World Bank Sees Tea Prices Falling Again in 2026 After an 8% Quarterly Drop

The World Bank's April Commodity Markets Outlook forecasts the average world tea price, the arithmetic mean of the Kolkata, Colombo, and Mombasa auctions, to fall 2.1% in 2026 to $2.85 a kilogram, extending a slide that has now run two years. The bank's own price data show the decline already well underway: the three-auction average dropped to $2.71 a kilogram in the first quarter of 2026, down 8.4% from the fourth quarter of 2025 and below every quarterly reading of the year before.

The three auctions have not moved together. Kolkata fell the hardest, down 22% quarter on quarter to $2.07 a kilogram, a decline the bank attributes mainly to ample Indian supply. Colombo eased a milder 5%, to $3.75 a kilogram. Mombasa held closest to flat, up slightly to $2.30 a kilogram.

The 2026 forecast follows a 4.3% drop in the full-year 2025 average, to $2.91 a kilogram from $3.04 in 2024. The bank's forecasters see the slide bottoming out after this year: they project the average price rising 5.3% in 2027, to $3.00 a kilogram. The current 2026 figure is itself a downgrade from the bank's own outlook six months earlier, in October 2025, which had put the year about ten cents a kilogram higher.

Tea's own decline is far milder than the headline number for the World Bank's broader beverages price index, which the same report puts down more than 30% for 2026. That composite is dragged down chiefly by cocoa, whose price the bank forecasts falling by more than half this year after 2025's record run, and by coffee, forecast down by double digits (arabica 14.4%, robusta 17.7%). Tea's 2.1% decline is the mildest of the basket.

Sources: World Bank, Commodity Markets Outlook, April 2026; World Bank, Pink Sheet commodity price data; World Bank, Beverage prices retreat as supplies recover.