The Australian Tea Drinking Report 2026: How a Nation of Coffee Lovers Is Quietly Rediscovering Tea

Published by O2H TEA | April 2026 · Updated 26 October 2026 · Version 1.1

Data sources: Roy Morgan, Expert Market Research, IMARC Group, CHOICE, Canstar Blue, Google Trends, Statista (via Wikipedia), TeaVision, FaBA, Mark & Spark Solutions, and O2H TEA store data (Shopify Analytics)

Key Numbers

Australian market — third-party sources

• About 9.8 million Australians aged 14 and over — 50% — drank at least one cup of tea in an average week in the 12 months to June 2016. (Roy Morgan, n = 14,956)
• Weekly tea drinking rises with age: 25% of 14–17-year-olds compared with 64% of Australians aged 65 and over. (Roy Morgan, 2016)
• The Australian tea market was worth about AUD 690 million in 2025 and is forecast to grow about 5.1% a year to 2035. (Expert Market Research, 2025) IMARC Group's separate estimate is USD 512 million for 2024.
• Australian Google searches for "matcha" in 2025 were about seven times their 2019 level. (Google Trends)
• In CHOICE's March 2024 blind taste test of 32 supermarket black teas, Aldi's Just Organic Black Tea ranked first, at about 6 cents a bag. (CHOICE, 2024)

O2H TEA store data — one Melbourne-based online retailer

• November and December accounted for 47% of O2H TEA's online orders in 2025 and half of its online sales value. (Shopify Analytics, Online Store, calendar year 2025)
• Our top-selling tea from February 2024 to April 2026 was Sakura Blossom, a sakura-strawberry oolong blend, at about a quarter of all the tea we sold online, followed by Peach Mountain, a white-peach oolong. (Shopify Analytics, Online Store, share of tea units)

1. The State of Tea in Australia

Australia is a coffee country. Everyone knows that. Melbourne's specialty coffee scene is world-famous, and the flat white is practically a national export.

But here is the number most people miss: 9.8 million Australians — 50% of the population aged 14 and over — drank tea at least once a week (Roy Morgan, July 2015 – June 2016). That is not a niche. That was half of all Australians aged 14 and over.

The Australian tea market was valued at approximately AUD $690 million in 2025, with a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.1% through 2035 (Expert Market Research, 2025). The IMARC Group estimates the market at USD $512 million in 2024, forecasting growth to USD $761 million by 2033 at a 4.51% CAGR.

Where Australia sits globally tells an interesting story. As of 2016, tea consumption per person was approximately 0.75 kg per year in Australia — well behind Turkey (3.16 kg), the United Kingdom (1.82 kg), and New Zealand (1.19 kg), but ahead of the United States (0.23 kg) (Statista, compiled by Wikipedia). In other words, Australians drink more tea than Americans, but far less than the British. There is room to grow — and the growth is happening, just not in the categories you might expect.

What is growing and what is not

The clearest story in Australian tea is the gap between everyday black tea, where price is a poor guide to taste, and specialty tea, where interest is growing. In CHOICE's March 2024 blind taste test of 32 supermarket black teas, Aldi's Just Organic Black Tea ranked first at about 6 cents a bag, and three of the top performers were among the cheapest per bag.

Meanwhile, the specialty tea segment is expanding rapidly:

• Matcha has moved from niche Japanese cafes to mainstream menus. Australian Google searches for "matcha" rose every year from 2020, and in 2025 were about seven times their 2019 level (Google Trends).
• Herbal and botanical blends appeal to people looking for lower-caffeine or caffeine-free options.
• Loose leaf tea appeals to people who want more flavour and less packaging waste than conventional tea bags.
• Bubble tea has become a cultural phenomenon among younger Australians, introducing an entirely new demographic to tea-based beverages — even if purists might debate whether it counts.

As far back as 2018, TeaVision listed herbal and functional teas and iced and cold brew tea among the Australian tea trends for businesses to watch.

