Average premium

What is the average premium?

The average premium is a key figure published by the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH). It sums up the more than 245,000 different basic health insurance premiums in a single number. This makes it possible to answer how much premiums are rising compared with the previous year or how one canton differs from another.

An individual premium depends on age, place of residence, deductible, insurance model and accident cover. The average premium takes all these variants into account with their actual weight: it divides the total of all premiums paid in a group by the number of insured persons in that group. The FOPH has used it as its main indicator of how premiums are developing since 2018.

The average premium is not a price that any insurer charges. Nor is it the reference premium that cantons use to calculate premium subsidies, or the standard premium that the FOPH used in the past.

How it works

The FOPH calculates the average premium for Switzerland as a whole and for subgroups, for example by canton and by age group. There are three age groups: children up to 18, young adults aged 19 to 25 and adults aged 26 and over.

In September, when the new premiums are announced, the average premium is an estimate. The FOPH uses the approved premiums and the insurers’ expected numbers of insured persons. How many people actually switch insurer, deductible or model only becomes clear over the course of the year. The figure can therefore shift afterwards. For 2025, the FOPH had announced an increase of 6%; according to the later figures, it was 5.7%.

The average premium is lower than the former standard premium for adults with a CHF 300 deductible, accident cover and free choice of physicians. The reasons: children and young adults are included, optional deductibles and insurance models are cheaper, and accident cover only counts for those who have included it. According to the FOPH, more than 80% of insured persons today choose a higher deductible, an insurance model or both.

Within a canton, premiums also differ by premium region. The cantonal average premium is an average across all regions.

Legal basis

The Federal Health Insurance Act (KVG) defines the average premium in one place: under Art. 65 para. 1sexies let. b KVG, the calculation of the minimum cantonal share of premium subsidies is based on “the premiums actually paid by insured persons for all forms of insurance (average premium)”. Since 2026, this has therefore also determined how much a canton must spend at least on premium subsidies.

The FOPH describes the calculation method for its annual communication in the fact sheet “Average premium”. The FOPH approves the premiums themselves every year; it publishes the approved premiums of all insurers on priminfo.admin.ch and as open data on opendata.swiss.

Example: canton of Zurich in 2026, average and individual premium

The table shows the average monthly premiums for adults in 2026 in five cantons and for Switzerland as a whole (source: FOPH, cantonal average premiums 2025/2026).

Canton	2025	2026	Change
Zug	CHF 366.30	CHF 311.50	−15.0%
Lucerne	CHF 387.70	CHF 402.80	+3.9%
Zurich	CHF 429.70	CHF 451.60	+5.1%
Bern	CHF 454.10	CHF 470.30	+3.6%
Geneva	CHF 572.30	CHF 586.00	+2.4%
Switzerland	CHF 446.90	CHF 465.30	+4.1%

The premium calculator shows what you would actually pay in your municipality. Each insurer’s figures are in the profiles under health insurers, and the cantonal overviews under premiums by canton.

What this means for you

1. Use the average for context. The average premium shows whether your canton is expensive or cheap and how much premiums are rising. For your decision, what counts is your own premium.
2. Check your own increase. When your new premium arrives in the autumn, compare your insurer’s percentage with the average change. If your increase is well above it, comparing is worthwhile. More under premium increase.
3. Keep to the deadlines. Notice of cancellation for basic health insurance must reach your insurer by 30 November. All dates are under deadlines.
4. Use the official source. The FOPH publishes the approved premiums of all insurers on Priminfo.

Common mistakes

• Taking the average premium for your own premium. It is an average across children, young adults and adults, and across all deductibles and models.
• Applying the change to your own premium. Individual premiums can rise much more or much less than the average.
• Confusing the estimate with the final figure. The figure communicated in September is an estimate; the final figure can differ, in 2025 by 0.3 percentage points.
• Treating the average premium and the reference premium as the same. The reference premium is a cantonal value used for premium subsidies.

We explain how we analyse premiums under how we calculate.