Brussels Just Crowned Three New World Coffee Champions — Here's Everything You Need to Know
Coffee's most competitive weekend of the year just wrapped up in Belgium, and the specialty coffee world now has three new titleholders to celebrate. Not one, not two, but three World Coffee Championships coincided with World of Coffee Brussels. The World Brewers Cup, World Coffee in Good Spirits, and World Roasters Championship all took place over the weekend, and they all placed new champions. For anyone who takes their morning cup seriously — or who appreciates elite craft competition regardless of the industry — this is as significant as a Formula 1 grand prix sweep. Three disciplines. Three new kings of the craft. One city.
World of Coffee Brussels hosted the World Brewers Cup, the World Coffee Roasting Championship, and the World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship between June 25 and 27. World of Coffee Brussels 2026 took place at Brussels Expo. The Belgian capital proved a worthy stage — a city where café culture has been woven into daily life for centuries, now serving as the backdrop for the most technically rigorous coffee competitions on the planet.
The Championships at a Glance: What's Actually Being Judged
Before diving into the winners, it helps to understand just how demanding these three competitions are. They are not beauty pageants for beans. Each one demands a distinct and grueling skill set, and each title represents the pinnacle of a year-long global qualification gauntlet.
The World Brewers Cup: Manual Brewing as High Art
The World Brewers Cup is an annual international competition that showcases the craft and skill of manual filter coffee brewing, where competitors prepare and serve coffee using non-electric devices to highlight excellence in hand-brewed specialty coffee. Organized by World Coffee Events under the Specialty Coffee Association, the event promotes innovation in brewing techniques, sensory evaluation, and the global appreciation of high-quality coffee.
Presented by title sponsor Brewista, the World Brewers Cup challenges competitors to push coffee and water to new heights, combining a compulsory technical round with an original stage performance that showcases skill, artistry, and storytelling. Think of it like competitive barbecue at the championship level — there's a required discipline and a freestyle round, and judges score on everything from water chemistry management to the story the brewer tells about their chosen beans. The structure features a compulsory service round using provided coffees, followed by an open service round in the finals where competitors select their own beans and deliver a presentation, emphasizing both technical skill and sensory excellence.
The competition has notably shaped industry trends, particularly the surge in popularity of pour-over methods and single-origin coffees since the 2010s, as baristas experiment with variables like water temperature and grind size to highlight unique flavor profiles. For the average guy who upgraded from a drip machine to a Chemex a few years ago and now finds himself down a rabbit hole of grind sizes and bloom times, the Brewers Cup is the sport at the top of that pyramid.
The World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship: Where the Bar Meets the Brew
Presented by title sponsor Fo Food, the World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship sits at the intersection of coffee and cocktail culture. Competitors face two intense rounds, including the unpredictable Spirit Bar, before six finalists battle it out with a signature coffee cocktail and a classic Irish Coffee. The Spirit Bar round is what separates this event from everything else — competitors pull a mystery spirit and must improvise a coffee-based cocktail on the fly. Technical precision meets the instinct of a seasoned bartender, all under bright competition lights.
The World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship promotes innovative beverage recipes that showcase coffee and spirits in a competition format. This competition highlights the barista/barkeeper's mixology skills in a setting where coffee and alcohol go perfectly together. From the traditional Irish Coffee with whiskey and coffee, to unique cocktail combinations. This is the event that speaks most directly to the coffee-cocktail crossover movement that's been sweeping American bar culture — cold brew negronis, espresso martinis at every rooftop bar, nitro coffee aged in bourbon barrels. The champions here are shaping that conversation.
The World Coffee Roasting Championship: Precision Over Fire
Presented by title sponsor InterAmerican, the World Coffee Roasting Championship puts precision and sensory skill to the test, with competitors roasting both a single-origin coffee and a custom blend from identical green coffee. Every competitor starts with the same raw material — unroasted green beans — and the winner is determined entirely by what they do with heat, time, and judgment. It is the ultimate test of whether a roaster's palate and technical control can produce a cup that rises above the rest. Competitors spend four days profiling, pulling triers, sniffing, counting seconds, and cupping. There is no faking it. The cup tells the whole story.
