Where do things stand as this plate closes? Here is the state of play, in four parts.

The price. On September 4, 2026, arabica trades at 295.6 cents per pound in New York. That is 5.1% less than a month earlier and 23.3% less than a year earlier, the lowest since late June.

The decline has its reasons. The 2026/27 Brazilian harvest is ending on good yields, and Rabobank projects a world surplus of 8.9 million bags. When announced supply exceeds demand, the price gives way.

And yet ICE certified stocks, that is, coffee already stored in the warehouses approved by the exchange, are at their lowest since 1999. They are the ones used to honor a contract that has reached maturity.

An announced surplus and empty warehouses at the same time: that is the paradox of this end of cycle.

The expected harvests. Forecasters do not agree, and this disagreement is information in itself. Here, for the same Brazilian harvest, are three figures published at three different times.

• Conab, February 566.2 million bags.
• StoneX, as early as November 202570.7 million bags.
• USDA, June 202671.9 million bags.

Between the lowest and the highest estimate, the gap exceeds five million bags. For the world's leading producer, that makes a considerable margin of uncertainty.

Vietnam, for its part, was expected to reach a record 32.5 million bags. And that despite a rainfall deficit of 20 to 25% in Dak Lak and Dak Nong. This deficit fell during the enlargement of the cherries, that is, when the fruit fills out.

The road traveled. The ICO composite indicator touched 267.57 cents in February 2026, after a peak of 4.41 dollars per pound a year earlier, in February 2025.

What is coming. The European regulation on deforestation applies on December 30, 2026. That is the deadline that drives all the mapping work described above, and the Commission's accompanying simplification report dates from May 4, 2026.

On the projection side, Rabobank published on March 30, 2026 an estimate of 20% of arabica areas becoming unsuitable by 2050. This figure is not peer reviewed: it reads as a signal, not as a measurement.

Finally, World Coffee Research released its 2025 annual report. The Innovea program is extended in it to canephora, in Vietnam and Ghana. Organized breeding therefore no longer concerns arabica alone.

And two silences, which must be flagged as such. No IUCN reassessment of the 130 species of Coffea has been published since 2019. And no account of the first harvest of the grafted stenophylla in Sierra Leone is available. We are waiting.

Trading Economics, coffee, Sept. 4, 2026, tradingeconomics.com; ICO, CMR February 2026; USDA FAS, June 2026; StoneX, Nov. 10, 2025 and June 5, 2026; Rabobank, March 30, 2026; WCR, Annual Report 2025; European Commission, May 4, 2026