Brazil's coffee harvest 2026: a season of adjustments and opportunities

Every coffee harvest brings its own surprises. This year in Brazil, we have seen a combination of encouraging production conditions, unexpected weather during harvesting, and a market that is still adjusting after several unusual years.

For our customers and partners, I want to share what has been happening at origin, how we see the current situation, and what it means for the coffees we bring to market.

A welcome recovery in production

Over the past few years, Brazilian coffee production has faced several challenges. Reduced supply, combined with strong international demand, pushed coffee prices to historically high levels.

For producers, these higher prices also created opportunities to invest. Across Brazil, we saw farmers renewing plantations, improving agricultural practices for weather resilience, and, in some cases, expanding irrigation and planting new areas.
Last year's favorable rainfall helped coffee trees recover and supported good flowering. Combined with these investments, it created positive conditions for a stronger crop.

This is an important development. After several challenging seasons, Brazilian coffee production is showing signs of recovery.

 A harvest that required some adjustments

Good production conditions, however, don't always mean a straightforward harvest.
Flowering happened later than usual, which also delayed cherry maturation. As a result, harvesting started approximately one month later than expected.

Then came another surprise: several episodes of rain during the harvest, when we would normally expect drier conditions.
These interruptions slowed down harvesting and caused more cherries to fall to the ground. They also affected the quality potential of some lots, making careful harvesting, separation, and quality assessment particularly important. This is part of the reality of working with an agricultural product. Weather doesn't follow our plans, and each season requires us to make adjustments.  What matters is how we respond.

At Sancoffee, our focus remains on understanding the conditions of each harvest, working closely with producers, and carefully evaluating the coffees that come through our quality process.There are very good coffees coming from this harvest. The weather challenges don't define the quality of an entire crop, but they do make attention to each lot even more important.

Why the market is moving differently

Another interesting aspect of this season is the pace at which coffee is reaching the market.

Brazil currently has better coffee availability than in recent years, and inventories have been building across cooperatives and warehouses. Yet producers have been relatively cautious about selling.

There are several reasons for this.

• After a prolonged period of high prices, many producers are still adjusting their expectations to the current market. Some are also holding on to coffees because they expect the better-quality lots to become more valuable.

• Another important factor is El Niño. The weather phenomenon is already underway, with forecasts indicating it could become particularly strong in the coming months. While it is too early to know exactly how it will affect Brazil's next coffee crop, the possibility of unusual weather conditions is adding uncertainty to producers' decisions. For many farmers, this is another reason to take a cautious approach to selling their current stocks while waiting for a clearer picture of the next harvest.

This creates an unusual situation: coffee is available, but not all of it is moving through the market at the pace buyers might expect. It is important to distinguish between physical availability and the decisions producers make about when to sell. They are not always the same thing.

What does this mean for our customers?

For buyers, the important message is that Brazil, and Sancoffee in particular, continue to offer excellent coffee opportunities. Despite the challenges of this harvest, we have a good range of quality coffees to offer.

At Sancoffee, our producers have continued making their coffees available on time, even as the broader market has seen slower sales. Meanwhile, our operations and logistics teams have been working hard behind the scenes to ensure that customers receive their coffees at the expected quality and on schedule.

This doesn't happen by chance. It's the result of long-term relationships with producers, continuous work on quality, and close coordination between our teams at origin and our customers around the world.

Our priority remains the same: to deliver excellent Brazilian coffees with the quality, consistency, and reliability our customers have come to expect from Sancoffee.

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