Tim’s take:
A harvest progress page published before a single official figure exists might look premature. It is the opposite. The baseline is the part everyone skips and then wishes they had: what went in the ground, what condition it reached, and what last year’s finals were. Without those, the first percentage that lands in mid-July is just a number in a field of noise.
The one figure below I keep coming back to is the barley area: 963,000 hectares, the smallest since 2010. Set that against 30% more oilseed rape and a wheat area nudged up, and you can see the shape of the season before a combine moves. It also tells you why anyone on a malting contract should watch the early quality columns more closely than the yield ones.
Bookmark this page and come back from mid-July, when AHDB’s weekly figures start. Read the percentages against the five-year average, not against last week, and keep your selling plan next to the pace numbers, because that is where the two decide each other.
This page tracks harvest 2026 as it happens: what proportion of each crop has been cut, what the early yields and quality look like, and what it means for.
Introduction
This page tracks harvest 2026 as it happens: what proportion of each crop has been cut, what the early yields and quality look like, and what it means for anyone deciding whether to sell off the combine or put grain in the shed. We update it weekly through the season as AHDB’s official harvest progress figures land, with the newest week at the top.
If you are after the pre-season picture, what was planted and in what condition, that lives in our harvest 2026 outlook. If you want the timing question, when each crop comes off and in what order, see our guide to harvest 2026 dates.
Week beginning 29 June: poised, not started
As of early July, the official score is nil-nil: AHDB’s weekly GB harvest progress reports have not yet begun for 2026, with the first edition of the season usually published by the middle of July. The first winter barley in the south and east is the crop to watch between now and then.
What we do know is the state of the crops going in. AHDB’s crop condition report, with data to 22 June 2026, put 58% of GB winter wheat in good or excellent condition, down from 64% a month earlier after a dry April and May. Winter barley stood at 64% good or excellent, winter oilseed rape at 80%, and spring barley at 55%. England carried the worst of the moisture stress; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had a kinder run.
Two things follow from that. First, expect an early and uneven start: drought-stressed crops on light eastern land ripen ahead of schedule, so the first cutting reports may look quick without saying much about the national crop. Second, the winter oilseed rape story is worth watching all season. The area is up 30% on last year and the crop has the best condition scores of anything in the ground.
The baseline: what is in the ground for 2026
AHDB’s Early Bird Survey set out the areas planted for harvest 2026:
Wheat: 1,675,000 hectares, up 1% on 2025.
Oilseed rape: 316,000 hectares, up 30% and the largest area since 2023.
Winter barley: 356,000 hectares, down 2%.
Spring barley: 610,000 hectares, down 15%.
Total barley: 963,000 hectares, the smallest barley area since 2010.
Oats: 170,000 hectares, down 14%.
The shape of the season is in those numbers before a single field is cut: more wheat and much more rape to gather, and the smallest barley harvest in sixteen years, which matters for anyone on a malting or feed contract.
The 2025 yardstick
To judge whether a 2026 yield figure is good news, you need last year’s finals. AHDB’s closing 2025 harvest report, with the season complete by late September, put average GB yields at:
Wheat: 7.6 t/ha.
Winter barley: 6.7 t/ha.
Spring barley: 5.8 t/ha.
Winter oilseed rape: 3.7 t/ha.
Oats: 5.2 t/ha.
When the first 2026 yield indications arrive, those are the lines to read them against. Early-cut fields tend to be the stressed ones, so first-week yield reports usually flatter nobody; the season average only settles once the main August wheat area is in.
What the first report of a season usually shows
The opening report of a harvest season follows a pattern, and knowing it stops you over-reading week one.
It is nearly all winter barley. In 2025, the earliest-starting season in AHDB’s records for at least 19 years, the first report showed 10% of the GB winter barley area cut by 9 July, against a five-year average of about 6% at that point, with wheat untouched. The regional spread was the real story: the Eastern region had 38% of its winter barley in, the South East 19%, and the north and west had not started.
Expect the same shape in 2026, possibly with a sharper eastern skew. The dry spring stressed crops hardest on the light land in eastern England, and stressed crops come fit first. A fast-looking week one driven by burnt-up fields on the Suffolk sands tells you about the weather in May, not the size of the national crop.
The reports that matter for the season’s verdict come from mid-August, when the wheat percentages start moving in earnest and the early yield indications carry real area behind them.
Beyond tonnes: the quality signals to watch
Yield gets the headlines, but for a lot of farms the quality columns in the weekly reports decide the year, because quality is the gap between premium and feed money.
