A Hot, Dry Autumn in Spain Just Knocked 4% Off the World's Olive Oil
The International Olive Council pegs 2025/26 global olive oil output near 3.44 million tonnes — down about 4% — as drought trims Spain's crop and the world's top region, Jaén, revises its outlook down roughly 20%.
TL;DR — Drought and a hot, dry autumn in Spain pushed the International Olive Council's 2025/26 global olive oil forecast down about 4% to roughly 3.44 million tonnes, with the world's biggest growing region, Jaén, cutting its outlook by about 20%.
Olive oil is the rare grocery staple where a single bad autumn in one Spanish province can move the global number. That's what happened for the 2025/26 crop year: a hot, dry stretch in Spain — the country that produces close to half the world's olive oil — shaved the global harvest just as the market was catching its breath from a brutal multi-year price crisis.
The headline number
The International Olive Council (IOC) estimates 2025/26 global production at about 3.44 million tonnes, a decline of roughly 4% from the prior season. That follows a bumper 2024/25, when output jumped 38% to around 3.57 million tonnes after the worst of the drought eased.
So this isn't a return to crisis. It's a dip — but a telling one, because of where it came from.
Spain, and the province that sets the price
Spain remains Europe's dominant producer, with output estimated around 1.37 million tonnes — three to eight percent below the October 2025 forecasts of roughly 1.44 million tonnes, per Olive Oil Times. The culprit was weather: a hot, dry autumn shrank fruit size and oil content, hitting non-irrigated groves hardest.
The sharpest blow landed in Jaén — the single largest olive oil region on earth — which revised expectations down by about 20%, blaming drought and missing autumn rain. When Jaén sneezes, the global balance sheet catches a cold.
| Region / metric | 2025/26 figure |
|---|---|
| Global production | ~3.44M tonnes (−~4%) |
| 2024/25 (prior year) | ~3.57M tonnes (+38%) |
| Spain output | ~1.37M tonnes |
| Jaén outlook revision | ~−20% |
| Global consumption (est.) | ~3.25M tonnes (+1%) |
Climate variability is the real story
Strip away the year-to-year noise and the pattern is what worries agronomists. The IOC flags a cluster of climate-linked stresses across the Mediterranean: a hot, dry autumn in Spain, ongoing drought in Crete, and the olive fruit fly cropping up in parts of Italy and Greece. Olive trees also swing naturally between heavy and light years — the "alternate-bearing" cycle — and climate volatility amplifies the bad years.
A peer-reviewed analysis published in Sustainability Science this cycle put it directly, examining "how climate change interferes with olive oil production" — drought, heat stress and erratic rainfall are increasingly the variables that decide whether a harvest is good or merely survivable.
A twist: prices are easing, not spiking
Here's where it gets counterintuitive. Despite the smaller crop, retail-level prices have been softening from the 2024 crisis peak, because the huge 2024/25 harvest refilled the pipeline. The IOC's January/February 2026 price data shows Spain's Jaén benchmark down 2.5% year-on-year, with Italy's Bari quote off a striking 30.9%. A 4% production dip isn't enough to undo that glut overnight — but it's exactly the kind of climate-driven wobble that keeps long-term prices structurally higher than the pre-crisis era.
FAQ
Why does Spain matter so much for olive oil prices?
Spain produces close to half the world's olive oil, and a single province — Jaén — is the largest growing region on the planet. A weather shock there moves the global supply number in a way no other producer can, which is why a dry Spanish autumn becomes everyone's problem.
If production fell, why isn't olive oil getting more expensive?
Because the record 2024/25 harvest refilled stocks after years of scarcity. That glut is still working through the supply chain, so prices have eased from crisis highs even though 2025/26 output dipped about 4%. A modest decline doesn't immediately reverse a large surplus.
Is climate change permanently threatening olive oil?
It's making harvests more volatile rather than ending them. Drought, heat stress and erratic rainfall increasingly determine whether a year is strong or weak, and researchers expect that variability — layered on olive trees' natural alternate-bearing cycle — to keep long-term prices structurally elevated.
Sources: International Olive Council (Dec 2025), International Olive Council (Jan/Feb 2026), Olive Oil Times, Sustainability Science.
Image: Arnaud 25, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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