Meet the Three New World Champions
World Brewers Cup Champion: Nas Jaafar, Malaysia
In the 2026 World Brewers Cup Championship, victory went to Malaysian competitor Nas Jaafar, who clinched the title after three days of competition during which he managed to maintain precision and concentration to come out on top in the finals. Jaafar's win is a milestone for Malaysian coffee — a nation that has spent the last decade quietly building one of the most sophisticated specialty coffee scenes in Southeast Asia, fueled by an incredibly coffee-literate consumer base and a generation of baristas and brewers who have been training relentlessly on the world stage.
The road to the title in Brussels was not short. The finalists in the 2026 World Brewers Cup included Jackie Tran of the Czech Republic in fourth, Ethan Junseong Park of South Korea in fifth, and Angie Molina of France in sixth. That field alone — spanning three continents — reflects the truly global nature of what manual coffee brewing has become. Established in 2011, the World Brewers Cup debuted at the World of Coffee event in Maastricht, Netherlands. Since then, it has grown into one of the premier events within the World Coffee Championships. In the years since, Asia-Pacific competitors have increasingly dominated the finals, and Jaafar's championship adds another chapter to that story.
World Coffee in Good Spirits Champion: Andy Philein, China
The 2026 World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship title was won by Chinese competitor Andy Philein. In the finals, Andy impressed with drinks inspired by the cosmos, including a signature cold drink named 'Saturn' and an Irish Coffee he titled 'Afterglow of the Cosmos'. Those aren't just clever names — in competition, the narrative a competitor builds around their beverage is scored alongside the taste. Philein's cosmic theme gave judges both a sensory and intellectual framework to evaluate, and clearly, the execution matched the concept.
Behind him came Sion Wu from Taiwan, Akira Zushi from Japan, Serene Yu from Australia, Dmitrii Shkliarov from Indonesia, and Ricky Chan from Hong Kong SAR. The finals lineup was a who's-who of Asia-Pacific coffee talent, a region that has been redefining the intersection of beverage craft and hospitality culture for years. Philein's win for China is particularly notable — the country's specialty coffee sector has undergone a seismic transformation over the past five years, with specialty café chains expanding at a pace that has stunned the global industry. Champions like Philein aren't just winning competitions; they're becoming ambassadors for an entirely new coffee culture taking root in the world's most populous nation.
World Coffee Roasting Champion: Benjamin Brassart, Belgium
Huge congratulations to the 2026 World Coffee Roasting Champion, Benjamin Brassart — the third new World Coffee Champion crowned in Brussels. There is something poetic about a Belgian roaster claiming the top roasting title on home turf, but Brassart's win is not a story about hometown advantage. It's a story about obsessive craft. The World Coffee Roasting Championship demands that competitors coax the maximum potential out of green coffee that every other competitor also has access to — there are no exotic secret ingredients, no proprietary equipment advantages. The gap between first and second place lives entirely in the roaster's hands and their ability to read a drum.
Belgium has a deep and serious coffee history that often gets overshadowed by the country's more famous exports — chocolate, beer, waffles. But the Belgian specialty coffee scene has been producing world-class talent quietly and consistently. As the SCA noted, "Brussels, with its global accessibility and historic coffee culture, is an ideal setting to bring together professionals, champions, and consumers from around the world." Brassart's win feels like both a personal triumph and a vindication of that local culture.
The Bigger Stage: World of Coffee Brussels 2026
The championships don't happen in a vacuum — they are the competitive heartbeat of World of Coffee, the SCA's flagship trade show series. World of Coffee is the premier international coffee trade show series created by the Specialty Coffee Association. Hosted annually in rotating cities across the globe, the event brings together thousands of coffee professionals — from producers and roasters to baristas, retailers, and equipment manufacturers. Each event features a dynamic exhibition floor, World Coffee Championships, educational workshops, and networking opportunities, and acts as a crossroads for innovation, collaboration, and growth within the specialty coffee industry.