2. Who Drinks Tea in Australia? A Demographic Snapshot

The stereotype of the Australian tea drinker — an elderly person with a teapot and a packet of Bushells — is outdated, but not entirely wrong. Age is the clearest divide in the Roy Morgan data.

According to Roy Morgan Research:

• 64% of Australians aged 65+ drink tea weekly — the highest of any age group
• Only 25% of Australians aged 14–17 drink tea weekly — the lowest
• Women (55%) are more likely to drink tea than men (45%)
• The average Australian tea drinker consumed 9.5 cups per week, rising to about 11 cups for those aged 65+

Note: Roy Morgan's figures come from its survey of the 12 months to June 2016 (n = 14,956), the most recent publicly available Australian tea consumption study at this scale that we know of. The absolute numbers will have shifted since.

Beyond the survey data

Roy Morgan's figures predate the post-2020 wellness boom, and we know of no newer public survey at the same scale. Our view — not measured data — is that much of the new interest in specialty tea comes from younger adults who are adding tea as a second daily ritual alongside coffee, often around wellness, mindfulness or an afternoon pick-me-up, and who discover matcha, oolong and pu-erh through cafes and social media.

Our own store data adds a small, local window:

• About four in five of our online orders from February 2024 to April 2026 came from Victoria — what you would expect for a Melbourne-based brand that also sells at local markets.
• Outside Victoria, the ACT placed more online orders than Queensland despite its much smaller population, although the numbers are small and we also trade at Canberra markets.

We design our range for curious tea drinkers who are newer to Asian teas. Our store does not record customers' age, gender or occupation, so this report makes no claims about who our customers are.

3. The Great Shift: From Black Tea Bags to Specialty Tea

The story of Australian tea in the 2020s is the gap between traditional black tea and specialty categories.

Supermarket house brands hold their own on everyday tea. In Canstar Blue's 2026 customer satisfaction ratings for tea bags, based on 1,777 Australians, Aldi's house brand Diplomat rated highest — ahead of long-established names. In our view, specialty tea is where Australians trade up for the teas they actually get excited about.

What Australians are discovering

Three categories stand out in specialty tea:

Botanical and floral blends — Teas that combine traditional tea bases (green, black, oolong) with flowers, fruits, and herbs. These are the gateway products for consumers who find pure Chinese or Japanese teas intimidating.

Our own store data points the same way. Our top-selling tea from February 2024 to April 2026 was Sakura Blossom, a sakura-strawberry oolong blend, at about a quarter of all the tea we sold online, followed by Peach Mountain, a white-peach oolong — both East-meets-West blends. That is one store’s customers rather than a sample of Australia, but it is consistent with the idea that blends act as an entry point: that people start with a peach oolong rather than an aged pu-erh, and some then work their way deeper.

Matcha — Once confined to Japanese restaurants and health food stores, matcha is now a mainstream cafe staple. Australian Google searches for "matcha latte" in 2025 were about four and a half times their 2019 level (Google Trends). The matcha market has its own dynamics — driven as much by cafe culture and Instagram aesthetics as by tea appreciation — but it is unquestionably expanding the number of Australians who think of tea as something beyond a Bushells bag.

Aged and fermented teas — Pu-erh, a fermented tea from China's Yunnan province, is beginning to appear on Australian specialty menus and in online retail. While still a niche category in the Australian market, pu-erh benefits from strong storytelling — the ageing process, the terroir, the comparison to wine vintages — that resonates with Australia's food-and-wine culture.

The premiumisation trend

Specialty tea sells at a clear premium to supermarket tea bags, which CHOICE found can cost as little as 6 cents a bag. In our view, brewing equipment such as teapots, glass tea makers and brewing sets is part of the same picture: a meaningful group of tea drinkers is investing in the full tea experience, not just the leaves.

4. Seasonality: When Australians Buy Tea

Our own store shows strong seasonality — and it runs on the Southern Hemisphere calendar, not the Northern Hemisphere pattern that dominates global tea industry discussion.

