Diamond Market Data: AWDC, Bain, and De Beers Public Figures

The Antwerp World Diamond Centre publishes an annual press briefing on Antwerp diamond trade¹. Antwerp's importance is structural: the city handles approximately eighty-six per cent of the world's rough diamonds by value and over fifty per cent of polished diamonds, through the four Antwerp diamond bourses and the supporting cutting, polishing, and customs infrastructure.

AWDC's 12 January 2026 release covered full-year 2025; the Q1 2026 figures followed in April 2026, and the H1 2026 (first-half) figures were released on 13 July 2026⁸. Headline points:

• H1 2026 total Antwerp diamond trade of $10.6 billion, up 9 per cent year on year, with the number of diamonds traded up 14 per cent. AWDC framed the half as a tentative recovery driven by administrative reforms and shifting geopolitics, while noting trade remains roughly 25 per cent below the level of two years earlier.
• In H1 2026 the dollar value of rough diamonds fell about 15 per cent year on year, which AWDC attributed in part to lab-grown competition, while polished-diamond value rose sharply. Rough inflows rose notably from Botswana, Angola, and the UAE.
• Full-year 2025 Antwerp trade value of $19.1 billion, down 22.4 per cent against 2024. Polished accounted for 65.6 per cent of value ($12.5 billion), rough 34 per cent ($6.48 billion), synthetics 0.37 per cent.
• Q1 2026 rough prices down 27 per cent year on year, from $99 to $72 per carat, with rough import volumes up 35.7 per cent.
• Q1 2026 total trade volume up almost twenty per cent over Q1 2025, but value up only 3.7 per cent.
• International polished prices up 11.6 per cent year on year in Q1 2026 (IDEX reporting on the same figures).
• India as the chair of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme for 2026, with active discussions on traceability and a continuing impasse on widening the conflict-diamond definition (see Chapter 10).

The H1 2026 picture is a two-track one: total trade value recovering on much higher volume, while per-carat rough prices sit well below year-ago levels and rough value keeps falling. Many more carats are moving, at lower per-carat rough prices, while the polished side firms. Rough is doing the bulk of the adjustment.

Bain & Company's Global Diamond Industry Report is the most widely cited industry-wide publication on diamond market structure². The 2021-22 report (its most recent edition) provided the wholesale and retail ratio anchors used elsewhere on this site. Our dedicated guide to the Bain diamond report covers its editions and what each headline figure means.

Each row reports a single source's figure for a specific metric in a specific window. Direct comparison requires care, as the denominators (rough vs polished, volume vs value, retail vs wholesale, US vs global) differ.

Bain reporting and trade-press analysis converge on a directional pattern: lab-grown's share of engagement-ring diamond demand has grown substantially since the 2018 Lightbox launch, particularly in the US, while natural retains the dominant share globally by dollar value. Specific market-share percentages vary by publisher and are sensitive to methodology².

We avoid quoting a single market-share number here. Two examples make the methodology problem concrete. A figure that says lab-grown is sixty per cent of engagement-ring diamonds may be true by carat count and false by dollar value because lab-grown carats sell at a fraction of natural carat prices. A figure that says lab-grown is twenty per cent of the global diamond market may be measuring all diamond jewellery globally, where natural's share by dollar is much larger. The directional consensus, that lab-grown is a meaningful and growing slice of US engagement-ring demand, is robust across sources. A specific percentage requires citing a specific source with its own denominator.

Market-share numbers in the diamond category are particularly fragile because the natural and lab-grown segments differ on pricing, supply structure, and grading. Five common methodology choices each yield meaningfully different results:

• By carat count vs by dollar value: lab-grown's share by carat is much higher than its share by dollar because of the price gap.
• Polished vs rough: rough-trade figures pick up the natural side strongly because most lab-grown polished comes from rough that does not move through traditional rough channels.
• Engagement-ring-only vs all diamond jewellery: lab-grown share is highest in the engagement-ring segment and lower in the broader jewellery category.
• US vs global: lab-grown share is highest in the US and lower in many other markets, particularly Asia-Pacific.
• Retailer-survey vs trade-import data: the two methodologies sample different parts of the market and give different snapshots.

Where possible, we cross-check market figures across the three primary publishers (AWDC, Bain, De Beers public materials) and treat trade-press figures (Rapaport, JCK, National Jeweler) as secondary. Industry-funded reports (whether from natural-diamond advocacy or lab-grown promotion) are read with caution for the obvious incentive reasons. Peer-reviewed work is preferred for any environmental or lifecycle analysis (see Chapter 11).

Where this fits in the reference

This chapter is a snapshot of public market figures with explicit notes on methodology. The next chapter, The Kimberley Process, covers the regulatory scheme on which AWDC reports natural-rough movement, and Chapter 11 brings in peer-reviewed lifecycle data.