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

TL;DR

I forecast 2.00 million metric tonnes of cocoa beans for Côte d’Ivoire in calendar year 2026.

Context

The live cocoa data are mostly crop-year data, while this question resolves on January–December 2026. ICCO describes Côte d’Ivoire’s normal main crop as October–March and mid-crop as May–August, with Africa’s mid-crop usually much smaller than the main crop (ICCO FAQ). Côte d’Ivoire also changed its marketing calendar in 2026, moving the main crop to September 1–February 28 and the mid-crop to March 1–August 31, which makes arrivals even less clean as a calendar-year measure (Xinhua via Big News Network, March 1, 2026).

The current 2025/26 season has recovered, but the start of 2026/27 is the key swing factor. On May 21, 2026, the Coffee and Cocoa Council said 2025/26 production should reach 2.0–2.1 million tonnes and port arrivals had passed 1.7 million tonnes by May 11, but the same report said pod survival for the next main crop was slightly below last year and fields had fewer pods and flowers after drought damage (Reuters via MarketScreener, May 21, 2026).

Evidence

The historical backbone is the FAOSTAT/OWID annual series. It has 64 annual observations, covers 1961–2024, is measured in tonnes, was last updated on February 25, 2026, and defines the metric as the amount of cocoa beans produced in the year (OWID/FAOSTAT, retrieved May 24, 2026). The full current Côte d’Ivoire series is:

The recent base rate points to a value near 2.0 million tonnes, not a return to the 2022 peak. The 2015–2024 mean is 2.031 million tonnes, the 2020–2024 mean is 2.100 million tonnes, and the 2022–2023 crash was 536,550 tonnes, or 22.7%, before a 68,001-tonne rebound in 2024; these are my calculations from the FAOSTAT/OWID series above (OWID/FAOSTAT, retrieved May 24, 2026). Since 2010, the standard deviation of annual changes is about 207,000 tonnes, so a ±200,000-tonne error band is normal even before source-definition risk (OWID/FAOSTAT, retrieved May 24, 2026).

The crop-year sources show why the annual number is hard to map. USDA/FAS put market-year production at 2.300 million tonnes in 2022/23, 1.760 million tonnes in 2023/24, and 1.750 million tonnes in 2024/25, with the market year beginning in October and the table units in 1,000 tonnes (USDA/FAS GAIN, January 2026). ICCO’s 2024/25 annual report put Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa-year production lower, at 1.681 million tonnes, up only 0.4% year on year, while projecting global 2024/25 cocoa production at 4.698 million tonnes (ICCO Annual Report 2024/2025). The 2024 source spread is large: FAOSTAT calendar 2024 is 1.890 million tonnes, USDA 2024/25 is 1.750 million tonnes, and ICCO 2024/25 is 1.681 million tonnes (OWID/FAOSTAT, USDA/FAS GAIN, ICCO Annual Report 2024/2025).

The strongest current-season evidence is bullish. The CCC’s May 21, 2026 estimate of 2.0–2.1 million tonnes for 2025/26 replaced a March Reuters trader-and-analyst consensus of 1.8 million tonnes, and its arrivals statement of just over 1.7 million tonnes by May 11 implies that the current crop is no longer tracking like the worst 2023/24–2024/25 scenario (Reuters via MarketScreener, May 21, 2026). A Côte d’Ivoire budget-planning table also used 2.050 million tonnes as its 2026 cacao assumption, after 1.890 million tonnes for 2024 and 2.000 million tonnes for 2025, though I treat that as a planning assumption rather than an updated crop survey (Côte d’Ivoire DPBEP 2026–2028).

The forward agronomy evidence is bearish for the last quarter of calendar 2026. Reuters reported on May 18 that interviews with 16 input retailers in eight cocoa basins showed fertilizer and crop-protection sales stalled since December, with up to 90% of stocks unsold; those retailers and farmers said lower treatment raises pest and disease risk for the 2026/27 season (Reuters via BusinessWorld, May 18, 2026). A separate HSAT survey reported on April 28 found that 73% of surveyed farmers had bought no fertilizer and only 2% had all they needed; HSAT projected a 4.8% production impact later in 2026 (Reuters via WKZO, April 28, 2026). NOAA’s May 14, 2026 ENSO discussion put the chance of El Niño at 82% for May–July 2026 and 96% for December 2026–February 2027, and a May 11 Reuters field report said patchy, below-average rain was already raising fears of a smaller, lower-quality mid-crop (NOAA CPC, May 14, 2026, Reuters via WHTC, May 11, 2026). FAO also described cocoa swollen shoot disease as a major threat to West African production and said Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana are the two countries most affected (FAO, May 5, 2026).

