School uniforms and crochet yarns enter the Istat basket

In the basket of calculation of inflation, for 2026, school uniforms, within which children's school aprons and boys' school uniforms are included, are included in the class Garments. This is announced by Istat, which has updated the sample of goods and services included in the basket, taking into account both the evolution of standards and classifications and the evolution of consumption behaviour, so as to ensure that the sample selection of references feeding into the calculation of price indices is broadly representative of the household consumption expenditure.

Also included in the basket are: clothing accessories, within which knitting and crocheting yarns are recorded, which are included in the class Other articles of clothing and clothing accessories; security equipment, within which video surveillance kits for reporting attempted theft are recorded, which are included in the class Security equipment and products for home maintenance and repair; charcoal, within which charcoal or charcoal briquettes for barbecues are recorded, which are included in the class Solid fuels.

Also included in the new additions are other household textiles, within which bath mats are surveyed, which merge into the class Household Textiles, emergency patient transport and emergency rescue services, within which private ambulance transport is surveyed, which merge into the class of the same name, camping and outdoor recreation articles, within which tents and backpacks are surveyed, which merge into the class Sporting, camping and outdoor recreation articles. To these is added the new aggregate with centralised reporting: software, excluding games, within which software and antivirus software are reported, which are placed in the class of the same name.

On the whole, there are about 27 million price quotations - from scanner data sources and coming monthly from the large-scale retail trade (GDO) - used in 2026 for estimating inflation; 404 thousand are collected on the territory by the Municipal Statistical Offices (UCS); about 188 thousand are collected by Istat (directly or through data suppliers) and about 203 thousand come from the database of fuel prices of the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy. With reference to rents for privately owned dwellings, there are about 1.5 million observations available for estimating inflation. In 2026, 80 municipalities (where 84.0% of the population resides in Italia) contribute to the calculation of consumer price indices (as in 2025); a further 10 municipalities (where a further 5.1% of the population resides) carry out the survey limited to municipal rates and some local services.