Lychee Season

Lychees are in season in Australia from November through to March, with the peak supply window running December to February. Queensland produces around 99% of the national crop, so that's where the season starts. Far north Queensland orchards begin harvesting in late October, working south through central Queensland and down to the Sunshine Coast and Bundaberg districts, before northern New South Wales wraps things up in late summer.

Lychees are primarily a summer crop in Australia.

Lychees (Litchi chinensis) are subtropical evergreen trees that need warm, humid conditions and a brief cool spell (night temperatures below 20°C for roughly a week) before they'll flower properly. A grafted or marcotted tree takes three to five years to first commercial crop and around ten years to reach full productivity, with a fully productive tree yielding up to 200 kg in a good season according to Gardening Australia. Most orchards propagate by marcotting (air layering) to reliably reproduce parent-tree fruit quality. Honey bee hives are brought in at flowering to supplement wind pollination. Bee Aware reports yields in two-cultivar rows run around 36% higher than single-variety rows.

Lychees are native to southern China and arrived in Australia in the 19th century, brought by Chinese goldminers. They've been grown commercially in Queensland for well over a century, as Gardening Australia notes. Queensland now dominates at around 99% of the national crop, with the remaining 1% from northern NSW, per DAFF. Growing districts run from Mareeba and the Atherton Tablelands in the far north down through Rockhampton, Bundaberg and the Sunshine Coast. The staggered geography gives Australia one of the longest lychee seasons in the world. The harvest rolls south from late October through to March, with cooler southern areas suiting mid-to-late cultivars that need a longer cold break, as documented by the Rare Fruit Council of Australia.

Australia produced 2,649 tonnes of lychees worth $40.5 million in 2024/25, with about 275 tonnes exported at $5.2 million. The commercial growing belt extends roughly 2,500 kilometres down the east coast from far north Queensland to northern NSW, per ISHS. Export has been the lever for managing domestic oversupply. Australia's first fresh lychee consignment to the United States shipped in late 2016, and the US market has since become the key destination after Chinese access collapsed following trade tensions, as ABC Rural reported. The 2022/23 season produced a record 3,215 tonnes but prices held steady as exports absorbed the surplus. A world-first trial of six Taiwanese varieties, selected for large fruit and intense flavour, has been running on a central Queensland farm since 2019 under an agreement between the Australian Department of Agriculture and the Taiwan Council of Agriculture, per ABC News. Commercial quantities are still several years off.