The coffee business worldwide shows that coffee is economically important for many countries. For Brazil, the largest producer and exporter of coffee, this commodity is usually a major source of income to small farmers. Drought periods have become increasingly intense over the recent years, affecting the production of these farmers as it reduces productivity and can even cause irreversible crop damage. Nowadays, the elucidation of the genetic factors involved in drought tolerance is amongst the priorities of several research groups. Responses to drought stress certainly involve changes in gene expression and the goal of this work, was the characterization of the gene expression profile on leaves of a sensitive clone of C. canephora (clone 22) and a tolerant clone (clone 14), grown under control and water stress conditions. The technique used in this study was the hybridization of DNA macroarrays, which was efficient to identify genes differentially expressed between the treatments used (irrigated and non irrigated) as well as differences between the genotypes studied (clone tolerant x sensitive). These differentially expressed genes are potential candidates for drought tolerance in coffee and may be subject to further experimental studies. The previously selected genes on the macroarrays experiments were further characterized by real-time quantitative PCR assays (qPCR). In general, most of the results obtained by the qPCR analysis corroborated with the differential expression observed with the macroarrays experiments.