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The global olive oil export market is heading into the final weeks of the 2025/2026 marketing year with prices drawing close attention from exporters, as the International Olive Council (IOC) places world production for the season at approximately 3.44 million tonnes, a level that keeps the market well supplied after two years of volatility. The estimate, drawn from European harvest reporting, covers the marketing year that opened on 1 October 2025 and closes on 30 September 2026.
For exporting nations, the closing months of any campaign shape the volume of output sold and the price at which it clears. A Tunisian market report published on 9 September 2026 on world export prices reflects that focus, arriving just days before the marketing year ends and before new-season data begin to dominate the conversation.
The 3.44 million-tonne estimate for 2025/2026 sits above the five-season average, according to the IOC and European market analysis. It follows a provisional 2024/2025 forecast of 3.507 million tonnes, which was described at the time as a record level of global output.
Consumption has followed a similar trajectory. IOC olive sector statistics for January and February 2026 showed that global olive oil consumption recovered in the 2024/25 crop year, surpassing 3.2 million tonnes. Taken together, the production and consumption figures describe a market in which supply has caught up with demand after the shortage-driven price spikes of earlier seasons.
The most recent detailed market data available for the current campaign, published in April 2026, described prices as stable across origins, alongside growing exports from the European Union and stock data for Spain and Italy, the two largest holders of olive oil in the bloc. That stability suggested that abundant supply had tempered the kind of speculation seen during the shortage years.
Against that backdrop, an economic-indicator-based analysis of the 2025/2026 season projected that the price of one litre of virgin olive oil would exceed the 5.5 euro threshold, and pointed to concentration in the market. The projection and the April stability are not contradictory: a floor above 5.5 euros per litre is consistent with a market that has settled at a high level rather than one still climbing. The euro figure should be read as a projection derived from economic indicators, not as a recorded transaction price, and the analysis also referenced market concentration as a structural factor that can support prices independently of harvest size.
Demand-side data reinforce the sense of a normalising market. The recovery in 2024/25 consumption past 3.2 million tonnes, documented in the IOC's early-2026 statistics, followed seasons in which high retail prices suppressed purchases in major consuming countries. Restored consumption matters for exporters because it widens the pool of import demand beyond the producing countries themselves.
Over the longer horizon, commercial market research projects the global olive oil market to grow from USD 20.31 billion in 2026 to USD 34.17 billion by 2034, an annual growth rate of 5.97 percent. Such projections refer to expected market value, not farm-gate or export prices, and depend on assumptions about yields, consumption patterns and pricing that annual campaigns can easily overturn.
Several caveats apply. The 3.44 million-tonne production figure is an estimate, and the comparable 2024/25 figure of 3.507 million tonnes was itself provisional when issued. The most recent origin-level price and stock data available for this campaign date from April 2026, leaving roughly five months of the season, including the southern European harvest planning period, covered only by projection literature rather than updated market reports.
Exporting countries will be watching three factors as the new marketing year approaches: whether the IOC confirms the 2025/26 production estimate in its final statistics for the season, whether prices hold above the levels projected in the economic analysis, and how quickly stocks in Spain and Italy, the market's reference point, are drawn down before the next harvest arrives.
Source: streamlinefeed.co.ke