Cobalt Price Trend and Forecast 2026-2027

Key Takeaways

• Cobalt started 2025 at a nine-year low, with the global average benchmark at USD 24.80/KG. A single political decision in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in February changed everything. The export ban, and later the quota system, drove global prices to USD 55.29/KG by Q1 2026, a gain of more than 120 percent across five quarters.
• North America averaged USD 25.48/KG in Q1 2025, peaked at USD 43.16/KG in Q1 2026, a total gain of around 69 percent. U.S. aerospace and defence demand, which accounts for over 51 percent of domestic cobalt consumption (USGS), provided the structural floor that held prices up even during the temporary Q3 2025 pullback.
• North East Asia saw the most explosive run of the two regions, climbing from USD 24.11/KG in Q1 2025 to USD 67.42/KG in Q1 2026, a 180 percent surge. Chinese refineries, which process approximately 78 percent of global refined cobalt (International Energy Agency), bore the full brunt of the DRC feedstock shortage and drove prices sharply higher.
• The DRC implemented a four-month cobalt export ban on February 22, 2025, extended it by three months in June, and replaced it with an annual quota system in October, capping 2026 exports at 96,600 metric tons, roughly 44 percent of global 2024 production (S&P Global Market Intelligence).
• The cobalt market forecast for 2026 remains structurally bullish: Fastmarkets projects a supply deficit of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 metric tons, with quota underexecution in early 2026 tightening the feedstock pipeline further. Battery chemistry shifts toward LFP are the main demand-side risk.

What Is Cobalt and Why Does Its Price Matter?

Cobalt is a lustrous, bluish-grey metal sitting at atomic number 27. It does not occur in native metallic form in nature and is produced almost entirely as a by-product of nickel and copper mining, which means its supply is structurally tied to decisions made about other metals. That dependency is not an academic footnote. It is the single most important fact about cobalt pricing: supply cannot be quickly adjusted in response to cobalt prices alone, because most cobalt miners are primarily optimising for copper or nickel output.

The Democratic Republic of Congo produced an estimated 73 percent of the world's mined cobalt in 2025, with global mine output estimated at around 310,000 metric tons (U.S. Geological Survey). That level of geographic concentration, unprecedented among major industrial metals, gives DRC policy decisions an outsized and immediate impact on global prices. The February 2025 export ban demonstrated this in real time: prices roughly doubled within months of a single government announcement.

Why do cobalt prices matter beyond the mining sector? Because cobalt sits inside the supply chains of some of the most strategically important industries of the energy transition era. Lithium-ion batteries with nickel cobalt manganese (NCM) or nickel cobalt aluminium (NCA) cathode chemistry power the high-range electric vehicles built by most Western and Korean automakers. Cobalt-based superalloys enable jet engines, military aircraft, and industrial gas turbines to operate at temperatures that would destroy any other alloy. And in North America in particular, over half of all cobalt consumed goes into the superalloy sector, a sector that cannot substitute away from cobalt without redesigning the physics of high-temperature metallurgy.

Which Sectors Are Driving Cobalt Demand?

Electric vehicle batteries: EVs represent the single largest and fastest-growing segment of cobalt demand globally. NCM and NCA battery chemistries remain dominant in premium and long-range vehicles, particularly in North America, Europe, and South Korea. However, the rise of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries in China and entry-level EV segments is eroding cobalt intensity per vehicle. The Cobalt Institute estimated total cobalt demand at approximately 213.5 thousand metric tons in 2025, with EVs as the primary growth driver.

Superalloys and aerospace: Cobalt's thermal stability and high-temperature resistance make it irreplaceable in jet engine turbine blades, combustor liners, and industrial gas turbines. In the United States, superalloys account for approximately 51 percent of cobalt consumption (USGS). Record order backlogs at Boeing and Airbus through 2025 have kept aerospace cobalt demand firm, and defence spending growth has added an additional demand stream through military platforms, unmanned systems, and smart weapons.

Consumer electronics: Smartphones, laptops, tablets, and portable devices using lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) batteries represent around 25 to 26 percent of global cobalt consumption. While growth in this segment has moderated as replacement cycles lengthen, it provides a stable baseline of chemical-grade demand from Chinese and Korean manufacturers.

Defence and strategic stockpiling: The U.S. Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) issued procurement tenders for alloy-grade cobalt in the second half of 2025, its first such activity since 1990. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed in July 2025 appropriated USD 2 billion for the National Defense Stockpile, with cobalt among the targeted strategic materials. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly signalled the intention to set price floors for critical minerals in October 2025, framing domestic cobalt supply as a national security priority.

Energy storage, catalysts, and hard metals: Cobalt catalysts underpin petroleum refining, and cobalt-containing hard metals are used in cutting tools and wear-resistant applications across industrial manufacturing. These segments are slower-growth but structurally stable, providing demand continuity independent of battery and aerospace cycles.

