News
Is There a Matcha Shortage in 2026? What Japan's Own Trade and Auction Data Show
The short answer (as of 2026-07-16)
Japan's own numbers back up the "shortage" headlines, even if "shortage" isn't the word the data itself uses. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries' (MAFF) own June 2026 tea-market report states that 2026 first-flush (ichibancha) tea traded at roughly double the previous year's price in Kagoshima and about 70% higher in Shizuoka — Japan's two largest tea-producing prefectures. Separately, the first tencha auction of the year at JA Zennoh Kyoto's Uji tea market posted its highest average price in a decade. Below is what we could verify directly, with the date each figure is current as of.
What MAFF's own June 2026 report says
MAFF's "茶をめぐる情勢" (Tea Market Situation) report, dated June 2026 — the most recent edition available as we write this — states:
- 2026 first-flush tea prices: roughly 2x the prior year in Kagoshima and about 70% higher in Shizuoka.
- Tencha (matcha's raw material) production: 6,278 tonnes in fiscal 2025, about 3.2x the 2014 level, and now 8.6% of all Japanese crude tea (荒茶) production — up from roughly 3% a decade ago.
- Tencha's price premium: tencha averaged ¥8,562/kg across all harvests in fiscal 2025, versus ¥1,746/kg for sencha — tencha runs about 4.9x sencha's price. First-flush tencha alone averaged ¥10,030/kg.
- Kagoshima is now Japan's #1 tea-producing prefecture by crude tea volume in both fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025 — the first time on record, per MAFF's own note, that any prefecture other than Shizuoka has topped the ranking.
Source: MAFF, 茶をめぐる情勢（令和8年6月時点）.
What the Uji tencha auction showed in May 2026
Japan's tencha doesn't move through a single national price — it's sold at regional auctions, and the season's opening auction is watched as an early read on the year. At JA Zennoh Kyoto's Uji Tea Distribution Center in Joyo City, the first tencha auction of 2026 (held May 13, 2026) traded 375 lots totalling 25,188kg at an average of ¥14,127/kg — a high of ¥40,021/kg, a low of ¥7,200/kg, and, per Japanese food-industry press coverage, the highest average in the past 10 years. The same market's opening 2025 auction had averaged ¥8,235/kg on a much smaller 1,678kg offered — meaning 2026's opening average ran roughly 72% higher year-over-year, a figure independent Kyoto Shimbun coverage of the same auction separately described as about 1.7x the prior year.
For context on what tencha actually becomes once it's ground, see our verified price-per-gram comparison and our piece on why Uji matcha is famous.
Why production keeps rising and prices still climb
It looks contradictory that tencha production is growing (3.2x since 2014) while prices are also hitting records — but both are consistent with demand outrunning supply rather than supply collapsing. MAFF's own national first-flush harvest survey (published August 2025, covering the 2025 crop) recorded a nationwide first-flush harvested area of 22,300ha, down 5% year-over-year, with crude tea production down 10%, attributed to unusually cool temperatures from early April through mid-May, particularly in Shizuoka. On the demand side, a Norinchukin Research Institute analysis of Google Trends data found worldwide search interest in "matcha" climbing sharply from late 2024 — Japan, the US, UK, Germany, France, China and Thailand all tracked a similar curve — and Japan's green tea exports, increasingly in powdered form, reached 8,718 tonnes in 2025, about 3.7x the 2,375 tonnes exported in 2020, per Japan's own Ministry of Finance trade statistics.
What we can't yet tell you
As of 2026-07-16, MAFF has not yet published its full national statistics for the 2026 (Reiwa 8) tea crop — those typically follow later in the year. The clearest same-year signal available today is the Uji auction result above and MAFF's own June 2026 market-situation report, both cited with their dates; we'll update this page with the 2026 national harvest figures once MAFF publishes them, rather than reuse older numbers under a new headline.
Sources
FAQ
- Is the 2026 matcha shortage a real supply problem or mostly marketing?
- Japan's own agriculture ministry and tea-market auction data point to a real, measurable tightening — record first-flush prices, a below-trend 2025 harvest, and a decade-high opening tencha auction — even though individual retailers may lean on the word 'shortage' harder than the data does.
- Will matcha prices come back down?
- We don't make price predictions — this page tracks verified, dated figures as they're published (MAFF's tea reports and the Uji tencha auctions) and we'll update it as new data appears, rather than guess at where prices go next.
- Why did Kagoshima overtake Shizuoka as Japan's top tea-producing prefecture?
- MAFF's own reporting on the 2025 harvest points to unusually cool spring temperatures that hit Shizuoka's yield harder than other regions, on top of a longer-running trend of Kagoshima's larger, more mechanized tea farms expanding production.
This article is for information only, not health or medical advice — we describe tea, not what tea will do for your body. Prices, availability and harvest details change; always check the linked vendor or official page before buying. Some outbound links are affiliate links — they never change what we recommend (see /how-we-review).