My calendar conversion is:

$$CY_{2026}=C_{25/26}-Q4_{2025}+Q4_{2026}$$

Here $C_{25/26}$ is total 2025/26 crop-year output, $Q4_{2025}$ is the October–December 2025 part already counted before calendar 2026, and $Q4_{2026}$ is the October–December 2026 start of the next crop. Port arrivals were 1.028 million tonnes by December 28, 2025 and 1.071 million tonnes by January 4, 2026, so I put $Q4_{2025}$ near 1.04 million tonnes (CocoaIntel/Reuters, December 29, 2025, CocoaIntel/Reuters, January 5, 2026). I put $C_{25/26}$ near 2.04 million tonnes from the CCC range, and $Q4_{2026}$ slightly below $Q4_{2025}$ because the input, pod-count, disease, and El Niño signals point down for the next main crop (Reuters via MarketScreener, May 21, 2026, Reuters via BusinessWorld, May 18, 2026, NOAA CPC, May 14, 2026).

The final distribution is a mixture. I put 45% weight on a direct annual-source outcome centered at 2.02 million tonnes, 25% on a crop-year/proxy outcome centered at 2.05 million tonnes, 20% on a downside weather-disease-input case centered at 1.78 million tonnes, and 10% on a high-normalization case centered at 2.25 million tonnes. The resulting mean is 2.00 million tonnes, the median is 2.01 million tonnes, the 10–90% interval is 1.74–2.24 million tonnes, and the 5–95% interval is 1.65–2.32 million tonnes.

What's non-obvious

The current 2025/26 CCC estimate is not the same object as calendar-year 2026. A large share of the 2025/26 crop arrived before January 1, 2026, while calendar 2026 includes the opening quarter of the 2026/27 crop; that opening quarter is exactly where the recent pod-count, input, and El Niño evidence is weakest (CocoaIntel/Reuters, January 5, 2026, Reuters via MarketScreener, May 21, 2026, Reuters via BusinessWorld, May 18, 2026). That is why the point forecast stays near 2.00 million tonnes even though the current crop-year estimate is 2.0–2.1 million tonnes.

Arrivals are also not final production. Reuters reported in 2025 that end-May arrivals differed by about 84,000 tonnes between exporter estimates and the regulator’s figure, partly because rejected low-quality trucks could be counted more than once or not accepted by exporters (Reuters via TradingView, June 2025). That makes the May 2026 arrival recovery real evidence, but not a hard lower bound.

Limitations

No authoritative calendar-year 2026 production number exists yet. The preferred-source hierarchy is a source of uncertainty because ICCO’s public country data are mainly cocoa-year data, while FAOSTAT is annual and currently stops at 2024 (ICCO Annual Report 2024/2025, OWID/FAOSTAT, retrieved May 24, 2026). If resolution uses the 2025/26 crop year as a proxy, the answer will probably land close to the CCC’s 2.0–2.1 million tonnes; if it uses a later FAOSTAT calendar-year value, Q4 2026 conditions matter more (Reuters via MarketScreener, May 21, 2026).

The largest remaining unknown is June–December 2026 weather and disease pressure. Better rains and adequate pesticide use could put the result above 2.2 million tonnes; renewed dryness, input shortages, swollen shoot spread, or quality rejection could push it below 1.8 million tonnes (NOAA CPC, May 14, 2026, FAO, May 5, 2026, Reuters via WKZO, April 28, 2026). Revisions are allowed until resolution, and the 2024 source spread shows that revisions and definitions can move the resolved value by more than 100,000 tonnes (OWID/FAOSTAT, USDA/FAS GAIN, ICCO Annual Report 2024/2025).