Ippodo Matcha Price Increase 2026: Every Grade, Old vs New

Ippodo announced on 1 September 2026 that it is revising prices and product specifications across its entire catalogue. The matcha changes land on 1 October 2026; a second set of changes to bancha, hojicha and genmaicha lands on 1 November 2026. This post lists what every matcha grade cost before and what it costs after, converts that to a price per gram so the grades are actually comparable, sets the rise against the five earlier ones since 2025, and gives a straight answer on whether to buy now. Ippodo is one of the brands we track for stock and price at Matcha Alert Club, so we watch these boxes go in and out of stock week to week.

What exactly changes on 1 October 2026?

Every matcha grade Ippodo sells goes up, by between 17% and 50%. The two koicha-grade powders take the biggest hit in both percentage and cash terms: Kanza moves from ¥10,000 to ¥15,000 and Kuon from ¥6,000 to ¥9,000, each for a 20 g box, each a 50% rise. The everyday tier moves far less — Ikuyo-no-mukashi rises 17%, from ¥1,200 to ¥1,400. The limited seasonal matcha, Tsukikage in autumn and Nodoka in spring, both go from ¥1,800 to ¥2,300. Every figure quoted here is in yen and excludes Japanese consumption tax, so a checkout total will run above these numbers.

How much does each Ippodo matcha grade cost now?

The table below is the full matcha list from Ippodo's revision, old price against new, sorted from the top of the ladder down. The 100 g bag rows are included separately because two grades, Sayaka-no-mukashi and Ikuyo-no-mukashi, sell in both a 20 g box and a larger bag. Read the percentage column rather than the yen column if you want to know where the pain really is: the cheapest grade in the list, Hatsu-mukashi, is going up by a third, a bigger proportional jump than Ummon-no-mukashi in the middle of the range.

What do the new prices work out to per gram?

Per gram is the only honest way to compare grades, because the boxes are not all the same size. On the new prices, Hatsu-mukashi is ¥40 per gram, up from ¥30. Ummon-no-mukashi, the grade most people step up to, is ¥250 per gram, up from ¥200. Kanza at the top is ¥750 per gram, up from ¥500. At roughly ¥147 to the US dollar (mid-market rate, September 2026), that puts Ummon-no-mukashi at about US$34 for a 20 g box, or roughly US$1.70 per gram.

One useful thing falls out of the arithmetic: the big bags are not cheaper. Sayaka-no-mukashi is ¥140 per gram whether you buy the 20 g box at ¥2,800 or the 100 g bag at ¥14,000. Ikuyo-no-mukashi is ¥70 per gram at both sizes. There is no bulk discount, so buy the size that matches how fast you drink, not the size you think saves money.

Which other Ippodo teas are getting more expensive?

Matcha is not the worst of it. Several gyokuro grades roughly double: Tenka-ichi goes from ¥5,000 to ¥10,000 for 50 g, Ippoen from ¥3,000 to ¥6,000 for 50 g, and the stem tea Kuki Gyokuro from ¥900 to ¥1,500. Sencha rises around 20% to 40%, with Kaboku 80 g moving from ¥2,500 to ¥3,500. Utensils go up by roughly 10% to 15%. Two new products arrive alongside the revision, a Hajime-no-Ippodo Matcha Starter Kit and a 400 g Mugicha, which is a fair sign Ippodo wants an affordable entry point to survive the increase.

Are the hojicha and genmaicha changes a price increase too?

Yes, and this is the change most likely to slip past a casual reader. On 1 November 2026, Gokujo Hojicha is renamed Hojicha and Gokujo Genmaicha is renamed Genmaicha. Those two, along with Kuki Hojicha and Wakayanagi, also drop from a 100 g pack to an 80 g pack priced at ¥1,000. The old 100 g packs sold for ¥600 to ¥700, so you were paying ¥6 to ¥7 per gram; at ¥1,000 for 80 g you are paying ¥12.50 per gram. The one-cup teabag boxes shrink the same way, from 25 bags to 22 — the gyokuro box goes to ¥2,300 for 22 bags, having been ¥1,800 for 25.