For wheat, the two numbers that matter are protein and Hagberg falling number. Milling premiums hang on both, and Hagberg is the fragile one: it falls when ripe crops stand through warm, wet spells, which is why a broken August forecast puts milling growers on edge. For malting barley, the buyer is testing germination and grain nitrogen, and a wet harvest raises the risk of pre-germination that turns a malting sample into feed. Specific weight, reported for all the cereals, is the broad-brush indicator: a light, screenings-heavy sample after a stressed season shows up there first.
The reading rule from early weeks applies double to quality: first-cut fields are disproportionately the stressed ones, and their samples flatter nobody. A poor specific weight in mid-July from drought-hit barley says little about the milling wheat still finishing on stronger land. Quality verdicts, like yield verdicts, are August and September stories.
Selling off the combine or storing: the harvest decision
Every week of harvest progress feeds the same on-farm question: sell now, off the combine, or dry it, store it and carry it.
Harvest is the point of maximum supply, so spot prices tend to sag as the season peaks; the market knows the grain has to go somewhere, and haulage and intake queues do the rest. Carrying grain into the winter usually earns a premium over harvest movement, but it is not free money: it has to beat the cost of drying to a safe storage moisture, the interest on money not yet banked, and the risk that the market moves against you anyway.
A fast, heavy harvest tips that calculation one way, a stop-start season with quality worries tips it the other, because anything dry and in specification gets scarcer when the weather breaks. That is why the pace numbers on this page and the price columns belong together. For the mechanics of the decision, from reading ex-farm quotes against futures to what a forward contract is actually insuring, see our working guide to UK farm prices in 2026.
The price backdrop
Harvest pace and grain prices move together. A fast, heavy harvest weighs on spot prices as grain floods the market; a stop-start season with quality worries can put a premium on anything dry and in specification.
Going into the season, AHDB’s arable market report of 29 June 2026 had new-crop feed wheat (November 2026 futures, East Anglia) at £181.50 per tonne, up £2 on the week, with hot, dry weather across France and the US Midwest putting weather risk back into the market. Where that goes as combines roll is one of the two numbers that decide what harvest 2026 is actually worth; the other is what your own weighbridge says.
For how to read the price series themselves, deadweight cattle and lamb, feed wheat, farmgate milk, see our working guide to UK farm prices in 2026.
How to read the weekly AHDB figures
From mid-July, AHDB publishes the percentage of each crop harvested, nationally and by region, for wheat, winter barley, spring barley, oats and winter oilseed rape, alongside early yield and quality indications. Three habits make the numbers useful rather than noise.
Compare against the five-year average, not last week. Ten per cent of winter barley cut in the second week of July is quick; the same figure in August is a crawl.
Watch the regional split. National percentages hide the gradient: the east can be half done while the north has not started, and in a stretched season like this one the gap will be wide.
Treat early quality reports with care. The first cut fields are often the stressed ones, and specific weights and nitrogen contents from them rarely represent the crop that follows.
Update log
4 July 2026: page created ahead of the season. Crop condition baseline (data to 22 June) and Early Bird planted areas in place, with 2025 final yields as the comparison line. First AHDB GB harvest progress report of 2026 expected around mid-July; from then on this page is updated weekly, newest week at the top, through to the last spring barley in September. If you spot the combines moving in your area before the official figures do, the reports always lag the fields by a few days.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much of harvest 2026 has been completed?
As of early July 2026, official cutting figures have not yet been published: AHDB’s first weekly harvest progress report of the season is due around mid-July. The first crop to be cut is winter barley in southern and eastern England. This page is updated weekly once the official figures begin.
When is the first AHDB harvest report of 2026?
AHDB usually publishes the first GB harvest progress report of the season by the middle of July, then weekly through to late September. In 2025 the first report covered cutting up to 9 July, the earliest start for at least 19 years, after a dry run into the summer.
Where do the weekly harvest figures come from?
From AHDB’s GB harvest progress reports, compiled during the season from a network of reporting agronomists and merchants and published weekly from mid-July to late September. They cover wheat, winter and spring barley, oats and winter oilseed rape, with the percentage of each crop harvested nationally and by region plus early yield and quality indications. We read each edition as it lands and update this page with what matters.
What yields are expected for harvest 2026?
No official 2026 yield forecasts are out yet. The reference points are 2025’s final GB averages: wheat 7.6 t/ha, winter barley 6.7 t/ha, spring barley 5.8 t/ha, winter oilseed rape 3.7 t/ha and oats 5.2 t/ha. With 58% of winter wheat rated good or excellent in late June after a dry spring, moisture through early July will decide which side of those lines 2026 falls.
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Source: AHDB
