Japanese Tea Prices & Supply: A Tracked Reference

A maintained table of the numbers behind Japanese tea pricing: tencha auction averages by market and year, MAFF farm-gate prices and production tonnage, Finance Ministry export and import figures, and the retail bands that follow them. Published matcha prices contradict each other constantly, almost always because three separate series get quoted as one. Every figure here names its market, its year, and its source.

Last reviewed: 4 October 2026. Figures below are the most recent published at that date. This review added the close of the 2026 Uji season, MAFF’s July 2026 situation report and 2026 first-flush survey, and export figures through August 2026.

Read the series before you quote the number

Four different quantities all get called “the price of matcha,” and they differ by more than a hundredfold.

A trade article that says “matcha hit ¥1.18 million a kilogram” is describing one prize lot of Shizuoka leaf at one April session ². An article saying “tencha averages ¥3,278” is quoting MAFF’s 2024 farm-gate figure ³, which the 2025 crop more than doubled. Both are true. Neither is what you pay.

The most common error in circulation is subtler: a whole series shifted by a year. Kettl’s 2026 update gives a Kyoto first-flush machine-harvested tencha series of ¥5,402/kg for 2024 and ¥14,541/kg for 2025 ¹⁰. GJTA reports the ¥13,972/kg average as the 2026 first market and names ¥8,235 as the previous record ¹, which matches Ooika’s independently published series exactly ⁴. Two sources agree with each other and disagree with the third by a season. Check the year and the market before repeating any of these.

Tencha auction averages

The Kyoto first market at the JA Zen-Noh Uji distribution centre in Jōyō is the single most-quoted series in the category.

2022–2025 from Ooika ⁴; 2026 from GJTA ¹. The 2026 session took 375 lots totalling about 25 tonnes ¹.

That table tracks one opening session. The whole Uji season is a separate series, and its 2026 close was a record:

GJTA, August 2026 ¹¹. The season average runs above the opening session’s ¥13,972 because prices rose as the season went on.

Regional markets, 2026 season:

Shizuoka is the line to notice. Its average fell in the same season Kyoto’s tencha average rose about seventy percent. The pressure is specific to shaded leaf, and the sencha heartland is on the other side of it.

Farm-gate prices (MAFF)

2024 from MAFF’s March 2026 report ³; 2025 from its July 2026 report, which draws on the national tea producers’ federation ¹². The tencha-to-sencha ratio went from roughly 2.7 to 1 to about 4.9 to 1 in a single crop year, and that ratio is what drives the field conversions described in the matcha shortage. Ippodo told customers in February 2026 that producer prices for matcha had risen 2.6-fold in a year ⁹, which matches the jump in the table.

The 2026 crop has no farm-gate average yet. MAFF’s July report says first-flush leaf traded at about twice the previous year’s price in Kagoshima and about 1.7 times in Shizuoka ¹².

Production and cultivated area

MAFF, March 2026 ³ and July 2026 ¹²; the 2026 first-flush survey ¹³ with prefecture changes from GJTA ¹¹; the Kagoshima tencha share from GJTA ¹. Kagoshima has led annual aracha for two consecutive years and heads the tencha table ahead of Kyoto and Shizuoka ³, but Shizuoka took back first place for the 2026 first flush ¹¹. The first-flush survey covers only the main producing prefectures, so its 24,100 tonnes is a different series from the national annual total, which MAFF publishes for 2026 next year.

Volume at the top of the range moved the other way. Hand-picked Uji tencha fell about 40 percent between 2024 and 2025, and mechanised first-harvest tencha about 18 percent ⁵.

Exports and imports

Ministry of Finance customs-cleared statistics, via Kyodo ⁷. Exports of sencha and other leaf grades fell in the same year ⁷.

MAFF reports the same trade on a calendar-year basis, and the figures differ for that reason alone:

MAFF, July 2026 ¹². Powdered tea fetched about 2.3 times the unit value of other green tea, and 85 percent of what went to the United States by volume was powder ¹².