The Australian tea calendar

In our 2025 online orders — our only complete year in the period — there were two peaks:

Peak 1: November–December (gifting season)

The largest spike by far. November and December accounted for 47% of our 2025 online orders and half of our online sales value — more than four times the monthly average for the rest of the year. Christmas gifting is the obvious driver.

Peak 2: July–September (winter)

A smaller rise during the Australian winter: July to September brought 22% of our 2025 online orders, against 8% in May and June. The rise was less clear in 2024, so we treat it as a tendency rather than a rule.

The quiet months: March–June

Once the gifting peak and the Australian summer are over, autumn is our quietest period: March–April brought just 4% of our 2025 online orders and May–June 8%.

From our experience, this pattern has practical implications for smaller tea brands:

• New product launches are best timed for October (building momentum into the gifting peak) or June (ahead of winter)
• Content marketing and SEO should ramp up in September–October, when purchase intent begins to climb
• The autumn trough is a good time to invest in brand building, content creation, and operational improvements — not sales pushes

5. The Wellness Connection

Interest in tea in Australia is closely tied to the broader wellness movement. The same consumers buying organic produce, practising yoga, and tracking their sleep are also reaching for tea — specifically, teas marketed around functional benefits.

What the data shows

Google Trends data for Australia, comparing yearly averages from 2019 to 2025, shows a mixed picture:

• "Green tea benefits" — consistently high interest, but no clear growth; searches run higher from April to September
• "Oolong tea benefits" — growing from a low base, with 2025 interest roughly double 2019's
• "Chamomile tea for sleep" and "pu-erh tea benefits" — too few searches in Australia for Google Trends to show a reliable pattern

The evidence gap

It is worth noting that many health claims associated with tea remain scientifically contested. While tea contains well-documented compounds like catechins (green tea), theaflavins (black tea), and L-theanine (most teas), the clinical evidence for specific health benefits varies widely. Responsible brands in this space are careful to distinguish between "contains beneficial compounds" and "will cure your ailments."

What is clear is that consumer perception of tea as a healthy beverage is a powerful growth driver, regardless of the nuances in the clinical literature. Tea is positioned as the antithesis of sugary soft drinks and energy drinks — natural, low-calorie, and associated with mindfulness and calm.

6. Sustainability and Packaging

Sustainability has moved from a nice-to-have to a purchase driver in Australian food and beverage. The Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA) Sustainable Packaging Trends Report 2025 identifies 12 key trends in sustainable packaging, grouped into four priority areas. On market size, one market research estimate, from Mark & Spark Solutions (March 2026), puts Australia’s sustainable packaging market at USD 4.1 billion in 2025, growing about 8.2% a year to 2033.

For tea brands, packaging is both a practical challenge and a brand opportunity:

• Conventional tea bags often contain polypropylene (a plastic used to heat-seal the bags), which does not fully biodegrade. This has become a growing consumer concern.
• Loose leaf tea avoids the tea bag problem entirely but requires different packaging and brewing equipment, creating a higher barrier to entry for new consumers.
• Biodegradable and compostable packaging is increasingly expected by the premium tea consumer. Brands that can demonstrate genuine sustainability credentials — not just greenwashing — gain a competitive advantage.

O2H TEA's approach — fully biodegradable packaging, Australian-packed — reflects this market direction. But the broader industry still has significant room for improvement. Many mainstream tea brands continue to use non-recyclable materials for individual sachets, outer wrapping, and shipping.

The opportunity for Australian tea brands is to lead on packaging sustainability in a way that the global tea giants, constrained by scale and legacy supply chains, cannot easily replicate. This is a competitive advantage that small brands can credibly claim.

7. The East-Meets-West Opportunity

Perhaps the most underreported trend in Australian tea is the growing appetite for Asian tea varieties — but with a distinctly Australian twist.

Australia's multicultural population means that Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and South-East Asian tea traditions are not foreign imports — they are part of the country's cultural fabric. What is new is the crossover: non-Asian Australians discovering these teas, and Asian-Australian entrepreneurs repackaging traditional teas for a broader audience.

