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Japanese tea prices broke records in 2025. In 2026, they went even higher. And this time it isn't only Tencha, the shaded leaf that is stone-milled into Matcha. Gyokuro, Kabusecha, Sencha, and even the leaf used for Hojicha all sold for far more than last year.

The reason is simple. As more farmers switch their fields to Tencha to meet global Matcha demand, there is less of everything else. Less supply means higher prices across the whole market.

Here is what the 2026 first harvest looked like at Kyoto's JA Zen-Noh tea market, held at the Uji Tea Distribution Center in Joyo, based on the final first harvest report from the Kyoto Prefecture Tea Industry Association and JA Zen-Noh Kyoto.

Kyoto Is Growing Less Tea Overall

According to Kyoto Prefecture's 2026 tea production report, both the area planted with tea and total tea production keep falling. The main reason is a shortage of growers.

That decline is hard to reverse quickly. A newly planted tea bush needs about five to six years before it can be harvested commercially. So when demand jumps, farmers can't simply plant more and catch up. Most of them change what they grow on the fields they already have.

Freshly picked tea leaves being steamed at a Tencha factory in Uji, the first step in making Tencha

Tencha Is the Only Tea Kyoto Made More Of

Among all first harvest teas traded at the Zen-Noh market in 2026, Tencha was the only category that grew. Every other tea type fell.

Tencha Volumes Rise

Uji Tencha (hand-picked): 9,517 kg, up 18.5% from last year.
Hatsucha Tencha (first harvest Tencha, picked with shears): 585,590 kg, up 20.3%.

Everything Else Falls

Gyokuro (23,897 kg, plus 1,171 kg of hand-picked Gyokuro), Kabusecha (23,216 kg), and Sencha (66,488 kg) each fell by about 20%. The report puts this down directly to farmers moving production over to Tencha.

The sharpest drop was in Karinaoshi, leaf from re-trimming Sencha and other tea bushes, which is used as a raw material for Hojicha. Karinaoshi volume fell 22.1% to 67,087 kg. That is less than half of what the market traded in 2023, before the decline began.

Once a field is converted, going back isn't easy either. As Matcha Wire reported, growers say a field set up for Matcha production can't simply be turned back into a Sencha field the next season.

Steamed Tencha leaves drying on conveyor racks inside a Tencha oven in Uji, Kyoto

Prices Rose for Every Type of Tea

Every tea category traded at the Zen-Noh market got more expensive in 2026.

Tencha

Tencha prices had already jumped sharply in 2025, and they kept climbing. Uji Tencha averaged ¥52,275/kg, up 10.9%. Hatsucha Tencha averaged ¥17,250/kg, up 21.9%.

So even with Tencha production up by about a fifth, prices still went up. Demand is growing faster than farmers can add supply. We saw the same pattern across Japan this spring, as covered in our report on how Matcha demand pushed Japanese tea prices to record highs.

Gyokuro, Kabusecha, and Sencha

The teas farmers are moving away from rose even faster:

Hand-picked Gyokuro: ¥42,909/kg
Gyokuro: ¥14,249/kg
Kabusecha: ¥8,369/kg
Sencha: ¥6,646/kg

All of these were up 50% to 80% from the year before.

Karinaoshi: The Biggest Jump

Karinaoshi saw the largest increase of all. Its average price reached ¥2,732/kg, up about 123% from last year and more than four times its 2023 level. Karinaoshi is a modest, inexpensive leaf, which is exactly why this jump matters. Even everyday teas like Hojicha are now feeling the squeeze.

First harvest Tencha leaves poured from a wooden tray during a tea appraisal

A Record Season for the Uji Tea Market

The full season ended with the "tomeichi," the closing auction, on July 31. Combining first and second harvest, total trading reached about ¥12.94 billion, roughly 1.3 times the previous record set in 2025, according to the Asahi Shimbun. It was the sixth year in a row that the total beat the year before.

The market handled about 950 tonnes of tea, slightly more than last year's 939 tonnes. But the average price rose from ¥10,251/kg to ¥13,614/kg.

Tencha drove most of it. The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that hand-picked and machine-harvested Tencha together totaled 595 tonnes, the most since the market opened in 1974. Machine-harvested Tencha alone brought in about ¥10.1 billion, and its average price was the highest since records began in 1996. Matcha Wire has a summary of the record Uji tea market season.

What This Means for Japanese Tea Drinkers

Kyoto's tea industry says the situation remains extremely tight, with no sign yet of prices settling. Many tea companies already raised prices last year. The industry's own report warns that the shortage of teas other than Tencha has started to seriously affect sales of Japanese tea products.

Tea merchants are worried about what comes next. Naoji Yano, chairman of the Kyoto Midorikai association of tea wholesalers, told the Yomiuri Shimbun he fears that if consumers can no longer buy tea at fair prices, people will start drifting away from tea altogether.

For tea drinkers, the takeaway is that the Matcha boom is now reshaping the price of nearly every Japanese tea, not just Matcha. New tea fields take years to mature, and converted fields are slow to switch back, so this is unlikely to change quickly. For more background, see why prices are going up for Matcha and our guide to the global Matcha shortage.

At Ooika, we'll keep following the Uji market and talking with our producers in Japan, and we'll share what we learn in our monthly Matcha Industry Report.

Beyond Matcha: Why All Japanese Tea Prices Are Rising