The short answer
The 2026 ceremonial matcha shortage is structural, not seasonal. Japan's tencha supply collapsed over two consecutive damaged harvests while global demand kept climbing. Our tracker logged 4,354 checks between March 30 and May 28, 2026 — 16.8% of listings were out of stock. The pattern varies by merchant and grade, but the constraint is real and measurable.
What tencha is and why it drives the shortage
Matcha comes from tencha: a shade-grown leaf harvested in a narrow spring window, dried without rolling, then stone-milled into powder. Tencha farming is geographically bounded — the right soil conditions and shade infrastructure take three to five years to establish. Global demand for ceremonial matcha rose 86% over three years. Supply had no mechanism to keep pace in that window.
The harvest problem made things worse
The 2024 and 2025 spring tencha harvests were both weather-damaged. Record heatwaves and irregular rainfall during the critical early-spring shading period caused yield declines of approximately 40% in top-grade Uji tencha. Auction prices climbed 265% year-over-year in 2025 — the largest single-year jump in the industry's recorded history. A senior buyer at California-based importer G.S. Haly reported paying 75% more for the highest-grade 2025 crop.
What our data shows
Availability varies sharply by merchant. Horii Shichimeien: 90% OOS across 110 checks — worst of any tracked source. Itoh Kyuemon: 19 OOS checks per blend, among the highest individual counts. Higher-volume merchants fared better: Kettl (8% OOS, 254 checks), Sazen Tea (8%, 166 checks), Ujicha Matcha (9%, 871 checks). The constraint is real but concentrated — the right merchants still have stock.
The tariff question, answered
The 15% tariff on Japanese tea imports is gone. It was removed November 13, 2025 under U.S. Executive Order 2025-17507 — tea has been at 0% duty since. Prices remain elevated because the tencha supply problem did not go with the tariff.
When does it get better?
The 2026 spring tencha harvest was completed in May. Processing and shipping typically adds two to four months before new-crop powder reaches international retailers. Most forecasts point to late 2026 or early 2027 for meaningful availability improvement — a gradual normalization rather than a sudden return to pre-shortage pricing.