Short answer, as of 15 August 2026: it is still durian season, the glut was real, and it has already turned. The cheapest window of 2026 was June and the first days of July, and prices in Singapore climbed back through the second half of July.
Malaysia’s main season began in June and peaked through July. A bumper harvest across Pahang, Penang and Johor pushed prices to roughly half what they were in 2025, and the season was widely described in Malaysia as a durian tsunami. That part is not in doubt.
What has changed since is the part most pages have not caught up with. The Johor harvest wound down through the middle of July, supply tightened, and Singapore retail prices rose again well before August. If you were waiting for prices to fall further, that is no longer the trade the season is offering.
Is it durian season right now?
Yes, but not evenly, and not at glut prices. Here is the state of play by region, with the date each reading comes from.
| Region | Status | As at |
|---|---|---|
| Raub and Bentong, Pahang | Producing, the heartland of Musang King | Early August 2026 |
| Karak, Pahang | Actively harvesting, night collection running | Early August 2026 |
| Balik Pulau, Penang | Main season running, started early this year | 2026 season reports |
| Johor | Harvest wound down, supply tightening | Mid to late July 2026 |
| Selangor | Tailing off towards the end of August | Early August 2026 |
Growers in Balik Pulau reported around 20% of their trees fruiting ahead of schedule back in March, after hot and dry weather triggered an early bloom.
Penang’s tonnage is worth setting out carefully, because the published figures do not agree with each other. Speaking at the end of June, with two months of the season still to run, the state’s FAMA director said production had risen “to more than 18,000 metric tonnes this year compared to about 17,000 metric tonnes last year”. In the same report, the Chief Minister gave Penang’s output as 17,910 tonnes in 2024 rising to 18,870 tonnes in 2025, which does not reconcile with a 2025 baseline of about 17,000. So treat 18,000 tonnes as a mid-season statement about a direction of travel, not as a final 2026 total, and note that the state’s own two figures for 2025 differ by nearly 2,000 tonnes.
Why 2026 got so cheap
Two things happened at once.
The first is acreage. A large number of durian trees planted between 2015 and 2020, during the Musang King export boom to China, reached full production this year. That is a step change in supply, not a normal fluctuation.
The second is weather. Conditions were favourable across the main growing states, so those trees produced well at the same time.
The result was widely described in Malaysia as a durian tsunami. Some numbers from the season:
- Grade A Musang King was selling around RM38.50 per kg in early July, roughly half the 2025 price
- Farm gate Grade C Musang King fell from about RM15 per kg to about RM10 per kg during the July peak
- In parts of Malaysia in June, Musang King was reported as low as RM6 to RM9 per kg
- In Penang in late June, Musang King and Black Thorn were still holding around RM30 to RM40 per kg
- In Singapore, Mao Shan Wang fell from a March peak of about S$28 per kg to about S$20 per kg by late June, with sellers expecting a floor around S$18
- At the very bottom of the glut some Singapore stalls went to about S$6 per kg, and a few gave durian away, according to sellers quoted in July
Singapore prices did not fall as far as Malaysian ones, because transport, overheads and rent do not fall with the harvest.
And then it turned, in July
The floor did not hold. Singapore sellers reported prices climbing from the start of July as the Johor harvest ended and supply tightened. Speaking to AsiaOne on 15 July, one retailer quoted Mao Shan Wang at S$28 to S$32 per kg, against about S$20 per kg the month before, and another said the lowest it had gone during the glut was S$17 per kg and it was back to S$19. Three days later, The Independent Singapore reported one stall moving from around S$18 to S$19 up to S$22, and another lifting premium Mao Shan Wang and Black Gold from around S$20 to S$21 up to S$23 to S$24.
Both reports give the same reason, and it is a supply reason rather than a demand one: the Johor harvest had eased, leaving Pahang as the main source. That is the mechanism to watch, because it is what turns a glut off.
So the useful correction to the story most people are still telling: 2026 was a glut year, and the glut ended around the middle of July. A price that was true in June is not a price you should expect to be quoted now.
Why the glut happened at all, why Singapore never fell as far as Malaysia, and how to read a durian price quote, are covered separately in the 2026 price drop explained. This page stays with where the season is now.
A note on the prices you see quoted
Durian prices are quoted two different ways and the gap between them is large enough to cause arguments.
Whole fruit, per kg. This is what you see at a Malaysian farm gate or a Singapore roadside stall when you pick a fruit and they weigh it. You are paying for husk, seeds and flesh together. Edible flesh is usually only about a quarter of that weight.
Packed flesh, per kg. This is deshelled fruit in a box, which is what most delivery services sell. It is naturally several times the whole fruit price per kg, because the husk and seed have been removed and someone has done the work.
So a headline like “Musang King at S$8 a kilo” is almost always whole fruit, often smaller or lower grade. It is not comparable to a packed flesh price, and neither number is dishonest. Check which one you are being quoted before deciding something is a bargain.
Two more things are worth knowing about how these numbers behave, because they change how you read the reporting rather than any single figure in it.
