Northwest Cherry Harvest Expected To Start Next Week

At last week’s annual 5 state meeting, Northwest Cherries released the 2nd crop estimate of the 2026 season; 18.4-19.2 million 20-pound boxes.  Eric Patrick, President of Northwest Cherries called it a great, marketable number.

“It's a little below our average over the last five years, but it's a great number," Patrick stressed.  "And that number will still change. So, you know, it could still go up a little bit, maybe down a hair. But, you know, we are really expecting really nice quality. And when the crop is average size, then we tend to get bigger fruit and consumers love bigger fruit. So, when we go in feeling, hey, this is a nice average size crop, then we usually see fruit size up half a size to a full size.” 

Retailers Are Chomping At The Bit

Harvest is expected to start May 25th-27th, and Patrick said consumers can’t wait.

“The North American market, they're excited for cherries right now, especially with California's crop numbers down, so retailers are chomping at the bit to get started with Pacific Northwest cherries," Patrick said.  "And then international, same thing, we're not supplying them with large amounts of export cherries right now out of the West Coast so this is really a wide open landing path for us and we're seeing you know continued growth in some countries like Thailand and what we want to do with Taiwan and you know even Japan's playing good right now so and we just met with some Australian retailers last evening so the world is looking for Northwest cherries right now and we're excited to provide them to them.”

The industry is currently anticipating the first major volume peak around June 25th, followed by another strong shipping window during the second week of July.

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