Global Cobalt Price Trend in 2025

The global cobalt price story in 2025 is, at its core, the story of one geopolitical decision and its cascading consequences. When the DRC government announced a cobalt export ban on February 22, the market had been sitting near a nine-year low. Prior to the ban, the Platts-assessed European cobalt metal price had fallen to USD 10.25/lb on February 21, 2025, its lowest level since 2016, and our global benchmark derived from North American and North East Asian VMP prices averaged just USD 24.80/KG in Q1 2025.

What followed was one of the most compressed commodity price reversals in recent memory. By Q2 2025, the global average had surged 35.7 percent to USD 33.65/KG as markets scrambled to absorb the shock of zero DRC exports. Q3 saw modest further gains of 3.4 percent to USD 34.80/KG as Chinese inventories drew down. Then came Q4: the replacement of the ban with a strict quota system (18,125 metric tons for Q4, representing a fraction of prior export volumes) triggered a 39.2 percent surge to USD 48.44/KG. Q1 2026 pushed higher still, adding 14.1 percent to USD 55.29/KG as quota underexecution in early 2026 kept the feedstock pipeline lean.

Note: Global values represent the simple average of North American and North East Asian VMP quarterly benchmarks. QoQ percentages are calculated from underlying unrounded averages; displayed prices are rounded to two decimal places.

North America Cobalt Price Trends in 2025

North America opened 2025 at USD 25.48/KG, cobalt's lowest regional benchmark in nearly a decade. The U.S. market had been flooded with Chinese-refined cobalt metal over the preceding 18 months, as Chinese processors converted DRC hydroxide at record rates and exported via Rotterdam into the U.S. supply chain, a dynamic that had pushed prices steadily downward since 2022.

The DRC export ban in February flipped the script immediately. By Q2, North American prices jumped 33.0 percent to USD 33.89/KG as buyers scrambled for spot material. Q3 2025 saw a brief 6.6 percent pullback to USD 31.64/KG: this was not demand weakness, but rather a market pause as participants assessed how strictly the DRC would enforce the ban and whether Chinese inventories would be sufficient to bridge the gap. The pause ended decisively in Q4. When ARECOMS announced the quota system on September 21 with tight annual caps, U.S. buyers reacted sharply. Prices climbed 23.5 percent to USD 39.09/KG in Q4, driven by aerospace restocking, early indications of DLA procurement interest, and physical shortages in alloy-grade material.

Q1 2026 added a further 10.4 percent to USD 43.16/KG as the quota system's real-world bite became clear. Reports indicated that less than 50 percent of the Q4 2025 export quota had actually left the DRC by year-end, due to administrative and logistics delays at DRC border crossings. That material shortfall rippled into U.S. inventory pipelines within months, keeping North American prices elevated despite the DRC having technically replaced the outright ban with a managed quota.

North East Asia Cobalt Price Trends in 2025

North East Asia's cobalt story in 2025 was the most dramatic of the two tracked regions, and also the most consequential for global pricing. China accounts for approximately 78 percent of refined cobalt production worldwide (International Energy Agency), processing cobalt hydroxide from the DRC into metal, sulfate, and tetroxide before selling downstream to battery manufacturers, electronics assemblers, and export markets. When the DRC export tap shut off, Chinese refineries felt the squeeze before anyone else.

Prices opened Q1 2025 at USD 24.11/KG, very close to the North American benchmark. The export ban announcement on February 22 triggered an immediate reaction: within days, futures on the Wuxi Stainless Steel Exchange surged 15 percent overnight per CRU Group data, and domestic spot prices spiked 8 percent within 48 hours. By Q2, NEA prices had risen 38.5 percent to USD 33.40/KG. Unlike North America, which paused in Q3, NEA continued climbing: a further 13.6 percent to USD 37.95/KG as Chinese refineries worked through remaining DRC inventory while competing aggressively for non-DRC sources (Indonesian MHP, recycled black mass, and Philippine nickel laterite streams).

Q4 2025 brought the most dramatic single-quarter move of the entire period: a 52.3 percent surge to USD 57.79/KG. This coincided precisely with the ARECOMS quota announcement on September 21 and the October 16 transition from ban to quota. The market's reaction reflected a fundamental repricing of cobalt supply risk. China imports of cobalt intermediates had already slumped more than 90 percent in August 2025 compared with a year earlier (DRC ARECOMS; trade data). The combination of tight quotas, persistent logistics delays at DRC export points, and speculative positioning pushed NEA prices to levels not seen since the 2022 peak cycle. Q1 2026 added a further 16.7 percent to USD 67.42/KG as the quota backlog from Q4 2025 (initially estimated at less than half-utilised) was rolled over rather than immediately released.

