EVE Online's Monthly Economic Report For February 2026

On Friday CCP Games released the February 2026 monthly economics report for EVE Online. As usual the developers told us up front the details they thought were either important or notable.

Economic Trends:

• Destruction Value increased, while Mining and Production Value declined.
• Velocity of ISK continues to decrease.
• The Mineral Price Index continues to decline, down ~52% over the past year.
• The Ship Price Index continues to decline, down ~21% over the past year.
• The Module Price Index continues to decline, down ~13% over the past year.

I think the takaways are that mining activity has increased, leading to cheaper ships and modules. Of course, cheaper goods results in less need for money, meaning the velocity of ISK continues to decline.

Given the way I've been told by CSM member The Oz the money supply calculations work a decreasing velocity of ISK isn't a surprise. While the changes in average daily concurrent users is seen immediately, ISK isn't officially removed from the New Eden money supply until an account has been inactive for 90 days. The ACU continued to decline in February from the highs of the Winter Nexus event which ended in the first week of January.

Looking at Jester's yearly average concurrent user chart, the ACU for the first two months of 2026 was still at 25,400. Doing a little math leads to the discovery that the ACU for the month was 24,518, a drop of 6.4% from January's ACU. 

Looking at the amount of ISK spent on items accounted for in the MER plus that exchanged for PLEX on the global PLEX market, the amount of ISK spent by players declined by 7.6% from January to February's total of 777.3 trillion ISK. If one considers ISK to PLEX transactions as a form of currency exchange the decline of 6.7% in the value of the goods traded comes out very close to the 6.4% decline in the ACU for the month. So the decline in the value of goods traded in the New Eden economy was due to the number of players dropping, right?

Not so fast. February has 3 fewer days than January, making last month 9.7% shorter than the first month of the year. Converting the monthly totals to daily totals of ISK spent by players, the breakdown is as follows:

• Amount of ISK converted to PLEX: down 1.4%
• Amount of ISK spent on Accessories: up 4.3%
• Amount of ISK spent on non-PLEX related items: up 3.2%

Overall, the amount of ISK spent in the New Eden economy each day actually increased by 2.3%.

By taking time into account I feel pretty safe making the following observation. The drop in average active users through the first two months of 2026 was due to the game losing more casual players at the end of the Winter Nexus event. The part of the player base that remained was a bit more dedicated to playing the game as the increased daily spending in February showed.

Could I have made the observation without using the MER? Sure. The theory sounds plausible on its face. But having some data to back up a theory always helps.