Kenyan coffee sold at the Nairobi Coffee Exchange earned Ksh 41.63 billion in the 2025/26 season, which ran from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026, KBC Digital reported on 7 October 2026. The exchange sold 770,034 bags across the season, about 47 million kilograms of coffee, according to the same report. In the 2024/25 season the auction moved 673,844 bags for Ksh 35.6 billion, KBC reported, so on its figures the latest season sold close to 100,000 more bags and earned about Ksh 6 billion more.
The Standard, in a report by Boniface Gikandi dated 6 October 2026, gave the same count of 770,034 bags and rounded the earnings to Ksh 41 billion. The exchange attributed the gain mainly to better prices and market demand, according to KBC.
How did prices move through the season?
By May 2026 the exchange had recorded Ksh 32.25 billion from 36.93 million kilograms, at an average of Ksh 43,780 for a 50-kilogram bag, KBC reported. That means about three quarters of the season's earnings had come in by May, on KBC's figures.
The last auction of the season, Sale 42 on 29 September 2026, sold 17,765 bags for Ksh 841.3 million, according to both KBC and The Standard. KBC reported an average of Ksh 38,140 for a 50-kilogram bag at that sale, or about Ksh 762 a kilogram of clean coffee, and called it some price softening. That was Ksh 5,640 a bag below the May 2026 average, on KBC's numbers.
The wider annual trend comes from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics. Its data, as cited by KBC, show the average auction price rose to US$7.21 a kilogram in calendar 2025 from US$4.90 in 2024, while the total volume sold during that calendar year fell. On those figures a kilogram sold at auction in 2025 fetched nearly half again what it fetched a year earlier.
Who sold Kenya's coffee?
Eighteen brokers marketed coffee at the exchange during the season, KBC reported, citing the exchange's chief executive, Lisper Ndung'u. Two of them carried much of the volume:
- Alliance Berries Limited sold 222,329 bags in 2025/26, about 29 percent of the season's coffee, according to KBC.
- New Kenya Planters' Cooperative Union sold 137,284 bags in 2025/26, about 18 percent, according to KBC.
- Kipkelion sold 58,356 bags, CEBBA 40,789 and Minnesota 30,405 over the same season, KBC reported.
At the final sale on 29 September, Ibero Kenya bought 5,696 bags and Louis Dreyfus 2,514, The Standard reported in its account of that auction.
How much coffee does Kenya grow?
Kenya's production rose from 49.5 thousand metric tons in the 2023-24 crop season to 51.4 thousand metric tons in 2024-25, according to the Economic Survey 2026 as reported by Agatha Ngotho in The Star on 30 April 2026. The same survey recorded a 35.9 percent rise in coffee prices to Ksh 975 a kilogram, The Star reported. At 60 kilograms a bag, 51.4 thousand metric tons is about 857,000 bags, roughly a fifth of the 3.93 million bags of green coffee Brazil shipped in September 2026 alone, a figure Reuters reported from Secex data on 6 October and our report on Brazil's September exports set out.
Kenyan coffee is sold in grades set by bean size, and The Standard reported that the final auction offered 2,468 bags of AA, 7,049 of AB and 3,094 of C. Our explainer on Kenyan coffee covers how it is grown and processed. In neighboring Uganda, August 2026 export volume fell 13.6 percent, according to the monthly report we covered on 6 October.
What does the Coffee Board expect for 2026/27?
Henry Kinyua, chairman of the Coffee Board of Kenya, said the industry expects better prices in the new coffee year. "We are expecting improved prices in the year 2026/2027," he said, as quoted by The Standard on 6 October 2026. That is an expectation rather than a measurement, and neither report gave a figure for it. He also urged farmers to keep to good farming practices to protect the quality of Kenyan coffee, KBC reported.
Photograph: Michael Starkie, Unsplash. Taken near Kampala, Uganda.