2026 so far is running faster still. Exports reached ¥48.3 billion in the first half ¹¹ and ¥67.4 billion for January to August, up 77.3 percent on the same months of 2025. Green tea was the largest increase of any item in Japan’s food exports, led by the United States, Germany and the UK ¹⁴. Volume for 2026 to date was not yet published at this review.

On US tariffs: an executive order of 14 November 2025 removed tea, along with coffee and other agricultural goods, from the US reciprocal tariffs, effective 13 November 2025 ¹⁵. GJTA judged the impact of US tariff policy on first-half 2026 food exports “limited” ¹¹.

For a baseline: in 2021 total green tea export value was ¥20.4 billion, with the United States taking ¥10.3 billion of it, and powdered forms accounting for 65 percent of value. The export unit price then ran ¥4,411/kg for powdered against ¥2,244/kg for other green tea ⁸. Value has therefore risen roughly fourfold in four years.

The import line deserves more attention than it gets. Japan brought in 5,801 tonnes of green tea in fiscal 2025, up 82 percent, while exporting 13,125 ⁷. Treat that import figure with care. MAFF’s July 2026 report describes green tea imports as running at 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes in recent years ¹², which does not square with 5,801 tonnes on any obvious reading. Fiscal against calendar year or a different customs scope may explain the gap. Until a customs table resolves it, quote the import number with its source attached. Imported leaf and powder are legitimate ingredients for plenty of products. They are also the raw material for anything sold as matcha that never grew in Japan, and that ratio is now close to one imported tonne for every two exported.

The producer base

From Ooika ⁴. Over 70 percent of remaining growers were past 65 as of 2024 ⁴, and only a few hundred farms produce tencha at commercial ceremonial quality ⁶. A tea bush takes four to five years to reach full production, so plantings made against 2026 prices arrive in volume around 2030 ⁶.

Retail and wholesale

Increases on the 2025 crop, by grade ⁵:

Retail moved roughly 15 to 20 percent through late 2025 and early 2026, with a further 5 to 10 percent expected as costly stock clears inventory ⁵. Japanese retailers are expected to reduce pack sizes or raise prices about 20 percent ¹. At the top of the market, Ooika reports heritage matcha that sold near $49 per 20 grams now going above $100 ⁴. The 2026 crop is now reaching shelves: Ippodo announced specification changes and price revisions from October and November 2026, citing the year’s crop and a sharp fall in gyokuro, sencha and bancha output ¹⁶.

One consequence lands inside the tea room rather than the shop. A bowl of usucha takes about 2 grams of powder; koicha takes around 4, and calls for a better grade to carry the thickness — the comparison is in usucha vs. koicha. At 2025-crop prices a koicha practice is now roughly four times the powder cost of a thin-tea one, which is a real constraint on how often a student can practise it.

Converted to the unit that matters when you are standing in a shop: a 30 gram tin at $30 is $1.00 a gram. The stone mill that produced it turns out about 40 grams an hour, a constraint explained in what is tencha, and hand-picked leaf entering that mill costs ¥45,000–60,000 a kilogram before anyone has ground, packed or shipped it ⁴. Arithmetic will not get a genuine first-flush ceremonial powder far below that line. Tins that clear it comfortably are telling you something about their contents, which is the argument in ceremonial vs. culinary matcha.

What this page is for

Three things it does. It names the market and the year for every figure, so a number can be traced rather than repeated. It keeps the four price series apart. And it records the import line, which most coverage of the shortage leaves out.

Two things it does not do. It carries no forecast beyond what the cited trade sources state, and it quotes no shop’s shelf price, because those move weekly and a reference page that goes stale in a fortnight is worse than none.

For what these teas are rather than what they cost, the survey of the seven Japanese green teas is the place to start. This page is reviewed quarterly against MAFF’s Ocha wo Meguru Jōsei, the Global Japanese Tea Association’s monthly reports, and Ministry of Finance trade statistics — the three sources that publish on a schedule. Auction figures land between April and June, so the spring review is the one that matters. Where a figure here disagrees with something you have read elsewhere, the likeliest cause is the series, not the arithmetic: check which market, and check the year.