What Factors Drove Cobalt Costs in 2025?

• DRC export ban and quota system: The single most important price driver. The DRC accounts for 73 percent of global mined cobalt (USGS). The February 22, 2025 export ban, extended in June and replaced by a quota system in October, removed the majority of global feedstock supply from the market for most of the year. The quota cap of 96,600 metric tons for 2026 represents less than half of the roughly 220,000 metric tons produced globally in 2024 (S&P Global Market Intelligence).
• Chinese inventory drawdown: Before the ban, China had accumulated approximately 85 thousand metric tons of cobalt intermediates in inventory by end-June 2025 (CRU Group). As refineries consumed these stocks without new DRC inflows, Chinese prices tracked the drawdown trajectory. By Q4 2025, usable stocks had tightened materially, pushing the NEA benchmark to its highest level since early 2022.
• U.S. defence and aerospace demand: North American demand was underpinned by superalloys throughout 2025. Aerospace order backlogs at Boeing and Airbus remained near records, supporting steady cobalt consumption for jet engine components. U.S. DoD procurement interest, flagged by the Defense Logistics Agency, added a sentiment premium. CSIS analysis published in December 2025 estimated that over 51 percent of U.S. cobalt consumption was driven by the superalloy sector (USGS data).
• Battery chemistry shift toward LFP: This was the main demand-side headwind. Lithium iron phosphate batteries, which contain no cobalt, grew their share of the global EV battery market to approximately 60 percent of capacity in 2025. This shift particularly affected Chinese domestic EV market cobalt demand. However, Western automakers and premium EV segments continued preferring NCM/NCA chemistries for their energy density advantage, maintaining structural demand in North America and Europe.
• CMOC Group production dynamics: CMOC Group, the world's largest cobalt producer, increased cobalt output by 13 percent year on year in H1 2025 despite the export restrictions (CRU Group). This created an unusual divergence: production continued while exports were blocked, building a stock overhang inside the DRC. CMOC reported 48,600 metric tons of cobalt inventory in March 2025, exceeding Glencore's entire 2024 cobalt output (S&P Global). These stockpiles will be released gradually under the quota framework, putting a ceiling on the velocity of any 2026 price recovery.
• Indonesian supply growth as partial offset: Indonesia's high-pressure acid leach (HPAL) cobalt projects provided a partial alternative source of intermediates for Chinese refineries. Indonesia's share of global cobalt supply was estimated at around 14 percent in 2025 (USGS), up from 7 percent in earlier years. However, the ramp-up pace was insufficient to compensate for DRC supply losses at the scale required by Chinese refining capacity.

Cobalt Market Forecast for 2026

The cobalt market forecast for 2026 is the most straightforwardly bullish of any commodity covered in this series. Every structural variable points to tighter supply and sustained elevated prices. The question is not whether prices will stay high but how high they go and whether demand destruction from LFP adoption moderates the rally before the DRC quota framework is revised.

On the supply side, the 2026 annual quota of 96,600 metric tons from the DRC is the hard ceiling. If the Q4 2025 quota backlog (18,125 metric tons) cannot be fully exported until later in 2026, actual ex-DRC volumes in H1 2026 may be materially lower than the headline number. Fastmarkets analysts projected a supply deficit of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 metric tons in 2026 assuming normal quota execution, and noted that logistical disruptions (including a bridge collapse on a key DRC export route) could widen this gap further. CMOC's large in-DRC stockpile provides a potential release valve, but its timing depends on ARECOMS discretionary quota adjustments.

On the demand side, the Cobalt Institute's Q4 2025 update estimated global demand would grow approximately 7 percent in 2026 to around 219,600 metric tons, recovering from a modest 3 percent growth year in 2025. Aerospace demand is expected to remain firm, battery restocking by cell manufacturers is likely, and U.S. strategic procurement could add incremental volumes. CSIS analysis laid out the case for a government price floor mechanism for cobalt, a step that would add a durable demand backstop if implemented.

Expected Cobalt Price Range (2026)

The wide range reflects the genuine uncertainty around DRC quota execution, Chinese inventory levels, and the pace of Indonesian HPAL ramp-up. NEA is expected to remain at a significant premium to NA throughout 2026, reflecting the more direct feedstock squeeze on Chinese refineries and the domestic battery sector's structural need for cobalt sulfate and tetroxide.

