After nearly two years of relentless increases, softwood log prices in the Czech Republic appear to be leveling out -- just as the country's timber industry pushes a separate, longer-term argument: that its future depends less on how much wood it cuts and more on what it does with it before it leaves the country.

Log prices stop climbing, mostly

A Global Wood Markets Info survey of roughly a hundred Czech forestry and sawmilling respondents -- forest owners, logging companies, sawmills of all sizes, and specialist lumber traders -- shows the sharp softwood log inflation that ran from the first half of 2024 through the end of 2025 has largely run its course. Prices in the first half of 2026 mostly held steady or ticked up only modestly, in some cases by no more than the equivalent of a few euros per cubic metre, a marked change from the pace of the previous two years.