From the boom in synthetic stones to the decline in marriages, the natural diamond market is in structural crisis
It seems hard to think, but the diamond sector has been in deep crisis for a few years now.
There are many reasons, from the excess supply of extracted stones to the declining demand, thanks to the reduction in marriages; a central role, however, seems to be played there growing production of synthetic diamonds.
The collapse of prices
The natural diamond market is in fact experiencing what many analysts define as a real “structural crisis”. From the peak reached in 2022, i Natural stone prices are in free fall and they have not yet found a point of balance.
The data is merciless. The DIAMINDX index, developed by the Diamond Standard platform, reached the lowest value in its history in August 2026, stopping at $2,490after losing almost 8% in just ten days of trading.
But it is the cumulative data that is impressive: since the peak of 2022, the prices of natural diamonds have undergone a contraction of approximately 50% net of inflation. A loss that is equivalent to halving the value in just four years.
Industry-wide, giant De Beers saw the average realized price for rough diamonds fall to $142 per carat in 2025, a 7% decline from the previous year. In the first half of 2026 the average price collapsed further to $105 per carat, with a contraction of 32% on an annual basis.
The historic company, which in the 1980s controlled over 80% of the world’s crude oil supply, today holds a market share of just 35%.
Synthetic diamonds
If there is a factor that more than any other has undermined the age-old balance of the market, it is the advent of laboratory-produced diamonds.
Stones chemically and physically identical to natural onesbut achievable in series, in a few weeks and at infinitesimal costs compared to mining.
The boom was truly vertical. In 2025, synthetic diamonds accounted for more than 40% of the global diamond jewelry market in terms of volume, growing more than eightfold compared to 2019.
In the United States, approximately six out of ten engagement rings now feature a lab-created stone. The global lab diamond market, valued at $30.2 billion in 2025, is projected to reach nearly $85 billion by 2035.
The geography of this industry is extremely concentrated, with China dominating the production of rough stones: with around 22 million carats produced in 2024, it controls almost three-fifths of the world’s supply.
The result of this production capacity was a steep collapse in wholesale prices. THE Synthetic diamond prices have dropped by around 90% since 2020making the stone a widely consumed product.
A high-quality synthetic diamond today costs around 80% less than a natural equivalent. The price difference is such that, for the same budget, a consumer can purchase a synthetic stone of much larger size or of higher quality.
Increase in supply and decrease in demand
If synthetic diamonds have dealt the hardest blow, the crisis in the sector has its roots in a structural imbalance between a supply that is struggling to contract and a demand that is progressively retreating.
On the supply side, the market finds itself dealing with a excess of stones in circulation. Inventories accumulated along the entire supply chain have reached record levels.
De Beers, which reported a loss of $511 million in 2025, is left with unsold inventory worth more than $2 billion.
Global production of natural rough diamonds has decreased, from a peak of 120 million carats to around 98 million, but not enough to offset the collapse in demand.
On the demand front, the factors of contraction are multiple and profound. The first and most significant is the decline in marriageswhich historically represented the main driver of demand for diamonds.
In China, the market that until a few years ago was considered the sector’s great growth driver, marriage registrations have collapsed from a peak of 13.5 million in 2013 to around 6.75 million in 2025, a contraction of around 50%.
The phenomenon is not just Chinese: in Western markets the new generations get married less and later, and increasingly choose to allocate the wedding budget to travel, experiences or the purchase of a house.
The result of this perfect storm is that the market is polarizing. On the one hand, natural diamonds of large dimensions and very high quality resist, increasingly relegated to a niche role in extreme luxury.
On the other, the entire commercial diamond segment is increasingly under pressuresqueezed between the abundance of supply, the decline in demand and the unbeatable competition from synthetic stones.
