Coffee prices fall below $3,400 as harvest nears

Coffee prices fell across markets on September 19, 2026, with London robusta dropping below $3,400 a ton and Vietnam's farmgate rate down to an average of 93,700 VND/kg.

Farmgate prices dip across Vietnam

Robusta buyers in Vietnam paid between 93,000 and 93,800 VND/kg on September 19, a range that trimmed 600 VND/kg off the previous day, according to domestic trade data compiled by Vietnam.vn. Dak Nong posted the day's highest rate at 93,800 VND/kg. Dak Lak and Gia Lai each settled at 93,600 VND/kg, and Lam Dong, the lowest of the four benchmark provinces, closed at 93,000 VND/kg.

A softer robusta market meets a harvest that hasn't even started yet.

The declines carried onto the exchanges, pulling coffee prices lower across both benchmarks. In London, the November 2026 Robusta contract closed at $3,391 a ton, down $39, or 1.14%, slipping under the $3,400 threshold it had held above in recent sessions, per Barchart futures data. In New York, ICE's December 2026 Arabica contract fell 5.05 cents to 276.50 cents/lb, a drop of 1.79%, after trading between 274.60 and 280.70 cents/lb during the session.

What's pulling coffee prices down

Traders point to a more favorable production outlook in some growing regions and to Brazil's rising export volumes, which have eased fears of a supply shortfall, Vietnam.vn reports. Certified Arabica inventories tracked by the exchange are also recovering from earlier lows, adding to the sense that near-term supply is less tight than it looked a few months ago.

Vietnam's own robusta harvest is part of that calculus. The 2026/27 crop is approaching, with picking due to run from October through February, and the anticipated new supply is already weighing on farmgate bids and futures curves ahead of the season, Vietnam.vn notes.

The pullback lands at a fragile moment for the trade. Coffee prices have fallen for much of 2026 even as retail prices stayed elevated, a gap StoneX describes as a market "split between a futures market pricing in abundance and a retail market still grappling with the legacy of scarcity."

For cafés and roasters that spent much of 2025 absorbing higher green coffee costs, a softer futures market offers room to renegotiate supply contracts, though StoneX notes retail prices tend to lag the futures curve by months, not days. Brazil's export surge in August already signaled where some of that relief is coming from.

Vietnam's harvest data will start arriving from October, the next test of whether new-crop supply pushes coffee prices further from the $3,400 mark or steadies them there. Café menus, for now, are still priced for the year coffee got expensive.