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MILAN – The upward trend in Arabica coffee futures prices is accelerating and this time Robusta futures are following suit. Yesterday, Tuesday 6 January 2026, the contract for March delivery in New York gained 4% (after +0.6% on Monday), ending the day at 373.85 cents, the highest close in the last four weeks. London also recovered after Monday’s declines: ICE Robusta’s main contract (March) gained 2.3%, to settle at $4,007, surpassing the $4,000 threshold for the first time since 11 December.
Further support came to coffee futures prices from the strength in the Brazilian real, which rallied to a 1-month high against the dollar.
The latest Commitment of Traders report from the ICE Arabica has seen the Non-Commercial Speculative sector increase their net long position by 5.93% over the week of trade leading up to Tuesday 30th December 2025 to register a new long position of 15,092 lots.
The Commercial sector held 50,347 lots. The Managed Money Fund increased their net long position by 2.55% to register a new long position at 29,006 Lots.
According to Dutch investment bank ING, Arabica coffee was one of the best-performing agricultural commodities in 2025. The sharp increase was due to unfavourable weather conditions in Brazil, which had a negative impact on the harvest of this variety.
Low stock levels, combined with US tariffs on imports from Brazil, provided further support for prices.
As already noted above, the sharp appreciation of the real against the dollar last year should also be taken into account.
At the same time, the recovery in production has contributed to a fall in Robusta prices, which nevertheless remain at very high levels.
Brazilian coffee exports are recovering. According to data from the Secretariat of Foreign Trade (Secex) exports in December totalled 3,504,683 bags, up 4.2% on-year.
This is the first increase over the same month of the previous year since last March, Secex reports.
However, this figure was slightly lower than the 3.54 million bags exported in November.
Secex points out that a positive trend was also recorded for other important commodities, including sugar, soybeans, iron ore and oil.
In December, Vietnam exported approximately 3 million bags, marking a 40.8% increase compared to December 2024, according to data released by the Vietnam Customs Authority.
Cumulative exports for the first three months of the 2025/26 coffee year totalled 5.65 million bags, marking a 47.4% increase compared to the same period in 2024/25.
