How many tonnes of cocoa beans will the Ivory Coast produce in 2026?

TL;DR

I forecast 2.02 million tonnes of cocoa beans in Côte d’Ivoire in calendar year 2026, with a 10th–90th percentile range of 1.81–2.21 million tonnes.

Context

Côte d’Ivoire is recovering from the 2023/24 cocoa shock, but the supply base is still damaged. The latest official annual data I found put 2025 calendar-year cocoa production at 1,840,311.5 tonnes, down 2.7% from 2024, while the national regulator told Reuters in May 2026 that the 2025/26 crop year should reach 2.0–2.1 million tonnes through the end of September (DGE/ANStat December 2025 economic table, Reuters via Business Recorder, May 24 2026).

The resolution is harder than the crop. FAOSTAT’s annual series is labelled as cocoa beans produced in the year, but ICCO and USDA mostly publish October–September cocoa-year or market-year data; Côte d’Ivoire also changed its commercial calendar in February 2026 so the main campaign runs September 1–February 28 and the small campaign runs March 1–August 31 (OWID/FAOSTAT metadata, USDA FAS, Jan. 7 2026, Government of Côte d’Ivoire, Feb. 27 2026).

Evidence

The historical backbone is the FAOSTAT/Our World in Data annual cocoa-bean production series. It is production quantity in tonnes, not value, with 64 annual observations from 1961 through 2024, last updated February 25, 2026; I add the official DGE/ANStat 2025 calendar value as a provisional 65th observation (OWID/FAOSTAT metadata, DGE/ANStat December 2025 economic table). The old normal is around 2.2 million tonnes: the 2017–2022 average is 2.195 million tonnes. The recent damaged state is around 1.85 million tonnes: the 2023–2025 average is 1.851 million tonnes.

The crop-year sources explain why the annual series fell. ICCO’s public country table reports Côte d’Ivoire at 2.241 million tonnes in 2022/23 and 1.674 million tonnes in 2023/24, in thousand-tonne cocoa-year units, while its 2024/25 annual report gives 1.681 million tonnes for Côte d’Ivoire, only 0.4% above the prior stressed season (ICCO country production table, published May 30 2025, ICCO Annual Report 2024/25). USDA/FAS is a little higher but tells the same story: its January 7, 2026 report estimates 2024/25 market-year production at 1.75 million tonnes, with mid-crop production of 500,000 tonnes versus a 10-year average of 550,000 tonnes, and says swollen shoot disease is present in most cocoa regions with major hotspots in San-Pédro, Haut-Sassandra, Marahoué, Gbôklé, Gôh, and Nawa (USDA FAS, Jan. 7 2026).

The strongest live signal is the rebound in 2025/26. CCC director Yves Brahima Koné told Reuters that 2025/26 production should reach 2.0–2.1 million tonnes, that arrivals at the two ports were just over 1.7 million tonnes as of May 11, 2026, and that high cocoa prices had helped farmers buy fertilizer and manage plantations better (Reuters via Business Recorder, May 24 2026). A separate commodity note put cumulative 2025/26 port arrivals at 1.659 million tonnes by May 31, 2026, up from 1.540 million at the same point last season but still far below the 2.104 million reached at that point in 2022/23 (ADM Investor Services, June 1 2026). I read this as a real recovery, not a full return to the 2020–2022 plateau.

The late-2026 part is the main downside. WMO’s May 2026 update put the probability of El Niño at 80% for June–August 2026 and near or above 90% for July–September through September–November 2026 (WMO El Niño/La Niña Update, May 2026). Reuters reported on June 2, 2026 that Côte d’Ivoire had sold about 950,000–1,000,000 tonnes of 2026/27 main-crop export contracts but had slowed sales because of El Niño and crop-development concerns; the same report said exporters were split, with some focused more on fertilizer shortages, aging farms, and disease than on El Niño itself (Reuters via MarketScreener, June 2 2026). The input signal is weak: an HSAT survey reported by Reuters on April 28, 2026 found that 73% of surveyed Ivorian cocoa farmers had not bought fertilizer for the next two production cycles (Reuters via WKZO, Apr. 28 2026).

I used a four-part mixture distribution. The main calendar-year recovery component gets 53% weight, centered at 2.030 million tonnes with a 105,000-tonne standard deviation. The crop-year-proxy or official-revision component gets 20% weight, centered at 2.070 million tonnes with a 90,000-tonne standard deviation, because the resolution rules may fall back to 2025/26 crop-year data and because the DPBEP 2026–2028 planning table has cocoa at 2.050 million tonnes for 2026 (DPBEP 2026–2028). The downside component gets 17% weight, centered at 1.800 million tonnes with a 150,000-tonne standard deviation, to cover a poor late-2026 main crop, disease, fertilizer constraints, and a low annual-source interpretation. The upside component gets 10% weight, centered at 2.270 million tonnes with a 135,000-tonne standard deviation, to cover a clean recovery toward the 2017–2022 regime.

This gives a mean of 2.023 million tonnes and a median of 2.032 million tonnes. The 5th–95th percentile range is 1.72–2.29 million tonnes, and the 10th–90th percentile range is 1.81–2.21 million tonnes. The distribution assigns 9% probability below 1.8 million tonnes, 59.4% probability above 2.0 million tonnes, and 4.5% probability above 2.3 million tonnes.

What's non-obvious

The obvious read is to take the CCC’s 2.0–2.1 million tonne 2025/26 crop-year forecast as the answer. That is close, but it is not the whole calendar-year question. Calendar 2026 combines the Jan–Aug or Jan–Sep tail of the recovering 2025/26 crop with the Sep–Dec or Oct–Dec start of the 2026/27 crop, and the latter is exposed to El Niño and fertilizer risk (Government of Côte d’Ivoire, Feb. 27 2026, WMO El Niño/La Niña Update, May 2026).

The other hidden point is that the official annual-data path is now lower than the older planning path. The DPBEP table had a 2025 cocoa forecast of 2.000 million tonnes and a 2026 forecast of 2.050 million tonnes, but the later DGE/ANStat 12-month 2025 table reports only 1.840 million tonnes for 2025 (DPBEP 2026–2028, DGE/ANStat December 2025 economic table). That is why I treat 2.05 million as an anchor, not as a point estimate.

Limitations

The largest source uncertainty is the final resolver. ICCO is preferred, but its free country data are crop-year tables, and the May 29, 2026 QBCS public note gives global 2024/25 production and grindings but not a free current country table for Côte d’Ivoire (ICCO May 2026 QBCS note). If resolution uses 2025/26 as a crop-year proxy, the answer likely moves upward by several tens of thousands of tonnes relative to a strict calendar split.

The second gap is measurement. Port arrivals are not production. They can move with stocks, price timing, quality rejection, cross-border flows, and the split between local processing and export shipment; Reuters itself reported unsold cocoa on the ground in the same article that carried the CCC’s higher production forecast (Reuters via Business Recorder, May 24 2026). The third gap is weather. June–December 2026 rainfall, pod survival, disease spread, and fertilizer availability will decide the 2026/27 main-crop contribution to calendar 2026.