With the primary surplus in this year’s budget, early debt repayments and the resilience of the economy in the face of pressures from the ongoing crisis in the Middle East as its “weapons,” Greece is awaiting the second round of assessments for 2026 by the five major international rating agencies. DBRS will be the first to deliver its verdict next Friday, September 4, followed by Scope Ratings and Moody’s on September 18. S&P will take its turn on October 23, and the cycle will close with Fitch on November 6.
Having awarded Greece investment-grade status in 2023/2024 and subsequently proceeded — with the exception of Moody’s — to issue further upgrades, the agencies confirmed Greece’s credit rating at BBB in the first half of 2026, adopting a wait-and-see stance due to uncertainty stemming from the war in Iran.
A lot has happened since last March, when the first assessments of 2026 were carried out. The Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, six months after the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran, with the price of Brent crude consequently much higher than at the beginning of the year — close to $90 a barrel compared with around $60 — while the price of natural gas in Europe has more than doubled, reaching €68 per megawatt-hour on Thursday from just €26.5.
Despite the intense pressures on the energy front and inflation, the Greek economy has demonstrated resilience. GDP increased by 2% year-on-year in the first quarter of the year, and the picture for the second quarter remains to be seen, with ELSTAT due to announce the data on September 7. The state budget recorded a primary surplus of €5.77 billion in the seven-month period from January to July, higher than the target, reinforcing the downward trajectory of debt.
At the same time, Minister of National Economy and Finance and President of the Eurogroup, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, referred to new early debt repayments by Greece amounting to €12.8 billion. With the early repayment, the budget target of reducing debt to 138.2% of GDP at the end of 2026 from 145.9% in 2025 is expected to be comfortably exceeded, with Greece leaving Italy as the country with the highest debt in the eurozone.
As the prospect of debt reduction is the decisive factor taken into account by the rating agencies, it remains to be seen how these developments will be reflected in their new assessments. It should be noted that Scope, which was the first agency to award Greece investment-grade status and revised the outlook for Greece’s credit rating from stable to positive in November 2025, has recently appeared much more optimistic about the pace of debt reduction. While its assessment on March 17 projected, in its baseline scenario, a decline to 127% of GDP by 2030 and 120% by 2035, in a report published in June it projected that Greek debt would plunge to 107% in 2031, well below the debt levels of not only Italy but also France and Belgium.
In its March assessment, Moody’s considered that the reduction in Greek debt would continue at a slower pace in the coming years, falling to 140% of GDP in 2027. This forecast is now outdated in light of the latest fiscal developments and the significant early repayment of debt, so the agency’s new verdict will be of particular interest, given that in its assessment it noted that “upward pressure on Greece’s credit rating could emerge if we saw sustained reductions in Greek debt that significantly exceeded our current expectations.”
In March, DBRS noted that “although the economic and fiscal tailwinds are likely to persist in 2026, the economic outlook is exposed to significant downside risks, such as an escalation of geopolitical tensions.” It added that it could upgrade Greece’s credit rating “if public debt declined broadly in line with expectations over the next 1–2 years and its ratio to GDP was projected to remain on a sustained downward trajectory over the medium term due to strong fiscal outcomes.”
Last week, Fitch made it clear that the rapid reduction in Greek debt had been the catalyst for the three upgrades it had made since 2021. Although the 22% growth of the Greek economy during the 2021–2025 period, compared with approximately 13.5% in the EU, was the main driver behind the reduction in debt, it was fiscal policy that determined the rapid decline, the agency noted. Fitch added that the factors supporting the recovery are beginning to weaken, as the tourism recovery has been completed, funding from the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility peaks in 2026, and there is no longer a negative real cost of financing. “As these factors fade, primary surpluses will bear a greater share of the burden of deleveraging (debt), at a time when maintaining them is becoming more challenging amid an ageing population, increasing commitments to defence and declining political consensus,” Fitch said.
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