Current as of 26 August 2026
Moving away from its peak. The record is kept because understanding what happened is more useful than the peak figure was. Checked every three months. First observed: Late 2023, sharply from February 2024.
The cocoa price cycle, 2023 to 2026
Cocoa went through the largest price event in its recorded history: a rise to several times its long-run level through 2024, then a substantial retreat across 2025 and 2026 as supply recovered and demand fell away. The bar in the shop has not followed it back down, and there are structural reasons for that rather than only cynical ones.
Between late 2023 and the end of 2024 the world price of cocoa did something it had never done, rising to a multiple of its long-run range and setting records at every stage. Since then it has fallen a long way — most accounts of the first half of 2026 put the retreat at somewhere between half and two-thirds of the peak, with a sharp rebound in mid-2026 when flooding in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana revived fears for the 2026/27 crop. What has NOT happened is the retail price following it down, and understanding why is more useful than either of the two stories usually told about it.
What would make this page wrong
Written before the page went up rather than added afterwards. If one of these has happened since the date above, treat what follows as history.
- A second consecutive large surplus, which would move the argument from 'prices have fallen from a spike' to 'the spike is over' — the ICCO's quarterly bulletin is where that would first show up.
- A serious West African harvest failure in 2026/27, which the mid-2026 flooding has already put in play and which would restart the cycle rather than continue it.
- Retail prices beginning to fall, which as of August 2026 they broadly have not, and which would make the stickiness argument above testable rather than explanatory.
- A structural shift in demand: the 2024/25 fall in grindings was large enough that if it does not reverse, the market rebalances at a lower level of consumption rather than a higher level of supply.
What stays true when this is over
The mechanism outlasts the cycle. Cocoa is bought forward: a manufacturer running a large brand is typically covered months to a year ahead, which means it neither pays the spot price on the way up nor stops paying yesterday's price on the way down. Retail prices are also sticky by design, because a listed price on a supermarket shelf is renegotiated on a schedule rather than continuously. So a commodity spike reaches the wrapper late and leaves it later, and the gap is measured in quarters. That is true of coffee and butter as well, and it will be true of the next cocoa cycle whatever its numbers are.
What actually happened, in order
THE SETUP was three poor West African seasons in a row against steadily growing demand. Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana together supply the majority of the world crop, their trees are old, black pod and swollen shoot were both active, and the 2023/24 season closed with a deficit of roughly half a million tonnes — an enormous number against annual grindings of a little under five million.
THE SPIKE ran through 2024. Stocks had been drawn down for years and there was nothing to cushion the shortfall, so the price did what a physical commodity with no inventory does: it rose until demand broke. Records were set repeatedly and the peak came at the end of the year.
THE UNWIND began in 2025. Higher prices bought better farm care and a better crop, buyers had already cut back, and the 2024/25 season closed in surplus rather than deficit. Stocks began rebuilding. Through the first half of 2026 the price fell steeply.
THE REMINDER came in mid-2026, when flooding across the two producing giants revived concern about the crop then in the ground and the price rebounded sharply. That is the part worth carrying away: a market with thin inventories does not calm down because one season went well.
Why the shop price has not followed
Four things, none of which requires anybody to be behaving badly, and none of which excludes the possibility that somebody is.
FORWARD COVER. Large manufacturers buy months ahead. A company that hedged its 2025 requirement in early 2024 paid near the top and is still working through product made from it. The same mechanism means that if prices stay lower, the relief arrives — late.
RETAIL PRICE ARCHITECTURE. Shelf prices are set in negotiated ranges and reviewed on cycles. They are also psychologically anchored: a price that has moved up to a round number is more likely to be held there than moved back down by a few pence.
EVERYTHING ELSE ALSO ROSE. Sugar, dairy, packaging, energy and distribution all moved over the same period. Cocoa was the dramatic one; it was not the only one.
REFORMULATION ABSORBED SOME OF IT ALREADY. A good deal of the adjustment happened inside the product rather than on the price label — smaller bars, more filling, less cocoa. That is a separate development and has its own record.
What this looked like from the farm
The exchange price and the farmgate price are different numbers with a weak and lagging relationship, and in the two largest producing countries they are not even set the same way: farmgate prices are fixed administratively for a season rather than floating.
Both countries raised their fixed prices substantially through the cycle, and both were criticised for the pass-through being partial and late. Meanwhile the input costs a farmer faces — labour, planting material, fungicide — rose in the same inflationary environment, and a price rise that arrives after a harvest failure arrives on a smaller volume.
The general lesson is one the economics section makes at more length: a high world price is not the same as a good year for a farmer, and it is possible for both to be true at once that the commodity broke records and that household income barely moved.
Widely said, not established
These are claims in circulation about this subject that the evidence available to this catalogue does not carry. They are listed rather than ignored, because a reader who has met them elsewhere is entitled to know where they stand.
- That manufacturers 'kept the money'. Margin data by product line is not public, input costs other than cocoa also rose over the same period, and the forward-buying mechanism above explains a substantial part of the lag without needing profiteering. The honest position is that the claim is not checkable from outside the companies.
- That the price rise reached farmers proportionally. Farmgate prices in the two largest producing countries are set administratively rather than by the exchange, and although both raised them substantially, the pass-through was neither immediate nor one-for-one. See the farmgate price entry in the glossary.
- Any specific figure for how much of a bar's retail price is cocoa. It varies enormously by product — a 90% bar and a filled wafer are not comparable — and the widely repeated single percentages have no traceable methodology.
Related
What is happening now
- Cocoa price volatilityThe standing economics treatment of why cocoa prices move as they do, and who carries the risk when they move. This record is one cycle; that one is the mechanism.
- Chocolate price driversWhat is actually in the price of a bar, cocoa being only one component. The right page for a reader asking why an expensive bar is expensive rather than why all bars got dearer.
- Cocoa supply chainWho stands between the tree and the wrapper, which is the structure that determines where a price rise gets absorbed and where it gets passed on.
Covered in
- Why chocolate got more expensiveWhat the price actually did, with the date it was last checked — the current half of the story this guide deliberately hands over.
Sources
- Quarterly Bulletin of Cocoa Statistics, No. 2, Volume LII, cocoa year 2025/26 (May 2026) — International Cocoa Organization (ICCO), 2026(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
- Confectionery and bakery trade coverage of cocoa pricing, reformulation and viral product trends, 2025-2026 — Assorted trade press (ConfectioneryNews, BakeryAndSnacks, FoodNavigator and similar), 2026(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
- ChocolateHQ editorial synthesis — ChocolateHQ(citation identity confirmed; passage not re-read)
How this page is kept current
Dates on this site are advanced by a person who has re-read the record, never by a build step. If the date at the top of this page is old, that is the honest state of it rather than a bug — and the list of what would make it wrong is there so you can check for yourself. See the editorial policy.