The weakest currencies in the world in 2026

The weakest currency in the world is the Iranian Rial (IRR): one US dollar buys 1,718,298 of them, according to exchange rates retrieved 2026-10-13. Next come the Lebanese Pound (89,500 per dollar), the Vietnamese Dong (25,897), the Laotian Kip (22,219) and the Indonesian Rupiah (17,924). In all, 6 currencies need 10,000 or more units to buy a dollar and 24 need at least 1,000. “Weak” here means low value per unit, which is not always a sign of trouble.

The 15 lowest-value currencies

“Value since July” compares with our 2026-07-03 snapshot: a negative figure means the currency buys fewer dollars than it did then. Retired codes such as the old Sierra Leone leone are excluded, even though some rate feeds still list them.

Two very different kinds of weak

The bottom of this table mixes two groups that have little in common.

Big units, steady value. The Lebanese Pound, Vietnamese Dong, Laotian Kip, Indonesian Rupiah, Uzbekistani Som, Guinean Franc, Cambodian Riel, Mongolian Tugrik and Burundian Franc moved less than 2% against the dollar since July. Holding steady against the dollar is not proof of health, since a currency can stabilise after a collapse, but for many big-unit currencies the zeros are a leftover from inflation long past. Prices are quoted in thousands, notes come in large numbers, and daily life works normally. Vietnam and Indonesia are both fast-growing economies whose currencies simply never had the zeros removed.

Currencies under pressure. The Iranian Rial (-25.5%), the South Sudanese Pound (-18.1%), the Ugandan Shilling (-9.0%) and the Malagasy Ariary (-5.8%) have lost at least 5% of their dollar value in a single quarter. This is weakness in the sense that matters: savings held in the currency buy less each month, imported goods get dearer, and people who can switch to dollars often do.

What a weak currency looks like at the till

Here are the lowest-value currencies for which we also have Big Mac and petrol (gas) prices, from The Economist’s July 2026 survey and GlobalPetrolPrices, with the litre converted at today’s rate.

The striking column is the dollar one. A weak currency does not make a country cheap. In Lebanon, where a Big Mac costs LBP 480,000, the burger works out to $5.36, against $6.22 in the United States. The cheapest burger in this group is in Indonesia at $2.38. Whether a place is cheap depends on local prices after conversion, which is why the ranking of the cheapest countries to visit looks nothing like this table. You can check any country’s pump price on our gasoline price tracker.

How currencies get this weak, and how they reset

The usual path is persistent inflation. When a government covers spending by creating money faster than the economy grows, prices rise, the currency buys less abroad, and people start holding dollars or goods instead. In the worst cases this becomes hyperinflation, where prices rise so fast that shops reprice daily. A banking or debt crisis can trigger the same spiral by destroying confidence overnight.

Countries eventually respond by redenominating: issuing a new currency unit worth a round number of old ones. Turkey removed six zeros from the lira in 2005; Venezuela has cut zeros from the bolívar more than once; Zimbabwe has replaced its currency several times. The most recent example in our own feed is Sierra Leone, where one new leone equals 1,000 old ones. A redenomination changes nothing real on the day it happens. It makes the numbers manageable again, and it only lasts if the inflation that caused the problem is brought under control.

One more caveat. For currencies with capital controls or multiple exchange rates, the rate in a data feed can differ a lot from what people pay on the street, so treat the figures for the Iranian Rial and the Lebanese Pound as indicative. Our Lebanon page shows how local prices there convert at the feed rate.

The biggest fallers since July

Unit value is static; direction is what hurts. These currencies lost the most against the dollar between 2026-07-03 and 2026-10-13, wherever they sit in the ranking:

• Bolivian Boliviano (BOB): -41.4%, now 11.84 per dollar
• Venezuelan Bolívar (VES): -25.5%, now 877 per dollar
• Iranian Rial (IRR): -25.5%, now 1,718,298 per dollar
• South Sudanese Pound (SSP): -18.1%, now 5,751 per dollar
• Iraqi Dinar (IQD): -13.1%, now 1,508 per dollar
• Zambian Kwacha (ZMW): -9.3%, now 20.09 per dollar

Moves this large in one quarter usually mean an official devaluation, a switch from a fixed to a market-set rate, or a crisis. For the opposite end of the table, see the strongest currencies in the world.