Helium Prices in 2026: How the Market Is Pricing Scarcity

How is helium bought and sold?

Helium prices in 2026 are hard to read because helium is a thinly traded commodity. Most of it is sold under long-term contracts, and spot trading accounts for only about 2% of the market in normal times, according to Phil Kornbluth of Kornbluth Helium Consulting ^[6]. Without a transparent spot market, price signals emerge slowly ^[7].

Between producers and users sits a small group of industrial gas companies: Linde, Air Liquide, Air Products, Messer and Iwatani. Exiger notes that these firms make the key decisions on how scarce supply is shared between chip plants, hospitals, laboratories and aerospace customers ^[5]. Qatar's Helium 2 plant, for example, sells its output to Air Liquide (50%), Linde (30%) and Iwatani (20%) ^[4]. Distributors such as Airgas, an Air Liquide company, then supply packaged gas to end users ^[8].

Prices are quoted at different points in the chain. Recently published upstream contracts are priced per thousand cubic feet (Mcf) of contained helium at the plant gate ^[15,16]; in one of them, the buyer bears processing and transport costs ^[15]. The USGS base price for Grade-A helium excludes the cost of moving it from producer to buyer ^[1]. Helium is usually shipped as a liquid that slowly evaporates; Chris Bakker, chief executive of Avanti, said it has notionally 45 days to reach the end user ^[7]. Bulk liquid moves in cryogenic ISO containers ^[5], while US statistics also count sales of gaseous helium ^[1].

What were helium prices before the 2026 shortage?

The US government used to publish helium prices. It last posted them in 2018, and the last federal auction was completed that summer ^[3]. For fiscal 2019 the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) price for crude helium was $119/Mcf for non-government users and $86/Mcf for government users. Private-industry Grade-A helium cost about $210/Mcf ^[3].

The federal system has since been privatised. Management of the Federal Helium System passed from the BLM to the General Services Administration in December 2022. Its assets were sold in two lots on 25 January 2024 and transferred to the buyer on 27 June 2024 ^[2]. Exiger identifies the buyer as Messer ^[5].

More recently, prices eased. The USGS estimated the Grade-A base price at about $390/Mcf ($14 per cubic metre) in 2024 and about $330/Mcf ($12 per cubic metre) in 2025, with producers adding surcharges ^[2,1]. Contract prices adjust slowly ^[7]. In the quarter to 31 March 2026, which included the first month of the crisis, Air Products still reported a pricing headwind driven by helium, with lower helium pricing in the Americas, Asia and Europe ^[9].

Helium prices in 2026: spot, surcharges and new contracts

Spot prices moved first. Kornbluth said spot prices had doubled since the crisis began and that contract prices "could go up a lot" in a long outage ^[6]. Exiger put European spot prices at around $450/Mcf in March ^[5]. Anish Kapadia of AKAP Energy cited early spot increases of about 50%. He said a sustained disruption could push prices above the previous shortage peak of $2,000/Mcf ^[7]. Aleksandr Romanenko, chief executive of IndexBox, estimated that delivered prices could rise 10–20% after a 30-day disruption and 25–50% after 60–90 days, mainly for buyers without long-term contracts ^[7].

Surcharges followed. Airgas declared force majeure from 17 March, expected some customers to receive up to half of their normal monthly deliveries and added a surcharge of $13.50 per hundred cubic feet ^[8]. The University of Washington told its buyers that Linde was applying a temporary 20% helium price increase from 1 June ^[10].

New long-term contracts provide rare published reference points. In April, U.S. Energy Corp agreed a five-year, fully take-or-pay sale of contained helium from Montana to an unnamed investment-grade industrial gas company. The price is fixed at $285/Mcf at the plant gate, with consumer-price escalation from March 2028 ^[15]. In June, Tetra4, a Renergen subsidiary, signed a five-year take-or-pay contract with an Asian industrial gases company for helium from the Virginia Gas Project in South Africa. Its initial base price is above $600/Mcf of contained helium, also at the plant gate ^[16]. The projects, buyers and terms differ, so the two prices are not a market index. Both show buyers committing to multi-year supply from new sources during the shortage.

Who gets helium first under allocation?

In a shortage, allocation matters as much as price. Kornbluth expected MRI users and rocket makers to receive 100% of their needs and semiconductor makers about 95%. Welding, diving and party balloons would face deeper cuts ^[7].

Institutional buyers have published their own allocations. In mid-June, in the 14th week of its supplier's force majeure, the University of Colorado said baseline allocations for three campuses had been cut from 50% to 40% of historical usage. The baseline is the year to 1 March 2026. Life-critical and life-sustaining activities can still receive up to 100% of historical volumes, and the university said allocations are strictly enforced ^[11].

The pattern is familiar from the previous shortage. In March 2022 the University of California, Davis reported that Linde had cut campus allocations to 50%, while Airgas set campus accounts at 65% and medical accounts at 100%. Those cuts followed an outage at the BLM's crude helium enrichment unit and problems at Russia's Amur plant ^[12].

Why logistics shape helium prices

Helium's price reflects the cost of moving it as well as producing it. About 200 liquid-helium containers were stuck in the Middle East in March. Each costs about $1 million, so few spares exist, and Kornbluth expected repositioning them to be the worst phase of the shortage ^[6]. Exiger estimated that roughly one-third of the world's cryogenic helium ISO containers were stranded in or around Qatar, and that repositioning them would take at least three months after the conflict ends ^[5]. ASP Isotopes said in June that container availability was likely to stay constrained while units remained held up in the Gulf ^[16].

Storage is the other buffer. In the quarter to March, Air Products said it was drawing on its US helium storage cavern, increasing liquefaction and repositioning parts of its large ISO container fleet ^[9]. In August, gasworld reported that Air Products had drawn on its Texas cavern for 40% of its helium volumes in its third fiscal quarter ^[13]. Air Liquide drew on helium reserves stored in its dedicated cavern in Germany during the first half. Helium still weighed on its sales: the group said volumes were affected by the interruption of a helium source, and Industrial Merchant sales in the Americas rose 5.3% in the half, or 6.7% excluding helium ^[14].

What are helium buyers doing?

Buyers are responding in four main ways:

• Reviewing contracts. Exiger advises checking supply agreements for force majeure, allocation triggers and price adjustment clauses, noting that buyers on spot or short-term contracts are most exposed ^[5].
• Locking in new supply. The Montana and South African deals show industrial gas companies signing five-year take-or-pay contracts with new producers ^[15,16].
• Paying more for priority. Jacob Feldgoise of Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology said chip plants would probably pay higher prices because helium is a small part of their costs ^[6].
• Using in-house liquefaction. The University of Colorado says its physics department's liquefier must meet all liquid helium needs at its Boulder campus ^[11].

In August, gasworld reported that Linde was confident it could maintain helium supplies, and that Air Liquide expected the partial restart in Qatar to lessen the shortage's impact on its business in the second half of 2026 ^[13]. For the gas-market background to the outage, see our analysis of LNG, gas prices and urea in 2026.

What to watch

The main variables for helium prices are the timing of a lasting reopening of Hormuz, the speed of container repositioning ^[5] and how far contract prices, which change more slowly than spot, rise when agreements are renewed ^[6]. Exiger lists further force majeure declarations and formal allocation programmes from Linde, Air Products, Air Liquide and Messer among the signals to watch ^[5]. With no published benchmark, new offtake deals will also matter: Renergen planned to complete contracting for its Phase 1 helium volumes in South Africa during the third quarter ^[16].

Alupetra does not trade helium; it follows the gas-market developments that affect helium supply and prices from its Istanbul, London and Dubai offices.