Global coffee consumption is estimated to fall 0.8% this year

SABy Sander · September 30, 2026 · 3 min read

The ICO now estimates global coffee consumption falling 0.8% while production climbs, the first coffee surplus in five years.

The International Coffee Organization revised its supply and demand statistics on 10 September 2026, and the surprise sits on the demand side. Global coffee consumption in coffee year 2025/26 is estimated to fall 0.8%, to 180.6 million bags from 182.2 million bags a year earlier. Supply is moving the other way, hard. The distance between those two lines is the whole story.

What the ICO actually changed

World coffee production is estimated to rise 4.4% to 183.6 million bags this coffee year, against 175.9 million bags in 2024/25. The updated supply and demand statistics credit the higher yielding half of South America's biennial cycle, expansion policies in Africa and good weather across Asia and Oceania.

Consumption, on the same accounting, slips to 180.6 million bags. Both figures are estimates for a coffee year that only closes at the end of September, so they are the ICO's best current read rather than a finished count.

The first coffee surplus after four years of deficit

From 2021/22 through 2024/25 the balance ran negative every year. Four consecutive deficits drained stocks, and prices behaved the way prices do when the warehouse keeps getting emptier. For 2025/26 the ICO projects a coffee surplus of 3.0 million bags.

A balance scale tipping towards three sacks of coffee while two cups ride high, the shape of a market with more supply than demand

Three million bags is not a glut. It is roughly a week of world demand, and it arrives after four years with nothing spare. That is still enough to change the mood of a coffee market that had spent two years pricing scarcity.

What coffee prices did next

The ICO composite indicator averaged 287.29 cents a pound in August, effectively unchanged from July. September broke the pattern. The indicator opened the month at 279.85 on 1 September, slid to 248.44 on 22 September, and averaged 262.32 across the first 20 trading days.

That is a fall of nearly 9% against the August average, and it arrived without one dramatic headline. Coffee prices move on margin calls and positioning as well as on beans, so a slide of this shape is worth reading carefully before the surplus gets the credit for all of it.

Where the drinking is falling

Most regions hold roughly steady. The decline is concentrated in the United States, the world's largest coffee-consuming country, and North America as a whole is estimated to drop from 30.2 to 28.5 million bags. South America, at 28.8 million bags, is set to pass it and take third place among consuming regions.

Five cups in a row with the last one left empty, under a dotted arc that rises and then falls back down

Europe stays on top, at 30.1% of world consumption in 2024/25 and 3.3 percentage points clear of Asia and Oceania. Whether American drinkers are buying less or reaching for better coffee less often is not something this number can settle: the ICO counts apparent consumption, which is production plus net trade and stock changes rather than cups.

What to watch from here

The split inside the crop matters more than the total. Arabica production is estimated to rise 2.8% to 104.4 million bags, while robusta production jumps 6.5% to 79.2 million bags. A surplus built mostly on robusta does not automatically loosen things for the washed arabica that fills most specialty bags.

Watch the ICO composite indicator month by month, and watch the price printed on the bag from a roaster you already buy from. Green coffee bought at last winter's peak is still working through roasteries, so retail trails the exchange by months rather than days. A shelf price that has not moved yet is not evidence that the market has not.