Vietnam Coffee Harvest Season Explained

The main Robusta harvest

Robusta accounts for the large majority of Vietnam's coffee production, concentrated in the Central Highlands provinces of Đắk Lắk, Gia Lai, Đắk Nông, and Kon Tum. Peer-reviewed agronomic research supports a core October-to-harvest window. Denis et al. (2022), published in Remote Sensing, divide Vietnamese coffee phenology into five periods and place the ripening/harvest period for Central Highlands coffee at October to December. Kouadio et al. (2021), published in Ecological Modelling, describe a similar five-period calendar, with ripening/harvest centered on October to December and harvest-related activity continuing into January in their monthly modelling data.

Industry sources describe a broadly consistent pattern with some additional detail on peak timing and later tails. Sucafina reported the 2024/25 Robusta harvest beginning in the second week of October, with peak picking in November extending into the first half of January. VietCoffeeTraders describes a longer overall window, running from October through February or March, with harvest beginning gradually in early October at lower elevations and wrapping up later at higher elevations. Halio Coffee's regional table places the Central Highlands Robusta harvest start in late October or November, with peak picking from November through January, and a possible tail extending into February in some areas or for later-ripening plots.

Taken together, peer-reviewed and industry sources agree on the core pattern even where exact end dates vary: Robusta harvest begins in early-to-mid October, is concentrated in the October-December/January window identified by agronomic research, and can extend into February or occasionally March in some areas according to industry reporting. A specific farm's harvest date within this window depends on elevation, local rainfall, flowering timing, and cherry ripeness, so a precise date should always be confirmed with the specific origin rather than assumed from a general calendar.

Why Arabica regions harvest at different times

Vietnam's Arabica-growing regions do not share one harvest calendar. Northern Arabica areas, including Sơn La, Điện Biên, and Quảng Trị, generally harvest earlier than the Central Highlands' Robusta crop and earlier than Lâm Đồng's Arabica. Sucafina reported that the 2024/25 Arabica harvest in these northern regions began in September and would finish around mid-December, with the harvest already at 75-85 percent complete or more in these areas by the time of its report.

Southern Arabica, concentrated in Lâm Đồng province around Đà Lạt, runs later. Sucafina placed Lâm Đồng's 2024/25 Arabica harvest completion around mid-January, considerably later than the northern regions. Halio Coffee's regional table describes Lâm Đồng's Arabica harvest beginning in late November or December, with peak picking from December through February and occasional extension into March.

It is tempting to explain this gap as a simple contrast between a cooler, higher-elevation Lâm Đồng and a lower-elevation northern Arabica belt, but the elevation data does not support that framing. Sơn La's Arabica is commonly grown around 800 to 1,200 meters, with some areas above 1,300 meters, and Điện Biên's Arabica is grown at a broadly similar or higher range, around 900 to 1,400 meters; WSCafe notes that the wider Sơn La and Điện Biên provinces sit within mountain ranges reaching 1,800 and nearly 2,200 meters respectively. These are not low-elevation environments. The observed timing gap between northern and southern Arabica regions is better attributed to a combination of regional climate, latitude, local rainfall patterns, flowering timing, and site-specific growing conditions, rather than to elevation alone.

Marketing year versus harvest season

Vietnam's coffee harvest calendar should not be confused with the marketing year used in official trade statistics. USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service reports Vietnamese coffee production and exports using an October-to-September marketing year, a convention that has remained consistent across USDA's Vietnam coffee reporting. A "marketing year 2025/26" figure therefore spans the period from October 2025 through September 2026, not the calendar year 2025 or 2026 individually.

This distinction matters when comparing harvest timing with production statistics. The bulk of a given marketing year's Robusta crop is harvested within the first few months of that marketing year, roughly October through December or January, consistent with both the peer-reviewed and industry harvest windows described above. Arabica from northern regions is harvested even earlier within that same marketing year, while Lâm Đồng's Arabica harvest can extend well into the second calendar year of that same marketing-year period.

A reader comparing a harvest report from one source with a production forecast from another should check whether each figure refers to a calendar-year harvest window or a marketing-year production total, since the two describe different, only partially overlapping, spans of time.

Harvest timing at a glance