What the retail data tells us

In our own store, blended teas have outsold unblended ones, led by Sakura Blossom. We read that cautiously — the blended H Collection is also the larger range, so the gap partly reflects what we stock — but it is consistent with the idea that many Australians want Asian tea translated, not transplanted.

This does not mean traditional teas have no market. Our reading is that the pathway to traditional tea often runs through accessible blends. Consumers who start with a peach oolong may, over time, develop the palate and curiosity to explore a single-origin oolong or an aged pu-erh. The blend is the on-ramp.

For brands and retailers, this suggests a clear product strategy:

1. Lead with flavour-forward blends that lower the barrier to entry

2. Educate through content, not through product complexity — blog articles, brewing guides, and comparison content that helps consumers navigate unfamiliar categories

3. Offer a pathway to depth for customers who want to go further — curated sets, tasting flights, and premium single-origin options for returning customers

The design factor

Australia's specialty tea market is also being shaped by design and branding in ways that traditional tea has never experienced. The aesthetic expectations set by specialty coffee — clean packaging, minimal design, Instagram-ready presentation — now apply to tea as well.

Several Australian tea brands have recognised this, investing in packaging design that signals quality and modernity rather than the faux-Asian aesthetic that dominated tea packaging for decades. Design awards from international competitions are beginning to appear in Australian tea brand portfolios — a signal that the industry is maturing beyond commodity tea into a design-conscious premium category.

8. What Is Next: Five Predictions for 2026–2027

Based on the data and trends analysed in this report, we offer five specific predictions for the Australian tea market over the next 12–18 months:

1. Matcha will peak as a trend — and stabilise as a category.

The explosive growth in matcha cafe menu appearances will slow, but matcha itself will remain a permanent fixture. Expect market consolidation as low-quality matcha powder brands are replaced by premium Japanese-sourced options.

2. Oolong will be the next "discovery" tea for Australian consumers.

Oolong occupies the sweet spot between green tea (which many Australians already know) and pu-erh (which remains niche). Its range of styles — from light and floral to dark and roasted — gives it broad appeal. Google Trends shows Australian search interest in "oolong tea" rising every year since 2020, and about a third higher in 2025 than in 2019.

3. The gifting market will drive premiumisation further.

Tea is increasingly positioned as a premium gift alternative to wine and chocolate. Expect more brands to develop gifting-specific packaging and seasonal collections, particularly targeting the November–December and Mother's Day windows.

4. Sustainability claims will face greater scrutiny.

As more brands make environmental claims, Australian consumers (and regulators) will demand specifics. "Eco-friendly" will not be enough — brands will need to demonstrate biodegradability, recyclability, or compostability with third-party certification.

5. AI-powered search will change how consumers discover tea.

As more Australians use ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews to research products, brands that publish authoritative, data-rich content will gain disproportionate visibility. The tea brands that invest in content today will be the ones that AI recommends tomorrow.

Methodology and Sources

This report draws on the following data sources:

Source	Data Type	Period
Roy Morgan	Consumer survey, Australians aged 14+ (n = 14,956)	12 months to June 2016
Expert Market Research	Market size and forecast	2025, forecast to 2035
IMARC Group	Market size and forecast (USD)	2024, forecast to 2033
CHOICE	Blind taste test of 32 supermarket black teas	March 2024
Canstar Blue	Customer satisfaction ratings, tea bags	2026
Google Trends	Search interest in Australia, yearly averages	2019–2025
Statista, compiled by Wikipedia	Tea consumption per person	2016
TeaVision	Australian tea trends article	2018
FaBA	Sustainable packaging trends (12 trends, 4 priority areas)	2025
Mark & Spark Solutions	Sustainable packaging market size estimate (USD)	2025–2033
O2H TEA	Store data from Shopify Analytics (Online Store channel)	Feb 2024 – Apr 2026; seasonality: calendar year 2025

About O2H TEA's retail data: O2H TEA is a Melbourne-based premium tea brand. The purchasing pattern and product mix data cited in this report is drawn from shop.o2htea.com (2024–2026). As a single brand's data, it reflects one online specialty retailer rather than the total market. All market figures are in Australian dollars unless otherwise noted.

