The price paid to pickers has risen from €1.55 to €4.50 per litre, equivalent to approximately €6.40–7.50/kg. Companies are reporting three times as many sellers, while online listings point to a potentially record-breaking season.
In Finland, rising prices for wild blueberries are drawing increasing numbers of pickers back into the forests. According to Finnish public broadcaster Yle, 2026 could become a record year for volumes sold by local pickers.
The main reason is economic. In 2025, companies specialising in the purchase of wild berries paid an average of €1.55 per litre for freshly picked, uncleaned blueberries. This summer, the advance price has reached €4.50 per litre, almost three times as much.
Why are blueberries sold by the litre in Finland?
In Finland, hand-picked wild berries are traditionally bought and sold by volume rather than by weight. Pickers use buckets and containers of standard capacity, allowing purchasing points to measure the quantities delivered quickly.
The weight of one litre can vary depending on ripeness, moisture and the presence of leaves or other impurities. As a general indication, one litre of cleaned wild blueberries weighs approximately 600–700 grams.
A price of €4.50 per litre therefore corresponds to approximately €6.40–7.50/kg. By comparison, the average price of €1.55 per litre paid in 2025 was equivalent to around €2.20–2.60/kg.
These conversions should be regarded as estimates, particularly because the price paid by companies in this case applies to freshly picked, uncleaned blueberries, whose weight may differ from that of sorted produce.
Up to €1,000 a week from picking blueberries
Among the Finns who have decided to take advantage of the situation are Soili Toura and her husband Ilkka, who live in Savitaipale. The couple have already delivered around 20 buckets of blueberries to a purchasing point operated by Dalla Valle in the city of Lappeenranta.
According to Toura, their picking activity earns them around €1,000 a week. Industry operators say that more experienced pickers can earn as much as €200–300 a day.
“Finns will pick wild berries when the price is right,” said Loreno Dalla Valle, CEO of the company bearing his name, which has been buying directly from independent pickers for more than 30 years.
Number of sellers triples
Dalla Valle operates around 70 purchasing points across Finland. During the first part of the season, the number of people delivering blueberries was three times higher than during the same period in 2025.
The sharp decline in foreign labour is also increasing the amount of produce available to local pickers. Only 123 Thai berry pickers arrived in Finland in 2026, compared with several thousand in previous years.
Most visa applications submitted for the wild berry season were rejected following revelations of serious cases of worker exploitation involving some Finnish berry companies. The reduction in foreign picking crews has left more fruit available in the forests, while also contributing to higher prices for pickers.
Online sales also heading for a record
The boom is also evident on the Finnish online marketplace Tori.fi. By the end of July, around 3,000 listings for wild blueberries had already been posted, while users had carried out approximately 50,000 specific searches for fresh produce.
Over the entire 2025 season, the platform hosted around 6,000 listings and recorded 85,000 searches. According to Jenni Tuomisto, head of Tori.fi in Finland, by the end of July the number of listings was already more than 50% higher than during the same period a year earlier.
As trading normally peaks in August, the marketplace believes that 2026 could set a new record.
Ten litres of cleaned blueberries selling for €50
Despite the sharp increase in the price paid to pickers, online prices for cleaned blueberries have remained relatively stable in recent years. On Tori.fi, 10 litres sell for an average of around €50, equivalent to €5 per litre.
Based on an estimated weight of 600–700 grams per litre, the retail price corresponds to approximately €7.10–8.30/kg. Here too, the actual value per kilogram may vary depending on the density and condition of the produce.
Dedicated wild berry marketplaces emerge
Growing interest in picking and direct sales is also encouraging the emergence of specialised platforms. These include Marjanetti.fi, a marketplace launched in spring 2026 which already has several hundred registered users.
A significant share of sales also continues to take place through local Facebook groups, which pickers use to reach households, restaurants and small commercial operators directly.
The Finnish season therefore demonstrates how prices paid at the point of origin can rapidly reshape the organisation of harvesting. The reduced presence of foreign workers and higher prices have turned wild blueberries into a tangible income opportunity, drawing increasing numbers of Finns back into the forests.
Conversions from euros per litre to euros per kilogram are approximate.
