracked Fed decisions directly. Neither was a calendar effect.

What the Fed is actually doing right now (as of August 2026)

Watch Out: Fed rate expectations shift fast and this section is a snapshot as of publication. Check the Federal Reserve's own most recent FOMC statement before making a timing decision — don't rely on any single article, including this one, for a real-time read.

This is where the standard "lock in before rates fall" advice, written for the 2024-2025 environment, stops applying cleanly. As of this writing, the Fed has held its target range steady for five consecutive meetings through July 2026. At that July meeting, three regional Fed presidents dissented in favor of a hike — the first three-way hiking dissent since 2016 — as inflation pressure tied to tariffs and oil-price shocks pushed some officials toward tightening rather than cutting.

The Fed's next scheduled meeting is September 15-16, 2026. Market pricing ahead of that meeting has leaned toward a hold, but with a real, non-trivial probability assigned to a hike — a meaningfully different setup than the "cuts are coming, lock in now" story that dominated CD content through 2024 and 2025.

What this means for timing a CD right now

The honest answer is that nobody, including this article, can tell you with confidence which way the September meeting or the ones after it will go. That uncertainty is itself the actionable insight:

If you're confident rates are more likely to fall from here: locking in a longer CD term now protects today's rate.
If you think a hike is genuinely possible: a shorter term, or staying liquid in a HYSA, lets you reprice sooner if rates move up.
If you're not confident either way — which is the defensible position right now: a CD ladder spreads your bet across multiple maturities instead of committing everything to one guess about one meeting.