US Matcha Wholesale Price & Availability Index

Japan's 2026 tencha (matcha raw leaf) auctions repriced sharply upward across every region, while the premium concentrated in ceremonial and organic tencha. This index tracks the public auction prices, models the US-landed cost, and shows where supply is tight.

Tencha price backbone (public auctions)

Public auction averages for tencha, the raw leaf that becomes matcha. This is the spine of the index. Only regions with a public auction average are priced here; the rest appear in the regional map below.

On the auction prints, premium tencha spans ¥14,127 (Uji auction avg) to ¥19,095 (Kagoshima May 14 all-lot avg) to ¥20,422 (Kagoshima organic), roughly $87 to $118 to $126/kg. Organic Kagoshima sets the ceiling on the auction floor. For a typical lot rather than a top print, use Kagoshima's first-flush season average across all tencha traded, ¥13,910/kg (~$86/kg), which is the headline Kagoshima figure we use across this site.

Regional coverage map (2026)

Not every region runs a public tencha auction, so we combine priced data with production and market context. This is the market-wide view a US buyer should have.

From auction tencha to US-landed cost ($/kg)

Finished-matcha wholesale prices are not publicly auctioned, so we model them transparently: public tencha auction price, then milling and yield, packaging, freight, and US customs equals the landed cost before any supplier margin. This lets a buyer sanity-check any quote. We do not publish our own selling prices or margin here. Inputs use grade-appropriate auction bands, not a single average. FX ¥162/USD.

Fixed bridge items: milling and QC (grade-dependent), N2-flushed bulk kg bags (~¥500/kg), US export freight (~$20/kg, falls with order size), US duty on HTS 0902 green tea (0% in normal treatment) plus handling (~$3/kg). Buyer takeaway: once you know the tencha auction band for your grade, the landed cost is largely fixed, so ask any wholesaler to quote from the raw-leaf (tencha) cost up.

Supply & availability by origin (July 2026)

Japanomars' farm-direct read across the regions we work with.

The tightest point in the 2026 US matcha supply chain is organic and single-origin ceremonial tencha, not volume culinary leaf. Yame in particular is moving toward allocation-only as social-driven demand outruns confirmed farm volume.

Harvest & restock calendar

• First flush (ichibancha): picked spring; tencha auctions print in May. Best quality, sets the year's ceiling.
• Second flush (nibancha): early summer; lower price band, feeds culinary and latte volume.
• Reorder window: offering inventory before the nibancha changeover has repeatedly triggered cafe reorders. Plan ceremonial commitments around the May print; plan volume around nibancha.

Second flush (nibancha) 2026: Kagoshima's July auction

Kagoshima ran its second tencha auction of the year on July 16, 2026, and the result is published. As far as we can find, these figures have not appeared in English anywhere else, so we are putting them here with the source named. The second flush is the band that feeds culinary and latte volume, which is the grade most cafes actually buy.

The wider leaf market moved the same way. Shizuoka, Japan's largest tea market, closed its second-flush season at levels trade press called unprecedented, and the reason given is matcha: growers keep converting fields to tencha, so ordinary sencha has gone scarce.

By the close of second-flush trading in late July, Shizuoka's season average sat in the low ¥2,000s against ¥1,204 the prior year, roughly 3.3 to 3.5 times the 2024 level, a level trade press called unprecedented. The stated driver matters more than the number: sencha is scarce because growers keep converting fields to tencha for matcha. The second flush confirms the structural story of this index rather than softening it.

Reading it as a buyer: second-flush organic tencha cleared at ¥9,859/kg against ¥20,422 for the first flush, so the second flush is roughly half the price of the spring print. That gap is the single biggest lever on a latte-grade quote, and it is why a supplier who will not tell you which flush your lot came from is not quoting you transparently. Conventional second-flush leaf at ¥7,050/kg sits close to the ¥8,000 lower band we use in the cost bridge above, which is the check that keeps that model honest.

Methodology & sources

Compiled from Japan's official tea auctions and government statistics, not our quoted prices and not hearsay. Primary sources: JA Zen-Noh Kyoto tencha auction (Uji), Kagoshima Chamber of Tea, Shizuoka Tea Market, Aichi and Mie prefectural tea statistics, and Japan's Ministry of Agriculture (MAFF). Finished-matcha bands are modeled from these public raw-material prices through the cost bridge above, never from undisclosed internal quotes. FX is a stated monthly input (¥162/USD as of July 2026), not a live tick, so the figures stay citable with an as-of date.

Why these numbers may differ from other published figures

Published matcha price figures vary widely, and most of the spread comes from three things rather than from disagreement about the market. First, which auction: Kagoshima runs more than one tencha sale a year, and the July second-flush average is roughly half the May first-flush average, so a figure quoted without its date can be off by 2x. Second, which lot class: organic and conventional clear at different levels, and an all-lot weighted average is a third number again. Third, primary versus secondary: prices repeated from summaries drift, and the drift is rarely corrected once it spreads.

Our rule: every figure here is taken from the auction body's own published record, and is labeled with the auction date and the lot class it refers to. Where no public auction average exists for a region, we say so and leave it qualitative rather than filling the gap with an estimate. If you find a number here that does not match a primary record, tell us and we will correct it and note the correction in the changelog.

Data & downloads

Every figure on this page is available as a machine-readable table: download the CSV (japanomars-matcha-price-index-2026-08.csv). One row per market print: region, market, statistic, lot class, auction date, ¥/kg, prior-year ¥/kg, year-on-year ratio, USD/kg at the stated FX, source and source URL. Rows are appended with each new auction print; superseded values are never deleted, so the file doubles as a time series. Snapshot date: August 19, 2026.

How to cite this index

You are welcome to quote any figure here with attribution. Suggested citation: Japanomars (2026). US Matcha Wholesale Price & Availability Index, updated August 2026. https://www.japanomars.com/insights/matcha-price-index. Please keep the as-of date and the FX basis (¥162/USD) with any number you reuse, and link to this page rather than copying the table, since values change with each auction print.

Changelog

• 2026-08-19: Added the CSV download, the citation block and this changelog. Set the update rule: FX and availability are re-checked on the 1st of each month; price rows are added whenever a primary tencha auction print is published.
• 2026-08-16 (v1.4): Kagoshima headline switched to the JA Kagoshima Prefectural Economic Federation first-flush season average (¥13,910/kg, about 2.3x the prior year). The May 14 and July 16 Chamber of Tea auction prints are kept as auction-specific data.
• 2026-08-04 (v1.3): Corrected the Kagoshima organic first-flush auction average to ¥20,422.6/kg (a mistyped ¥24,422 in v1); derived USD and cost-bridge figures corrected. Added the Kagoshima second-flush (nibancha) auction of July 16 (organic ¥9,859/kg, conventional ¥7,050/kg). Added the note on why figures may differ across sources.
• 2026-08-04 (v1.2): Second-flush section added with Shizuoka Tea Market February to June prints.
• 2026-07-16 (v1): First publication: Uji and Kagoshima 2026 tencha auctions, regional coverage map, cost bridge, availability by origin, harvest calendar. FX ¥162/USD.