Matcha shortage update: the autumn 2026 auctions and the 2027 outlook

Where prices stand after the 2026 spring

The headline from our spring article was that tencha, the shaded leaf that becomes matcha, was being bid up at every auction in Japan. The 2026 first-harvest results confirmed it. At the first tencha auction of the year at JA Zen-Noh Kyoto's Uji tea distribution centre on 13 May, 375 lots totalling 25,188 kg sold at an average of ¥14,127 per kg, the highest in ten years, against ¥8,235 at the same auction a year earlier, as reported by Shokuhin Shimbun. The top lot went for ¥40,021 per kg. In Kagoshima, the prefecture-wide tencha auction on 14 May averaged ¥19,095 per kg, up ¥8,480 on the year, as reported by Minami-Nippon Shimbun. In Shizuoka, Chunichi Shimbun reported the second harvest closing in late July at prices it called unprecedented, with conversion of fields to tencha thinning the supply of leaf for sencha.

Reported 2026 auction results. These are raw-leaf market prices in Japan, not matcha prices, and not what any one buyer pays.

Those are leaf prices at the market, before milling, packing and export, not matcha prices. But a mill that paid roughly double for its first-harvest leaf cannot sell the matcha for last year's money, and that is the cost every exporter, including us, has been passing through since June.

Why the autumn trade matters this year

Autumn tencha, picked in September and October after the bushes have been cut back, is the leaf behind most culinary matcha. It is also the crop that surprised everyone last year. In the 2025 autumn trade at the Kagoshima prefectural tea market, Minami-Nippon Shimbun reported autumn and winter bancha averaging ¥1,468 per kg on the opening day on 6 October, peaking at ¥3,403 per kg on 29 October, and reaching about seven times the 2024 crop's average of ¥431 per kg on some days, higher than that year's first-harvest average. The reasons given were low inventories, growers switching fields to tencha, and bottled-tea demand holding steady while supply shrank.

As we write in early November, the equivalent figures for the 2026 autumn trade have not yet been published in the sources we follow, so we will not guess at them. What we can say is that the two autumn-harvest lots in our catalog, Aki and Minori, are 2025 autumn tencha priced at $100 / kg, FOB Osaka, and that price holds for the lots we have. When the 2026 autumn leaf is milled and we take new lots, the price per kilo will be set from what the mills ask at that point, and we will say so on the product page.

The pull from exports has not eased

The demand side is the simpler half of the story. Japan's green tea exports reached ¥72.1 billion in 2025 on 12,612 tonnes, double the ¥36.4 billion of 2024, according to MAFF, with the United States taking 4,431 tonnes worth ¥29.3 billion and the EU and UK together 2,393 tonnes worth ¥18.6 billion. For January to May 2026, Sankei Shimbun reported exports of ¥40.2 billion, ahead of the same months of 2025. Tencha production itself reached 6,278 tonnes in 2025, about 3.2 times the 2014 level, according to MAFF, and that growth is what has been feeding the boom. The problem is that the fields making it are being converted from sencha one by one while the number of farms keeps falling: MAFF counted 53,687 tea farms in 2000 and 12,325 in 2020, a decline we went through in this piece.

The 2027 outlook: what is known and what is not

Three things are reasonably clear. First, a field converted from sencha to tencha needs two to three seasons of shading and new netting before it yields a proper tencha crop, so the fields converted in 2025 and 2026 will start to add supply from 2027 and 2028, not before. Second, growers are hesitant to convert because, as the Seoul Economic Daily reported in October, they do not know whether the boom will last, and a Shizuoka grower quoted by Shokuhin Shimbun in May put it plainly: the 2025 rise may be temporary and the future is uncertain. Third, demand keeps rising, and MAFF's own target is ¥81 billion of tea exports by 2030.

What is not known is the weather, which decides the size and timing of the first harvest, and whether the 2026 second and autumn crops were large enough to refill inventories. We do not expect first-harvest tencha prices in spring 2027 to fall back towards 2024 levels. Our working assumption, and it is an assumption, is that 2027 first-harvest matcha will be priced at or around 2026 levels, that limited single-cultivar lots such as Sae, our first-harvest Saemidori from Yame at $290 / kg, FOB Osaka, will sell out earlier in the year than they did in 2026, and that the real relief, if it comes, arrives with the 2028 crop from converted fields.

What we are doing about supply

We buy milled matcha from mills in Yame, Kagoshima and Shizuoka rather than one region, which spreads the weather and auction risk; the three districts do not move in step. We hold lots rather than promise grades, so a product on the catalog is tea we can ship, with its harvest and cultivar on the page. The café range is built around blended and second-harvest lots such as Wa and Tsuyu, whose leaf is less exposed to the first-harvest auctions. And a standing order reserves a lot and holds its price per kilo for the harvest year.

What a café should do before spring 2027

1. Decide which drink needs first harvest. Usually one signature drink and the usucha. Everything else can run on a second-harvest or blended café lot, and that is where the savings are.
2. Lock the volume lot now. If you pour more than 10 kg a month, ask for a standing order on a café lot before the spring auctions, while the current lot is still priced on 2026 leaf.
3. Re-price the menu per cup, not per kilo. At 4 g per latte, a $50 per kilo move is $0.20 a cup. Our cost sheet shows how to set a price that survives the next auction.
4. Test the alternatives before you need them. Order 20 g samples of two café lots and one culinary lot now, so that if your usual grade sells out in May you already know the substitute. The sample form sends up to six.
5. Keep the retail shelf honest. If you sell matcha by the tin, raise the shelf price with the lot, not in one jump next spring.

We will update this article when the 2026 autumn results are published and again after the first 2027 auctions.

Questions buyers ask

Prices and lots named in this article are as published on Nov 2026; the catalog always carries the current list price per kilo.