In the first quarter of 2026, the global tungsten price reached a historic turning point: the spot price of tungsten powder broke through 2,000 RMB per kilogram, with a cumulative increase of more than 450% within 14 months, marking the industry’s entry into an era of permanent structural shortage.

As an indispensable core material for metal processing, the supply system of tungsten carbide has contracted comprehensively due to the continuous decline of ore grade in China, stricter environmental regulations, tighter mining quotas, and the implementation of dual-use export controls, forming an insurmountable supply barrier.

Meanwhile, the “Iron Triangle of Demand Growth” composed of national defense, new energy infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing has unleashed rigid incremental demand. The fierce collision between supply and demand has triggered profound shocks in the tool industry across Europe and the world, pressuring small and medium-sized enterprises and shifting market trading models toward long-term contracts.

This tungsten price bull market is not a short-term cyclical fluctuation, but a systematic transformation driven by geological constraints, policy regulation, and geopolitical strategies. It is forcing the industry to accelerate the development of recycling systems, material substitution, and intelligent manufacturing upgrades, while profoundly reshaping the competitive landscape of the global industrial chain.

Analysis of the 2025–2026 Tungsten Price Bull Market

The current pricing environment sweeping the global industrial base cannot be classified as a standard cyclical commodity fluctuation driven by transient speculative trading; instead, it represents a permanent structural restructuring of the global tungsten price and market system.From the baseline of approximately 311 RMB per kilogram in early 2025, tungsten carbide powder soared to a benchmark of 2,000 RMB per kilogram in March 2026. This trajectory shows that the market is rapidly transitioning from an era of reliable abundance to an era of severe and highly controlled shortage, directly driving the tungsten price to historical highs.

Timeline of the Tungsten Price Surge and Market Contraction

The sharp rise in the tungsten price has unfolded in four distinct and measurable phases, characterized by gradually tightening supply fundamentals that eventually triggered panic buying among global industrial buyers and tool OEMs.From 2025 to Q1 2026, the tungsten price and the tungsten market experienced an extreme evolution from stability to out-of-control growth.

Phase 1 (January–May 2025)

Tungsten price fluctuated between 316–358 RMB/kg, and APT price between 211,000–248,000 RMB/ton. Supply and demand were largely balanced, with moderate inventory consumption. Early indicators of reduced Chinese quotas began to affect forward contracts, laying the groundwork for the subsequent tungsten price rise.

Phase 2 (May–September 2025)

Tungsten price rose to 358–645 RMB/kg, and APT price climbed to 248,000–418,000 RMB/ton. Initial supply tightness emerged, as strict environmental shutdowns in core Chinese mining areas began to restrict spot supply, pushing the tungsten price into a steady upward channel.

Phase 3 (September–December 2025)

El tungsten price entered an accelerated growth phase, surging to 645–1,080 RMB/kg, with APT price reaching 418,000–680,000 RMB/ton. Explosive and inelastic manufacturing demand coincided with severe global inventory depletion, and regional spot supply indicators fell below 15 days, further boosting the tungsten price.

Phase 4 (December 2025–March 2026)

The market peaked, with the tungsten price skyrocketing to 1,080–2,050 RMB/kg and APT price jumping to 680,000–1,300,000 RMB/ton. China’s strict dual-use export controls came into effect, largely freezing global market liquidity, and major institutions confirmed a systemic structural shortage that sustained the high tungsten price.

Restructuring of Global Trading Patterns in Early March 2026

By the first week of March 2026, the tungsten price reality completely broke historical models. In the domestic Chinese market, 65% wolframite and scheelite concentrates surged above 860,000 RMB per ton. Ammonium Paratungstate (APT) reached an astonishing 1.3 million RMB per ton. In the European market, the impact was equally severe, with European APT quoted at 2,160 USD per metric ton unit (mtu), and European tungsten carbide powder sold as high as 292–300 USD per kilogram of tungsten content.

The speed and magnitude of this tungsten price growth have nearly paralyzed the traditional spot market trading structure. Holders of physical tungsten are extremely reluctant to sell, expecting further inevitable price appreciation, while buyers maintain a cautious and paralyzed wait-and-see attitude, as they cannot absorb these costs without destroying their operating margins.

As a result, the entire industry has shifted almost entirely to rigid, heavily negotiated long-term contracts, which have severely hit small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) lacking sufficient transaction volume or balance sheets to secure such agreements.

The Game of Geology, Policy and Geopolitics

China’s Dominance in Tungsten Resources

China has historically accounted for approximately 82.7% of global primary tungsten mine output. Through an effective combination of unavoidable geological realities, strict environmental policy enforcement, and geopolitical strategies, China has systematically built an insurmountable “supply barrier”, which has become the core driving force behind the global tungsten price surge.

Geological Degradation and Environmental Tightening

The primary and inescapable physical constraint shaping the future of the tungsten price and market is the severe decline in China’s ore grade. Over the past two decades, the average grade of domestic raw tungsten ore in China has plummeted from 0.42% in 2004 to a mere 0.28% in 2024. This degradation has enormous thermodynamic and economic impacts; the extraction process now requires processing 300 to 400 tons of raw ore to produce one ton of usable tungsten concentrate. This energy-intensive process has pushed the absolute basic production cost above 100,000 RMB per ton, creating an irreversible floor price that prevents the tungsten price from returning to the sub-100,000 RMB per ton era of the early 2020s.