How we measured our store data: Store figures come from Shopify Analytics for shop.o2htea.com. Orders and sales use the Online Store channel only — wholesale and manually created orders are excluded. "Top-selling" means the largest share of tea units sold; loose leaf and tea bag formats of the same tea are combined, and tea sets and teaware are excluded. Seasonality uses calendar year 2025, our only complete year in the period. Sessions data includes some automated traffic, so we do not use it for location claims.

Data limitations: Roy Morgan's consumer data is from 2016 and may not reflect post-pandemic shifts. Market sizes vary across sources because of different scope definitions and currencies; where estimates differ, we show more than one and name each source. Google Trends shows relative search interest, not search volumes.

This report will be updated annually. For questions, corrections, or data collaboration inquiries, contact info@o2htea.com.

Corrections and updates

• 26 October 2026: We removed a statement that Sydney accounted for more website sessions than Melbourne. It was based on a one-week sample from April 2026; across February 2024 to April 2026 our store analytics show Melbourne ahead. We also removed a statement about Canberra and regional Victorian sessions that our data does not support, and a description of our customers' age and occupation, which our store does not record. We updated the Google Trends figures from a fresh pull, corrected a reference that described a 2018 TeaVision article as a 2025 trend report, corrected the source of the per-person consumption figures to Statista (2016), corrected the average weekly cups for Australians aged 65 and over to about 11, clarified that 5.1% is a forecast growth rate, and removed an AUD 1.8 billion figure that covered tea and coffee manufacturing together.
• 13 September 2026: We re-attributed the sustainable-packaging market estimate to Mark & Spark Solutions (in USD) and removed a product-range split we could not support with a stated period.

Frequently Asked Questions

How big is the Australian tea market?

Expert Market Research valued the Australian tea market at about AUD 690 million in 2025, with forecast growth of about 5.1% a year to 2035. IMARC Group puts it at USD 512 million in 2024. Estimates differ because of scope and currency.

How many Australians drink tea?

About 9.8 million Australians — 50% of the population aged 14 and over — drank tea at least once a week in the 12 months to June 2016, according to Roy Morgan. The average weekly consumption among tea drinkers was 9.5 cups.

What type of tea is most popular in Australia?

We have not found recent public data that ranks tea types by volume in Australia. Black tea is the everyday supermarket staple — CHOICE's 2024 taste test covered 32 supermarket black teas alone. At O2H TEA, one online specialty retailer, blended teas have outsold unblended ones, although our blended range is also larger.

Is tea consumption growing or declining in Australia?

Market research firms forecast the Australian tea market to grow about 4.5–5% a year (IMARC Group; Expert Market Research). The most recent large public survey of Australian tea drinkers, by Roy Morgan, dates from 2016, so there is little recent public data on how many people drink tea.

When do Australians buy the most tea?

At O2H TEA, November and December accounted for 47% of our 2025 online orders, with a smaller rise in July–September and the quietest months from March to June. This is one retailer's pattern, not a national measure.

What is the most popular specialty tea in Australia?

We have not found public sales data that answers this for Australia as a whole. At O2H TEA, our top-selling tea from February 2024 to April 2026 was Sakura Blossom, followed by Peach Mountain.

The Australian Tea Drinking Report is published annually by O2H TEA, a Melbourne-based premium tea brand. O2H TEA has been recognised with the Golden Pin Design Award (Taiwan) and the Asia Design Prize (South Korea) for its packaging design. Learn more at shop.o2htea.com.

What Australians are actually buying from us. Our top-selling teas have been Sakura Blossom (sakura-strawberry oolong) and Peach Mountain (white-peach oolong), both East-meets-West blends from the H Collection. Newer to most Australian drinkers are our Xiao Qing Gan tangerine teas. See our best sellers.