Prices drift, they do not jump. People who buy at the farm gate describe movement of a ringgit or two at a time, sometimes daily, sometimes across a working week, rather than the overnight swings the coverage implies. A headline announcing that prices are about to shoot up is usually describing a gradual climb already underway. At Singapore retail the effect is blunted further, because small ringgit moves largely disappear into the exchange rate before they reach a stall price here.
A low price tells you the market is loose, not that the fruit is good. Prices fall when there is a lot of fruit, which is the honest 2026 story above, and they also sag when a lot of under-ripe or damaged fruit is sitting unsold and the market stops moving. Both look identical on a price tag. So treat the bottom of the band as the place you are most likely to meet fruit that was not ready, whatever the reason for the price, and judge the fruit rather than the number.
When does the 2026 season end?
The main season runs June to August and often extends into September. Johor has already finished. Selangor is tailing off. Pahang, which matters most for Musang King, was still being harvested in early August, including night collection at Karak.
What changes in the back half of August is volume rather than availability. Fruit keeps dropping, but fewer trees are still producing and the range of varieties on a stall narrows. The signal worth watching is what is being harvested rather than what is being advertised: highland and old-tree fruit coming down in quantity is the classic late-season marker, because those trees drop last.
One thing this page will not do is guess at a price for the week you are reading it. Checked again on 15 August 2026. The only durian pricing published in the first half of August that we could find for Malaysia is a Chinese-language financial wire piece dated 14 August, carried by 21st Century Business Herald, which puts small, lower-grade Musang King at about RM9 per kg wholesale against RM90 per kg at the 2025 peak. We are not treating that as an August reading. It names no source for its Malaysian figures, it dates them only as “currently”, and the story it tells is the June glut rather than anything that has happened since. No dated Singapore price report has appeared since the middle of July. So the most recent figures anyone can honestly quote are still July’s, and they are above the June floor rather than below it.
The practical reading. The cheapest durian of 2026 has already been and gone, and it was June into the first days of July. What the rest of August offers is fruit that is still good and still plentiful in Pahang, at prices that have come off the floor. If you want several varieties side by side, do it now rather than in September, when the choice narrows further.
After that, Malaysia has a smaller second season, roughly December to February, sometimes starting as early as October or November. It produces less fruit and fewer varieties, and prices rise again.
For how the seasons work in general, rather than what 2026 specifically is doing, see when durian season runs, which covers the month by month pattern and why the dates move from year to year.
What to buy this year
In a glut year the usual advice inverts. Normally you buy early because the first fruits are best. This year supply was abundant enough that quality held up well into the season, so there was never much reason to rush in June or July.
That has now changed properly, not just at the margin. The fruit is still good, but the discount is gone, so the reason to buy is that the season is ending rather than that the price is unusual.
A glut year is still good for trying things you would not normally pay for, and 2026 has been one even after the July rebound, because the whole price band sat lower than 2025 for most of the season. If you always buy Musang King, this is the year to eat Black Thorn (D200) next to it and find out whether you actually prefer it. Side by side comparison is expensive in a normal year, and our head to head pages set out what actually separates the common pairs.
If you are new to durian, start with D24 or D13. Both are sweet rather than bitter with a milder aroma. Musang King is the famous one, but its bitterness is an acquired taste and it is a strange place to start. If you are choosing between those two specifically, D13 vs D24 answers it directly.
For what each variety actually is, including which ones are commonly mislabelled, see our guide to durian types and their D numbers.
Sources and how this page is maintained
Season timing, harvest reports and the prices quoted above are drawn from Malaysian and Singaporean market reporting for the 2026 season, and from Malaysia’s Department of Agriculture for variety registration. Prices are market reference points for whole fruit unless stated otherwise, and they move week to week.
The July turn is the best sourced part of this page, and the two reports behind it are linked in the section above so you can read them yourself: AsiaOne, 15 July 2026 and The Independent Singapore, 18 July 2026. The earlier June figures are not individually linked. The two Penang claims have since been chased to source and are now linked: the early-bloom figure holds exactly as reported, and the tonnage claim did not. An earlier version of this page said Penang’s 2026 production “came in above 18,000 tonnes”, which was wrong in a way worth naming: the figure was spoken at the end of June, two months before the season finished, so nothing had come in at all. It is now attributed and dated, with the conflicting state figures shown alongside it.
One correction is worth stating openly, because this page carried it. An earlier version quoted Singapore sellers as expecting, in early August, roughly two more weeks of floor prices and then a firming of 20% to 30%. That forecast is real, but it was made in January 2026 and it was about Malaysia’s minor December to February season, not this one. It should never have been presented as an August reading and it has been removed rather than restated.
The expected end of the main season is a projection, not a measurement. The regional status lines carry the date each reading comes from, because a durian season report without a date on it is close to useless.
This page is updated during the season rather than republished each year, so the address stays the same. It was last checked on 14 August 2026, when no price report published in the first half of August could be found in either the English or the Chinese-language press. If you are reading it well after that date, treat every price figure as historical.