El Niño in Colombia: Drought, Hydropower Strain and Washed Arabica

Colombia carries two El Niño exposures at once, and they arrive together. Rainfall falls, which stresses the coffee crop. And the electricity system, historically hydro-heavy, loses its fuel at the same moment. Few countries have those two vulnerabilities stacked as directly.

With El Niño declared in June 2026 and a peak forecast for October-December, both are live into 2027.

The rainfall signal

The drying is concentrated in the Andean and Caribbean regions — which is where most of the population, most of the agriculture and effectively all of the coffee sit. The already-dry December-to-March window deepens, and the wet seasons on either side of it arrive weaker.

The 2015-16 event is the reference case: reduced rainfall, low reservoirs, elevated fire risk in the eastern plains, and national attention on electricity supply through the first half of 2016.

Coffee: the washed-arabica problem

Colombia is the world's largest producer of washed arabica — the mild, bright cup that anchors speciality blends. That is a different product from Brazilian natural arabica, and buyers cannot simply swap one for the other without changing what ends up in the cup.

Coffee here grows across a wide altitude band with two harvests in much of the country, which spreads risk compared with Brazil's single main crop. But drought stress during flowering and cherry development still reduces both yield and screen size, and higher temperatures push the viable altitude band upward — a slower structural pressure that El Niño years accelerate rather than cause.

Because Colombia, Brazil and Vietnam can all be stressed by the same event, an El Niño is one of the few things that can move arabica and robusta together. Our coffee prices page tracks that combination.

Hydropower: the second exposure

Colombia's grid has historically drawn a large share of its generation from hydro. That is efficient in a wet country and fragile in a dry one.

When reservoirs fall, the system leans on thermal backup, costs rise, and in severe episodes the public conversation turns to rationing. The mechanism is the same one that stresses Peru and Ecuador on the other side of the Andes, though the coastal El Niño signal there is different in kind — wetter, not drier.

What to watch

For Colombia the operational indicators are reservoir levels published through the dry season and the rainfall verification in the coffee belt during flowering. The ocean index tells you the pressure is on; those two tell you whether it is landing.

Current readings are on the live dashboard; see also how this event compares with 1997-98 and 2015-16.