Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE:ICE) today announced that on October 23, 2026, open interest (OI) across ICE TTF options reached a record of over 3 million contracts, up 33% year-over-year (y/y). On the same day, ICE TTF futures and options hit record OI of over 5.9 million contracts, up 16% y/y.

ICE’s TTF options are based on TTF futures, the global benchmark for natural gas, and span daily expiries through to monthly, quarterly, seasonal and calendar spread contracts, allowing customers to match their options strategy to the time period of their exposure. Energy options, including natural gas and oil contracts, make up 40% of ICE’s total open interest.

“Natural gas has become a truly global market, where a shift in supply or demand in one region is felt around the world,” said Gordon Bennett, Managing Director, Utility Markets at ICE. “Middle East LNG exports, European storage levels and cargo flows between Europe and Asia are shaping global supply, and with many gas markets trading as a spread to TTF, participants use the benchmark to price those changes. ICE offers the broadest range of contracts across the TTF curve, so customers can hedge from the next hour to the next decade on one centrally cleared platform.”

“TTF options let customers shape price risk management around their positions and adjust flexibly as market conditions change,” continued Bennett. “As global natural gas markets grow more connected, customers are using TTF to build positions across regions and trade the relationships between them, and this open interest record reflects that demand.”

ICE’s prompt natural gas futures and options contracts, including Next Hour, Within Day, Day Ahead, Weekend, Balance of Week and Balance of Month, serve the physical market and are the primary tools utilities and producers use to manage their short-term physical gas portfolios. With TTF as the main pricing reference across European gas hubs, customers can trade the spreads between them on one platform. Prompt natural gas futures that have seen particularly strong average daily volume growth this year include AVL (Austrian), TFE and TTL (Dutch), TGP (German) and PEG (French) contracts.

ICE is the only exchange offering Balance of Month contracts in TTF, allowing participants such as shippers to buy or sell gas for all remaining days of the month in one trade rather than covering each day separately, simplifying supply management. For long-term hedging, TTF monthly futures have open interest out to December 2033.

OI across ICE’s global natural gas portfolio is up 9% y/y, with Henry Hub, the U.S. natural gas benchmark, up 11% and ICE JKM LNG (Platts), the benchmark price for natural gas in North-East Asia, up 30%. ICE also offers contracts across AECO, the Canadian benchmark, and NBP, the U.K. benchmark.