Canon plans to raise prices from 2027 to absorb component costs

Canon plans to raise prices from 2027 to offset rising costs of components and materials. The company said so in the question session after its third-quarter 2026 results. The detail matters because that cost is already in its numbers: it acknowledged that its margin fell by around five percentage points and that it has not yet passed it on to buyers.

The increase already happened; now you pay for it

The sequence is the part that usually gets lost. Higher costs do not arrive with the new price: they arrived earlier, while the company absorbed them. Canon said it had not yet been able to pass them fully into selling prices.

That is why 2027 shows up as a date. If the trend continues, the company will raise prices steadily to recover what it has already spent. The adjustment is not a reaction to a future cost but the billing of a present one.

The origin is memory and raw materials. Canon identified those two items as negative factors for its 2027 outlook, with a full-year impact. It also mentioned the situation in the Middle East among the causes of the margin loss.

And one detail widens the scope: memory is also the raw material for cards and storage. If its price stays high, the budget for a purchase does not end with the body.

The problem is not exclusive to Canon either. The shortage of electronic components and the price of memory hit the whole imaging industry, so one brand's adjustment usually anticipates the others. When the input rises for one, it rises for all.

The missing data

The three things any reader would want are missing. Canon did not say which products go up, did not say by how much and did not say when. Nor did it state that every body and lens will cost more.

A headline that names a specific model with a new price, today, has no support in the company's communication. The only defensible claim is the general one: there will be adjustments from 2027.

It is also worth separating two things that get mixed up. A list-price increase is not the same as the price paid on the street. Discounts, promotions and old stock can absorb part of the adjustment for months, especially on models that already have a successor on the way.

Canon had already been adjusting prices for rising costs, and said it will keep deciding with a longer view. What is new in 2027 is not the mechanism, but that the adjustment is now communicated in advance and with the margin as evidence.

Putting the buying calendar in order

For the photographer, the practical consequence is not to rush out and buy. It is to order the calendar. If the purchase was planned for the coming months, timing weighs more than before. If it was planned for 2027, there is now a concrete reason to bring it forward or to wait and see the size of the adjustment.

It is also worth looking at the whole kit and not just the body. Lenses, cards, batteries and storage respond to the same pressures, and cards in particular get bought more than once during the life of a camera.

The second-hand market gains weight in that scenario. A body from the previous generation does not get more expensive because of a list adjustment, and for many uses the gap with the new model is smaller than the price gap.

The open question is not whether Canon raises prices, because it already said it would. It is how much of that cost ends up on the counter and how much stays in the margin. Until there is a new list, any figure is a guess.