Ethiopia coffee harvest 2026: dearer cherry, tighter washed supply.
Ethiopia coffee harvest 2026: cherry prices roughly tripled, washed lots ran short, naturals ran long. What it means for the next buying round. Send your brief.
The 2025/26 season was Ethiopia's biggest by value: about $3 billion in coffee exports, covered in an earlier entry. A harvest report published by Algrano in January 2026, built from exporter interviews, shows how that value was made at the start of the chain. The figures below are what named firms told Algrano. They are not national benchmarks.
Cherry cost three times as much
Fitsum Bekere of Sweet Plus Trading put the peak cherry price at $1.51 per kg, against $0.45 the season before. Money is the reason. Farmers wanted cash now, and washed processing makes them wait.
Washed ran short, naturals ran long
With less fresh cherry reaching washing stations, more of it was dried at home. Boledu Coffee cut its planned washed share from about 40 to 45% to about 20%. The report expected a washed shortage and a natural surplus. The caution it gives for naturals is consistency: many small home-drying operations make uneven lots, so a buyer should ask about drying method, lot separation and sorting before committing.
What exporters were asking
- Yirgacheffe Union said its break-even was $5.10 per lb, and that it had never sold that high before.
- Konga Trading's opening offer for organic lots was about $5.60 per lb FOB, against about $4.66 the year before.
$5.60 per lb is about $12.35 per kg, which sits inside the $6 to $13 range in our price entry. The top of that range is where the organic and washed lots now trade.
Volume and timing
The report describes tighter volumes and stronger competition in the south (Yirgacheffe, Sidama, Guji), good volume but slow preparation in the west (Jimma, Limu), and some shipments moving from January into February and March. USDA's forecast, quoted in the report, put 2025/26 production at 11.56 million bags and exports at 7.8 million bags. The Addis to Djibouti route was also less predictable that season, which is why the arrival date deserves a buffer.
What to do with it
If you buy washed, book early and ask what share of the exporter's book is washed this year. If you buy natural, the supply is there, so spend your attention on sorting and drying. And read the EU question in this month's entry alongside it, because both land in the same buying round.