Financial markets will have one fewer occasion to fret over the anticipated decision of Federal Reserve policymakers in 2027.

The U.S. central bank announced Thursday that while the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will still meet eight times next year, the October gathering “will be dedicated to the discussion of broad monetary policy strategy issues,” with no decision on whether to cut, hike or leave interest rates unchanged.

Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh had telegraphed the change at his post-FOMC press conference in October.

“Getting policy right involves assessing near-term developments at timely, regular and information-rich intervals,” Warsh explained to reporters. “But it’s equally important we reserve time and space as an intellectually diverse group for strategic deliberations, for thinking anew about big questions, looking out over longer time horizons, focusing, as I say, on the left side of the decimal point.”

The Fed chair also shared his expectation that in 2028, two of the eight FOMC meetings will focus on strategy and broad monetary policy instead of a rate decision.

Bloomberg had previously reported on Sept. 9 that several regional Fed presidents — including Austan Goolsbee, Beth Hammack, Anna Paulson and Jeffrey Schmid — had expressed openness to scaling back the rate-setting schedule.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 mandates that the FOMC meet a minimum of four times per year. According to a speech delivered in 1998 by then-Fed Governor Laurence Meyer, the meeting cadence varied from four to 19 over the years and was set at eight in 1981.

The tentative 2027 FOMC schedule announced Thursday is as follows:

• Jan. 26-27
• March 16-17
• April 27-28
• June 8-9
• July 27-28
• Sept. 14-15
• Oct. 26-27
• Nov. 16-17

The October meeting has been designated as the strategy session with no rate decision. As of result, the meeting typically held in early December has been moved up to mid-November.

October represents the logical choice for the general strategy meeting, as every two years that FOMC meeting had historically preceded a federal election cycle.

To avoid the appearance of political motivation, the Federal Reserve has typically avoided interest rate adjustments at the meeting immediately preceding federal elections — with some notable exceptions.

In 2024, the Jerome Powell-led FOMC controversially executed a jumbo half-point rate cut at the meeting prior to that year’s presidential election. Michelle Bowman formally balked at that decision, marking the first dissent by a Fed governor since 2005.

Prior to this year’s midterms elections, the Fed paused its rate-hiking cycle. But the inaction created its own form of controversy, with both Hammack and Lisa Cook dissenting and Christopher Waller subsequently suggesting more aggressive monetary tightening may be needed in December.