Coffee prices fell 8.7% as Brazil's record crop reached buyers
Brazil's record crop finally reached the market, and every ICO price group fell with it.
The ICO composite indicator price averaged 262.18 cents a pound in September 2026. That is 8.7% below August, and it is the clearest sign yet that coffee prices have started to follow Brazil's harvest rather than the fear of it. Every one of the four group indicators the ICO tracks fell, by between 7.3% and 9.9%. Volatility dropped with them, to 10.0% from 13.7% in August.
What September did to coffee prices
The index opened the month at its high and closed at 261.60 cents on 30 September, 7.0% under the August close of 281.15. The September coffee market report reads less like a crash than a slow exhale, giving back most of what the summer weather scare had added without one dramatic session.
The spread of the fall says more than its size. Brazilian Naturals lost 9.9% to average 290.19 cents, Colombian Milds 8.1% to 356.15, Other Milds 8.8% to 329.44. On the New York exchange arabica fell harder, 10.4% to an average 280.68 cents, a steeper drop than any of the physical groups managed.
Brazil's harvest is the whole reason
On 24 September CONAB raised its estimate for Brazil's 2026/27 crop to 67.6 million bags, a record. The Brazilian coffee harvest sets the tone for every other line on the board, and when the largest producer lands a record, buyers stop paying for the possibility of scarcity.
Robusta did not fall as far. The Robustas group gave up 7.3% to 167.49 cents, cushioned by a CONAB estimate that came in 6.6% lower, while Brazil's arabica crop ran 34.8% above last year. The same split shows in what those shipments did to American buyers: arabica moving in volume, robusta coffee holding its ground on a smaller crop.
A coffee surplus smaller than one week of drinking
The same report puts coffee year 2025/26 in surplus by 3.0 million bags, the first after four deficit years. The ICO then undercuts its own headline in the next line of the table: a 3.0-million-bag coffee surplus is less than one week of world consumption. That is the argument against reading a falling board as a comfortable one.
Stocks make the point from the other side. Certified arabica coffee stocks in New York touched 217,646 bags on 15 September, the lowest since 1999, then rebuilt to 260,654 bags by 30 September as Brazilian arrivals reached the exchange. Arabica coffee stocks that thin are why the fall stopped where it did. With demand no longer what it was, supply is the only half of the equation still moving.
The one region that went the other way
Trade complicates the picture. Global shipments of all forms of coffee rose 14.6% to 12.55 million bags in August 2026 against 10.95 million a year earlier, and green coffee exports alone came to 10.94 million bags, up 15.6%. The board was falling while more coffee moved than in any comparable August.
One region went the other way. The Caribbean, Mexico and Central America shipped 0.79 million bags in August, down 14.3% from 0.93 million, a fourth straight month of decline that the ICO attributes mainly to Nicaragua and Mexico. Year to date the region is still ahead, 15.16 million bags against 14.66 million, so this is a stumble, not yet a trend. Check the roast date on the bag in the cupboard against the month it was bought. What is being drunk now was bought green long before September's numbers existed, and the shelf always lags the exchange.
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