Has Ippodo raised prices before?

Five times since mid-2025, and the pattern matters more than any single announcement — the October 2026 revision is the sixth. Ippodo has been adjusting price, pack size and availability roughly every few months:

• 1 August 2025 — Important Notice about Matcha Supply Shortage and Revisions to Pricing: shortage declared, per-customer purchase limits introduced, and a price revision announced with details to follow.
• 1 October 2025 — Price and product changes coming into effect starting October 1, 2025: matcha prices revised and specifications changed, including several grades moving from 40 g to 20 g packs.
• 19 February 2026 — Important Notice: Industry Supply Shortages and Upcoming Bancha Restrictions: bancha put under purchase restrictions, where it has stayed since.
• 1 March 2026 — Product changes coming into effect starting March 1, 2026: Kanza, Kuon and Organic Matcha repackaged from 20 g cans to 20 g boxes; Gokujo Hojicha 200 g, Kuki Hojicha 200 g, Gokujo Genmaicha 200 g, Wakayanagi 200 g and Hojiko 400 g discontinued.
• 1 June 2026 — Price changes coming into effect starting June 1st, 2026: Uji-Shimizu 400 g went from ¥950 to ¥1,200, blamed on raw material and packaging costs.

Read together, the direction is one way. Nothing on that list has ever been reversed, and no grade has come back at its old price.

Why is Ippodo raising prices again?

The explanation Ippodo gives is a supply one, and it is consistent with what the trade has been saying since 2025. Global demand for matcha surged from around 2024. Tea is agricultural: a newly planted field takes roughly five years to reach its first harvest, so growers cannot answer a demand spike inside a season. In 2026 Japanese production shifted further toward tencha, the shaded leaf that matcha is milled from, which cut the volume left for gyokuro, sencha and bancha and pushed those categories up too.

That matches outside reporting. Fortune quoted a senior buyer at importer G.S. Haly paying 75% more for premium Japanese matcha on the 2025 crop, with lower grades expected to rise 30% to 50%, and noted US tariffs of 15% on Japanese matcha stacked on top. Coverage of the shortage has also pointed out that matcha is harvested only once a year from spring leaves, which caps how fast any producer can respond. Ippodo says it changed specifications alongside prices to keep quality intact while keeping products buyable, and that it does not expect prices to return to pre-2024 levels.

Should you buy Ippodo matcha now or wait?

Buy one box of the grade you drink, before 1 October 2026, and stop there. The saving is real: ¥1,000 on Ummon-no-mukashi, ¥200 on Ikuyo-no-mukashi, ¥5,000 on a box of Kanza. But matcha oxidises quickly once the seal is broken, and a 20 g box is roughly a month of daily bowls, so a stockpile of six boxes at the old price is mostly a stockpile of flat, dull powder by spring. If you have never bought Ippodo before, this is a reasonable moment to try the grade you were curious about rather than the one you were saving up for.

Waiting is the right call in one case only: if you are shopping across brands rather than committed to Ippodo. The shortage is industry-wide, but not every house has repriced on the same schedule, and a grade at a comparable tier elsewhere may still be sitting on 2025 pricing this month. You can check the current listings on our Ippodo listings page and set an alert if the grade you want is out of stock — restocks and repricings tend to land together.

Sources

• Ippodo: Oct./Nov. 2026 revisions to product specifications and pricing (1 September 2026)
• Ippodo: October 2026 product price revisions, per-SKU PDF
• Fortune: senior tea buyer sees enormous matcha price increase coming (16 September 2025)
• Global matcha shortage threatens to spike prices of a morning staple
• Ippodo: Important Notice about Matcha Supply Shortage and Revisions to Pricing (1 August 2025)
• Ippodo: Price and product changes coming into effect starting October 1, 2025

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