Why matcha costs more now

Matcha has become more expensive because the leaf it is made from, tencha, cannot be grown, dried and milled as fast as people outside Japan now want to drink it. The clearest measure is the price farmers get at the Kyoto tea market. Tezumi's account of the 2025 season reports that machine-picked tencha opened 170% above 2024 prices and hand-picked tencha around 220% up. The next spring went further. In May 2026, Kyoto's machine-picked tencha averaged 13,972 yen a kilo, about 1.7 times the previous record of 8,235 yen set a year before, according to the Global Japanese Tea Association's May 2026 report.

Raw tencha prices at Japan's markets rose year after year from 2024 to 2026.

Market and year	What happened	Source
Kyoto, 2025	Machine-picked tencha opened about 170% up on 2024. Hand-picked averaged about 220% up. Machine-picked cost what hand-picked had cost the year before	Tezumi
Kyoto, May 2026	Machine-picked tencha averaged 13,972 yen/kg, about 1.7 times the prior record of 8,235 yen	GJTEA
Kagoshima, May 2026	Tencha averaged about 19,000 yen/kg, roughly 1.8 times the year before	GJTEA
Manufacturers, 2026	Raw material costs more than double the year before. Many retailers expected to cut pack sizes or raise prices about 20%	GJTEA

What pushed demand up

Tezumi names several causes together. Drinkers abroad moved toward better matcha, the kind meant to be drunk plain or in a good latte. A weak yen brought more visitors to Kyoto, where the old houses sell matcha by the tin. In the second half of 2024, some of Japan's largest producers stopped taking on new trade buyers and capped retail sales. The frozen stock of older tencha that producers usually lean on ran out, so the 2025 harvest had to carry everything, and a cold spring that year cut yields. Tezumi reports some Fukuoka producers saw yields fall 30% while prices doubled.

Why supply is slow

One stone mill makes only about 30 to 40 grams of matcha an hour, according to Tezumi's overview. Adding mills takes stones, skilled cutters to dress them and staff to run them. Upstream, tencha needs shaded fields and its own drying ovens. Farmers can convert sencha fields, and Kyoto's prefectural government has offered money to help, but many sencha cultivars shade poorly, and newly planted bushes take three to five years to mature. GJTEA reports tencha planting rising elsewhere too, around 70% more in Koka, Shiga, in a single season.

Where the leaf is grown now

The growth has come mostly from the south. Kagoshima produced about 2,150 tonnes of tencha in 2024, around 40% of Japan's total, and has been the top producer since 2020. Its flatter, larger, more mechanised farms can switch to tencha faster than the small hill gardens of Uji. We cover the regions in where matcha comes from.

Tariffs

For American buyers, a 15% tariff on Japanese goods from August 2025 added to the pressure, and CBS News reported US cafés and importers bracing for it. Importers including O-Cha later reported that green tea and matcha were exempted from 13 November 2025, though teaware was not. The leaf had already become more expensive in Japan, so the exemption did not bring prices back.

What it means for a tin

Some brands have kept prices by changing what goes in. Tezumi notes producers altering blends, including second-harvest tencha in lower-grade usucha blends, and limiting their ranges. That makes the details on a tin worth more than ever. A named harvest, a region or farm, a cultivar and a recent milling date tell you what you are paying for.

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