Copper analysts lift 2026 price forecast to $10,500 as supply crunch deepens

Copper will average $10,500 a tonne on the London Metal Exchange this year, according to a Reuters poll of 30 analysts released Monday, a 7.2 percent upward revision from the $9,796 median forecast that the same group of analysts produced just eight months earlier.

The upgrade — the sharpest in the survey’s recent history — follows a wave of mine-side disruptions across three of the world’s largest copper-producing nations that have erased the small surplus analysts were counting on to keep prices contained. Where the July 2025 poll projected a 40,000-tonne refined copper surplus for 2026, the latest survey now points to a deficit of roughly 150,000 tonnes. Production setbacks in Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Chile — jurisdictions that together supply close to 40 percent of the world’s mined copper — have swung the market from comfortable to tight in the space of two quarters.

It is a remarkable reversal.

“We expect copper to hold onto its recent gains and sustain these into 2026 and beyond,” said Matthew Sherwood, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Recent developments now suggest the refined copper market will begin to tighten earlier than we previously forecast.”

The worst single blow landed at Freeport-McMoRan’s Grasberg operation in Indonesia’s Papua province, the world’s second-largest copper mine. A mud-flow incident in September 2025 killed seven workers and triggered a sustained production slowdown that has persisted into 2026. Benchmark Minerals estimates the disruption alone could strip close to 100,000 tonnes of copper concentrate from this year’s supply — a hole large enough to tip the global balance into deficit even if every other major mine ran at nameplate capacity.

The problems are not confined to Indonesia. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, power supply instability and logistical bottlenecks have capped output growth at several operations, curbing a production ramp-up that the market had been banking on to fill the supply gap. In Chile, the world’s largest copper-producing nation, state-owned Codelco is navigating a multi-year production slide as ore grades at its ageing mines decline and new projects face repeated permitting and construction delays. The cumulative effect is a supply picture that looks tighter than it has at any point since the post-pandemic commodity rebound of 2021.

Copper has already rallied 25 percent so far in 2025. The demand side is not letting up. Grid electrification spending in China and India continues at elevated levels and the latest capital expenditure plans suggest it will stay there. Europe’s clean-energy infrastructure buildout — from offshore wind to EV charging networks — is inherently copper-intensive and shows no sign of slowing. Data-centre construction in the United States, driven by the AI investment cycle, is accelerating and consuming copper at rates the wiring-and-cabling supply chain was not designed for. None of these demand drivers looks likely to reverse in the near term.

The analysts are not unanimous. The poll’s range stretched from $9,200 to $11,500 a tonne, the widest spread in several survey rounds. That gap reflects genuine disagreement about how much supply the disrupted mines can claw back in the second half of the year. Grasberg’s recovery timeline is uncertain — Freeport has not committed to a firm restart date. Congo’s power issues could ease with seasonal rains. Codelco has surprised to the upside before. The most bullish forecasts assume at least one of these reversals materialises; the most bearish bank on none of them delivering.

What moves next

The immediate risk is that the deficit forecast itself tightens the physical market before any supply shortfall materialises. When 30 analysts publish sharply higher price projections, traders adjust their books, and industrial consumers — from Chinese smelters to European wire-rod mills — accelerate restocking to beat the move. The resulting inventory draw can tighten the spot market further, turning the forecast into a self-fulfilling prophecy at least in the near-term pricing window.

On the supply side, few analysts see a quick fix. Opening a new copper mine takes the better part of a decade in most jurisdictions, and the projects already under construction will add tonnes only incrementally. Oyu Tolgoi’s underground expansion in Mongolia is ramping up. Kamoa-Kakula’s phase-three expansion in Congo is advancing. But the new capacity those projects bring will not arrive fast enough to close a 150,000-tonne deficit in 2026. Recycling and scrap recovery help at the margin — secondary production accounts for roughly 30 percent of global refined copper use, a share that has been broadly stable for a decade — but they cannot replace primary supply at meaningful scale.

For copper consumers, the poll points one way. A market that was supposed to be balanced in 2026 is now short. The consensus has shifted faster than any single mine can fix, and the price — while it may not repeat the breakneck rally of 2025 — is not heading lower.