De Beers Cuts Sightholder List From 70 to 50 Amid Industry Weakness

De Beers notified more than 20 of its 69 sightholders that their client relationships will not be renewed when new contracts take effect on July 1, 2026 — a reduction exceeding one-third of its trading roster and the deepest single-cycle cut in the company's recent history.

While De Beers had repeatedly signaled that it planned to trim its sightholder list, the cuts ran deeper than some had expected. Buyers of smaller diamonds, a segment where De Beers wields less control and prices have fallen the most, were hit especially hard. There are now only a handful of sightholders remaining in New York City and Israel, two once-thriving diamond hubs.

The storied diamond miner had been mulling the changes for some time, deferring a decision on multiple occasions as the sector battled a series of market shocks. Central to its thinking is a determination to funnel more goods to what it sees as the strongest clients at a time when it is producing fewer diamonds.

The backdrop is a natural diamond market under acute pressure from multiple directions. China, once a vital growth engine for diamond jewellery, has become a significant drag on demand due to a slowing economy and declining marriage rates. De Beers posted a sharply wider $511 million loss in 2025 as weak Chinese demand, U.S. tariff pressures and softer global prices weighed on its worldwide operations. The underlying EBITDA loss reflected weak prices, softer Chinese demand, and competition from lab-grown diamonds.

Through much of 2024 and 2025, De Beers' official prices stood well above those in the secondary market, where cutters and polishers trade among themselves. Reluctant to reduce benchmark prices, the company began offering discreet side-deals, granting favored customers discounts of as much as 20%, a break from tradition. People close to the company said the approach channeled more goods to the strongest buyers, yet the opaque practice angered clients who had no transparency over who received discounts while others paid full price.

Industry analyst Edahn Golan noted that at least one new sightholder from India was added to the roster, signaling a continued shift in rough-diamond purchasing toward South and East Asian cutting centres. De Beers is not confirming how many companies are on the new list or which clients did or did not make the cut, but the company does plan to update its online sightholder directory when contracts begin in July.

The number of De Beers sightholders peaked at around 350 in the 1970s, had halved by 2001, and was further reduced in subsequent changes to the client structure. The move to sub-50 clients is the most concentrated the list has ever been, and it arrives as De Beers navigates not just cyclical weakness but a structural reckoning: the rapid rise of lab-grown diamonds, whose prices have collapsed in recent years, has enabled those stones to capture increasing market share, particularly in the bridal segment, undercutting natural diamonds across key consumer categories.

Near-term trading conditions are expected to remain challenging, with continued macroeconomic volatility, conservative inventory management in the midstream, and lab-grown diamond penetration all expected to limit rough diamond demand. For the buyers that survived the cut, the new contract period beginning July 1 offers privileged access to De Beers' supply, but at a moment when holding that access and profiting from it are two very different things.