Key Analyst Insights for the Cobalt Market

2025 turned cobalt back into a geopolitical commodity. Three years of post-2022 price collapse created a market where Western miners were shutting operations, Chinese processors were running at full utilisation, and the DRC's ARECOMS was watching export value collapse in real time. The export ban was a rational state intervention: the DRC controls 73 percent of the world's cobalt supply (USGS) and was watching that resource exported at prices not seen since 2016. Several themes will define 2026:

• DRC quota execution is the critical variable. Less than 50 percent of Q4 2025 quota was reportedly shipped by year-end due to paperwork and logistics. The rolled-over volumes will re-enter in 2026, but their timing and pace will set the tone for H1 price direction. ARECOMS has reserved the right to adjust quotas quarterly.
• S. defence procurement is the new demand wildcard. The Defense Logistics Agency's cobalt tender activity in H2 2025 signals a structural shift in U.S. sourcing strategy. CSIS analysis proposed price floor mechanisms similar to the DoD's NdPr floor for MP Materials. If implemented at even a modest scale, this would create a durable floor under North American alloy-grade cobalt pricing.
• Indonesian HPAL ramp-up is the medium-term supply answer, but it is years away from covering the DRC gap. USGS estimated Indonesia at roughly 14 percent of global supply in 2025. Even aggressive expansion scenarios keep the DRC firmly in the majority through 2030.
• Battery chemistry divergence will grow sharper. North American and European EV makers keep NCM/NCA for premium range, but Chinese mass-market EV adoption is increasingly LFP-based. This means cobalt demand growth is becoming more geographically concentrated in Western markets, even as refining remains predominantly Chinese.
• Recycling as a secondary supply source. Advanced hydrometallurgical processes now achieve recovery rates exceeding 95 percent from spent lithium-ion batteries (Cobalt Institute). As the first generation of EV batteries reaches end of life in the late 2020s, secondary cobalt will become a meaningful supply stream, reducing structural dependence on DRC primary output.
• CMOC's in-DRC stockpile is the market's most important unknown. Approximately 48,600 metric tons (more than Glencore's entire 2024 output) was stockpiled in DRC as of March 2025 (S&P Global). The mechanism and pace of its release under the quota framework will determine whether 2026 ends in deficit or manages a partial rebalancing.

Key Takeaways for Buyers and Manufacturers

For Buyers

• If you are buying cobalt for aerospace or defence superalloy use, forward coverage is now a business necessity, not a risk management preference. The supply deficit environment flagged by Fastmarkets for 2026 and 2027 means spot availability of alloy-grade material will remain constrained, and procurement teams that do not have term contracts in place face meaningful price and availability risk.
• Track DRC ARECOMS announcements closely. The authority has reserved the right to adjust quarterly quotas based on market conditions. Any upward revision would signal a potential price ceiling; any tightening or enforcement action would push prices sharply higher. ARECOMS communiques are the single highest-signal news item for cobalt procurement planning.
• Monitor Chinese refinery utilisation rates as a leading indicator. When Chinese refiners cut utilisation, it signals downstream demand softness before it appears in headline prices. Conversely, rising utilisation alongside falling hydroxide imports signals an impending inventory squeeze that will flow through to metal prices within six to eight weeks.
• Evaluate Indonesian-origin intermediates as a DRC-alternative. Indonesian mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP) from HPAL operations is structurally growing in volume. While it does not yet compensate for DRC volumes, buyers who have qualified Indonesian feedstock in their supply chain have more optionality when DRC quotas tighten.
• Factor in recycled cobalt briquettes for non-battery chemical applications. As battery recycling scales in North America and Europe, black mass-derived cobalt is becoming a traceable, lower-carbon alternative for select applications. Qualifying suppliers now reduces sourcing risk when primary markets tighten.

For Manufacturers

• Vertical integration into cobalt processing outside China is now a strategic imperative for Western battery and superalloy manufacturers. The concentration of 78 percent of refining in China (IEA) is a systemic risk that regulators in both the U.S. and EU have flagged explicitly. Qualifying additional processing partners in North America, Europe, or allied jurisdictions reduces geopolitical exposure.
• Battery manufacturers using NCM/NCA chemistry should pursue longer-term cobalt contracts and direct mine-to-cell offtake agreements. The DRC quota system creates a predictable-but-tight supply environment through 2027. Battery makers who rely on spot purchasing for cobalt sulfate will face structurally higher input costs than those with contracted supply chains.
• Superalloy producers should engage directly with the DoD National Defense Stockpile framework. If the U.S. government implements a price floor mechanism for alloy-grade cobalt, qualifying as an approved supplier creates a guaranteed revenue stream that funds capacity investment and supply chain resilience.
• Invest in battery recycling hydrometallurgy. Recovery rates exceeding 95 percent from spent LIBs (Cobalt Institute) make cobalt recycling economically attractive at current price levels. Building recycled cobalt capacity now positions manufacturers for the mid-2020s wave of first-generation EV battery retirements.
• Chinese refiners should consider diversifying feedstock beyond DRC hydroxide. Indonesian HPAL material, Philippine laterite streams, and secondary battery inputs all carry lower geopolitical risk. The 2025 export ban demonstrated that 18 months of capacity investment can be rendered idle by a single sovereign decision with two days' notice.