Arabica coffee futures settled at 288.75 cents a pound on Monday, September 28, 2026, up 3.6% on the day and at their highest in about two weeks. The jump came as investment funds bought back bets against coffee. Robusta futures in London ended the same day at $3,412 a tonne. Both are far below their 2025 records, but the market is caught between a huge Brazilian harvest and very little coffee sitting in exchange warehouses.
A Year of Big Swings
Arabica topped $4 a pound twice in 2025, in February and again in the autumn, when US tariffs on Brazil sent it back up. Its record, set that year, is around $4.40. Robusta’s record, above $5,700 a tonne, came in early 2025.
This year started high too. On January 6 the March arabica contract settled at 373.85 cents, and then the slide began. By June 9 the September contract had fallen to 240.90 cents, around the year’s low. In August a squeeze on the expiring September contract briefly pushed it back up to 363.60. Now the benchmark December contract sits near $2.89.
Why Prices Came Down
Brazil is having an on-year. Its coffee trees alternate bigger and smaller crops, and 2026 is a big one. On September 24 Brazil’s crop agency, Conab, raised its estimate to a record 67.6 million 60-kilo bags, up 19.6% on last year, with arabica up 34.8% to 48.2 million bags. US forecasters put the crop even higher, at 71.9 million, and some private analysts go above 75 million.
Vietnam, the robusta giant, is growing too, with output forecast at 32.5 million bags for 2026/27 and exports up about 14% in the first eight months of the year. Worldwide, production in 2025/26 is estimated to have grown about 4% while consumption slipped a little, leaving a surplus of around 3 million bags.
Why They Haven’t Fallen Further
The coffee that can actually be delivered against New York futures is scarce. Certified arabica stocks in exchange warehouses fell to 217,646 bags on September 15, a 27-year low, before recovering slightly to 253,203 bags by September 28. Thin stocks are what made the August squeeze possible.
Weather is the other worry. Forecasters give very high odds of a strong El Niño, which could disrupt the flowering that sets up Brazil’s 2027 crop. Heavy rain in Minas Gerais this month has helped, but traders will watch every forecast until the flowers set.
What Reaches Your Cup
Shelf prices follow futures slowly. In the US, retail coffee prices in August 2026 were 6.1% higher than a year earlier, a big slowdown from the 17.5% annual rise in May and 20.9% in August 2025. Instant coffee is still rising faster, at 11%. JDE Peet’s, the company behind Jacobs and L’OR, raised its prices by close to 20% across 2025 while the amount of coffee it sold fell by about 4%.
In Italy, a survey this August put the average bar espresso at €1.29, up about a quarter since 2021 and well behind the rise in bean prices. Café prices are sticky both ways. They rose more slowly than beans did, and they’re unlikely to fall just because futures have. For how the benchmark itself works, see how the coffee C price works.