This geological deterioration directly conflicts with China’s increasingly stringent environmental requirements. The Central Environmental Inspection Team has enforced strict tailings treatment standards and ecological restoration agreements in core resource areas (most notably Ganzhou in Jiangxi and Chenzhou in Hunan). These rectifications have led to the direct suspension or permanent closure of more than 60 non-compliant mining and smelting enterprises, further tightening supply and supporting the tungsten price. In Hunan Province alone, 30% of mineral processing capacity was shut down by the end of 2025 for failing to meet these new environmental thresholds.

Compounding these physical constraints is state-led deliberate policy intervention on production volume. China’s Ministry of Natural Resources has strictly controlled output, setting the first batch of 2025 mining quotas at 58,000 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 6.45%. In addition, the second batch of quotas in major producing provinces was further cut by 8% to 10%, driving mine operating rates below 35% of total theoretical capacity, which directly restricts supply and supports the high tungsten price.

Export Control Policies and Strategic Restructuring

The final catalyst for the sharp tungsten price shock in 2026 was the launch of the “2026 Dual-Use Items Catalog” export control framework on January 6, 2026. By explicitly listing key tungsten oxides and carbides under strict military export controls, the Chinese state has implemented a highly restrictive “whitelist” export system. Foreign intermediaries, independent traders, and non-aligned manufacturers were immediately excluded from the supply chain, with all export rights concentrated in state-backed vertically integrated entities such as CMOC and Xiamen Tungsten.

This move has effectively decoupled China’s domestic tungsten price and market from the broader global market, creating significant regional premiums. The strategic objectives of this policy framework are twofold: to ensure sufficient and competitively priced raw materials for China’s high-value national defense, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing sectors, while artificially raising global input costs to provide a huge competitive cost advantage for Chinese downstream tool manufacturers in international export markets. The 25% Section 301 tariffs imposed by the United States on Chinese tungsten products since January 2025 have further complicated trade flows, embedding an additional cost layer in Western supply chains and amplifying global tungsten price volatility.

The Iron Triangle of Demand Growth

The total collapse of supply elasticity has collided violently with the cross-industry explosive demand of what analysts call the “Iron Triangle of Growth” — national defense and military applications, new energy infrastructure, and advanced technology manufacturing. Together, these three core demand areas have pushed tungsten demand into a rigid growth channel, further exacerbating the global supply-demand imbalance and underpinning the strong tungsten price.

National Defense Sector

The national defense sector has fundamentally changed the long-term consumption trajectory of tungsten. Ongoing geopolitical tensions, regional conflicts, and the rapid depletion of Western ammunition stockpiles have triggered large-scale, state-sponsored restructuring of defense supply chains. Tungsten’s extremely high density and the highest melting point among pure metals (3,422°C) make it completely irreplaceable in the manufacture of armor-piercing projectiles, kinetic energy weapons, rocket nozzles, and advanced radiation shielding materials.

This defense-driven consumption operates entirely independently of traditional macroeconomic cycles, injecting highly rigid, price-insensitive demand into the market and providing solid bottom support for the elevated tungsten price.

New Energy and Advanced Manufacturing

The global energy transition has significantly accelerated tungsten consumption in previously niche applications. The solar photovoltaic (PV) sector has witnessed a technological revolution, with the market penetration of ultra-fine tungsten wire (for silicon wafer cutting) exceeding 60%. This single technological shift has created over 4,500 metric tons of structural new demand annually, supporting the tungsten price.

In the automotive sector, the rapid expansion of electric vehicles (EVs) requires a large number of specialized tungsten carbide tools. Processing highly abrasive aluminum battery shells, lightweight structural components, and advanced thermal management systems rapidly wears out traditional tools, creating an urgent need for larger volumes of high-quality tungsten carbide. Forecasts indicate that as the EV transition matures toward 2030, automotive tungsten consumption could be approximately 30% higher than previous baseline estimates, adding further momentum to the tungsten price.

Finally, the relentless push toward extreme miniaturization in the semiconductor industry requires advanced tungsten interconnects, complex barrier layers, and specialized thermal management systems for artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator chips and quantum computing platforms.

The convergence of these highly specialized, performance-critical applications within the “Iron Triangle” ensures highly inelastic demand; no matter how high the tungsten price rises to the 2,000 RMB/kg level, end-users cannot simply replace the metal, laying the foundation for a prolonged and strong bull market. Medium-term forecasts show a persistent global supply gap of approximately 20,000 metric tons per year from 2025 to 2028, accounting for about 19% of total global demand, which will continue to support the tungsten price at high levels.

Conclusión

In summary, the global tungsten price and tungsten carbide prices will remain high in 2026 with a strong upward bias, and the structural shortage pattern is difficult to reverse.

Faced with persistently high raw material costs, upstream mining and smelting enterprises will further focus on compliant production, strictly control supply rhythms, and strengthen resource control.

Midstream tungsten carbide and powder manufacturers will stabilize costs and supply by increasing the proportion of recycled tungsten, optimizing product mix, and locking in prices through long-term agreements.

Downstream tool manufacturing and machining enterprises will be forced to accelerate cost transmission, promote material substitution and process upgrading, and enhance supply chain resilience.

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