Try buying a bag of pistachios at the supermarket in the next few weeks and take a good look at the price. What you are seeing is not a label error but the photograph of a crisis that has built layer upon layer, and which in March 2026 reached the breaking point.
According to Expana data, the wholesale price of pistachios reached $4.57 per pound, the highest value in eight years. But what is happening?
The issue is complex and involves the war in Iran, climate change but also Dubai Chocolate, the chocolate bar that has gone viral on social media.
Because pistachios are becoming more and more expensive
Iran is not only one of the places where pistachios grow best in the world, it is literally the country that dictates the pace of the global market. With around a fifth of world production and a share of almost 30% of exports, Tehran is the supplier on which the entire supply chain depends. But today, that supply chain is broken.
Since the end of February 2026, the military escalation involving Iran, the United States and Israel has made the routes in the Strait of Hormuz extremely unstable and maritime traffic has significantly slowed down. For pistachio traders this means only one thing: it is increasingly difficult to find goods, and the little that does circulate has a price that reflects the risk.
It would be wrong, however, to attribute everything to the war crisis. The pistachio market had already been under pressure for months. In 2025, drought hit three major producing basins simultaneously: Iran, Türkiye and California. Harvests remained below expectations, and supply contracted at a time when demand was accelerating. Prices had already risen by about a third over the course of the year, even before the armed conflict broke out.
Added to this were international sanctions and internal Iranian turbulence, which had already complicated export logistics for some time and caused the value of the rial, the national currency, to collapse. The conflict in fact did not create the crisis but multiplied it.
Then there is a third protagonist in this story, the so-called Dubai Chocolate. In recent years, bars filled with pistachio cream and knafeh paste have become a global phenomenon, fueled by social media and replicated on an industrial scale by major confectionery brands around the world. Pistachio ice creams, spreads, drinks, pralines, pistachio has invaded shelves and menus and the food industry has contributed to increasing pressure on demand in a market already under stress.
Should we give up pistachios?
The global pistachio market is worth about $5.5 billion today and is expected to grow to $7.2 billion over the next five years, according to Mordor Intelligence. If the logistical situation in the Middle East does not unblock, however, that growth could translate not into more product available, but into increasingly higher prices for increasingly smaller quantities.
The real risk, according to sector analysts, is that pistachios cease to be a commonly used ingredient and become almost a luxury good, with cascading consequences on everything that contains it: from ice creams to spreads, from desserts to baked goods.
