In the July 2026 edition, 21 of 54 countries did not change their Big Mac price by a single unit of local currency. Not a baht, not a real, not a dirham.
The obvious reaction is that something is wrong — either with the data or with the burger market. Neither is true. Six months of a completely unchanged price is the normal state of a menu board. Once you know that, the interesting question flips: not “why did 21 stay flat” but “what does it take to make a company reprint its menus?”
Flat is the default, not the anomaly
Here is the share of countries with an unchanged local price in each of the last ten editions:
| Edition | Unchanged | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 2022 | 27 / 56 | 48% |
| Jul 2022 | 14 / 53 | 26% |
| Jan 2023 | 13 / 53 | 25% |
| Jul 2023 | 15 / 54 | 28% |
| Jan 2024 | 27 / 54 | 50% |
| Jul 2024 | 24 / 54 | 44% |
| Jan 2025 | 26 / 54 | 48% |
| Jul 2025 | 20 / 54 | 37% |
| Jan 2026 | 24 / 54 | 44% |
| Jul 2026 | 21 / 54 | 39% |
The normal band is roughly 40–50%. This edition’s 39% is at the low end of ordinary.
The genuine anomaly is the middle of the table. Through 2022 and 2023, only a quarter of countries held prices steady — meaning three quarters were raising them, in consecutive six-month windows. That is the global inflation surge, visible in a hamburger.
What this edition actually shows is a return to normal. Most companies, most of the time, do not touch their prices.
Why menus are sticky
Economists call this menu costs, and the term is not a metaphor here — it comes from exactly this situation.
Changing a price is not free. You reprint menu boards across every franchise, update the app and delivery platforms, retrain staff on combo maths, renegotiate with franchisees who set prices under contract, and absorb the goodwill hit from customers who notice. For a marginal cost increase, the rational move is to eat it and wait.
So companies change prices in jumps, not drifts. They hold for a year or two while margins compress, then move once, decisively, by more than the accumulated inflation. You can see this in the data as long flat runs punctuated by step increases.
This is why a six-month index snapshot showing “no change” is not evidence that costs are stable. It is evidence that costs have not yet moved enough.
Who never changes, and who never stops
Counting price changes across the eleven editions since January 2021:
Least frequent
| Country | Changes | Longest flat run | 5-year total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🇹🇭 Thailand | 1 / 11 | 6 editions (3 years) | +5% |
| 🇧🇷 Brazil | 2 / 11 | 6 editions | +9% |
| 🇮🇱 Israel | 2 / 11 | 9 editions (4.5 years) | +35% |
| 🇹🇼 Taiwan | 2 / 11 | 6 editions | +8% |
| 🇦🇪 UAE | 3 / 11 | 6 editions | +29% |
| 🇧🇭 Bahrain | 3 / 11 | 5 editions | +20% |
| 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia | 3 / 11 | 8 editions | +36% |
Most frequent
| Country | Changes | 5-year total |
|---|---|---|
| 🇦🇷 Argentina | 11 / 11 | +2,619% |
| 🇹🇷 Turkey | 11 / 11 | +2,068% |
| 🇺🇾 Uruguay | 11 / 11 | +76% |
| 🇪🇺 Euro area | 11 / 11 | +46% |
| 🇺🇦 Ukraine | 10 / 10 | +140% |
| 🇺🇸 United States | 10 / 11 | +27% |
| 🇸🇪 Sweden | 10 / 11 | +30% |
Two patterns fall out of this.
Thailand held one price for three straight years and has raised it a cumulative 5% in five. In a country with low, stable inflation and intense local competition from street food and regional chains, there is neither the cost pressure nor the pricing power to move. The baht’s own movements did more to the dollar price than McDonald’s Thailand ever did.
Israel’s is the strangest entry in the table: only two changes in eleven editions, including a nine-edition freeze — yet +35% cumulative. That is the step-function pattern in its purest form. Nothing, nothing, nothing, then a large jump that catches up all at once. Israel’s Big Mac rose 15% in local terms this edition alone.
Argentina and Turkey changed price every single time. At 2,000%+ cumulative inflation, menu costs stop mattering — the cost of not repricing dwarfs the cost of repricing. This is what the economics literature means when it says high inflation makes prices flexible: the stickiness is a function of how much is at stake, and above a certain rate nothing is worth holding.
The United States changed price in 10 of 11 editions, but only +27% cumulatively. Frequent, small adjustments — the signature of a large, competitive, low-inflation market where repricing infrastructure is cheap and continuous.
What this means for reading the index
Three practical consequences:
A flat six months means nothing on its own. Do not read “unchanged” as “no inflation here.” Read it as “not enough accumulated pressure to justify a reprint yet.” The pressure is still building.
Expect overshoot after long freezes. Countries with long flat runs will jump by more than the intervening inflation when they finally move. Israel’s +15% this edition after years of stillness is the model. Watch Thailand, Taiwan and Brazil for the same.
Change frequency is itself an inflation signal. You can rank countries by macroeconomic stability using nothing but how often the burger price moves. Argentina and Turkey at 11/11 versus Thailand at 1/11 tells you something real before you look at a single CPI release.
The limits
This is one product in one chain, sampled twice a year. A price that appears flat between two January-to-July snapshots could have moved and moved back. Franchise markets set prices locally, so a national figure smooths over real variation — something we have documented in detail for the eurozone, where a single row hides a 25% spread.
But for the specific question of how often a large consumer-facing company adjusts a headline price, twice-yearly sampling over eleven editions is enough to see the shape clearly. And the shape is: long stillness, sudden jumps, and the frequency rising with inflation.
Data: The Economist Big Mac Index, all editions January 2021 – July 2026, local-currency prices. Part of our July 2026 edition analysis.