The show floor at Brussels connected attendees with 112 roasters, producers, and coffee professionals from around the world, while Green Coffee Connect brought together producers, importers, exporters, traders, and roasters for dedicated networking and business opportunities. This is where next year's trends get made — new brewing equipment, emerging origins, processing techniques bubbling up from farms in East Africa and Latin America. For serious coffee professionals and enthusiasts, walking the floor at a World of Coffee event is the equivalent of walking the SEMA show or attending a major trade expo in any other craft industry. There's commercial business being done, but there's also genuine passion driving every conversation.
Each edition of World of Coffee shines a spotlight on a single origin country through its Portrait Country program. This year, the SCA welcomed Uganda as Portrait Country of World of Coffee Brussels 2026. Uganda's emergence as a specialty coffee powerhouse is one of the more compelling stories in the industry — Uganda has become Africa's number one coffee exporter, and the Brussels platform gave Ugandan producers a rare chance to put their coffees directly in front of Europe's most influential buyers and roasters.
Where This Fits in the 2026 World Coffee Championship Season
The Brussels crownings represent a pivotal mid-season moment in what has been an expansive 2026 World Coffee Championships calendar. Seven annual skills-based competitions are hosted at events around the world, featuring some of the world's best coffee competitors. The World Coffee Championships promote coffee excellence, knowledge-sharing, networking, and innovation.
A combined four World Coffee Championship events are hosted in Bangkok and Brussels this season, following previous announcements that the 2026 season would start with the World Latte Art Championship in San Diego and finish with the World Barista Championship in Panama. The season spans four continents — a logistical feat that underscores just how global specialty coffee has become as a competitive discipline. The 2026 World Barista Championship is set to take place October 23–25 in Panama City. Panama City as a host city is a meaningful choice — the country's Geisha-growing highlands have become legendary in specialty coffee circles, and hosting the world's most prestigious barista competition in the shadow of Boquete will not be lost on anyone in the industry.
Earlier in the year, World of Coffee Bangkok hosted the World Cup Tasters Championship between May 7 and 9. The Cup Tasters Championship is a different kind of spectacle — it rewards pure palate, the ability to correctly identify the odd cup out in a triangle tasting at speed. It looks deceptively simple from the outside and is brutally difficult in practice, the kind of thing that makes you immediately want to test yourself and immediately realize you'd fail.
A Season Defined by Global Depth
What's particularly striking about this Brussels sweep is the geographic spread of champions. Malaysia, China, and Belgium — three countries on three different sides of the world — taking the three available titles in a single weekend. Each championship is a culmination of a year's worth of effort by the competitors and represents the highest achievement in each respective discipline. These are career-defining moments.
For context, look at where the broader season's champions have come from. Mikaël Portannier, representing France, was the 2025 World Coffee Roasting Champion. Jack Simpson of Axil Coffee Roasters in Melbourne, Australia, was the 2025 World Barista Champion — a man who had been on a steady ascension as a three-time Australian Barista Champion, taking third at the WBC in 2023 and runner-up behind Mikael Jasin in 2024 before finally winning it all. The geography of champions has never been more diverse, and the competitive depth has never been more formidable.
That depth matters for American coffee culture specifically. The U.S. has one of the richest domestic competition circuits in the world. Diego Guartan of Big Shoulders Coffee in Chicago was crowned the 2025 US Roasters Champion, and American competitors consistently reach the finals of world events across multiple disciplines. The US Brewers Cup, US Coffee in Good Spirits, and US Latte Art Championship all crown domestic champions who then carry the American flag to these world stages. When a Malaysian brewer or a Chinese mixologist takes a world title, they're beating a field that includes formidable American talent. That's not a knock on American competitors — it's a tribute to the level the game has reached globally.
What the Competition Format Reveals About the Industry
For anyone outside the specialty coffee world, it can be difficult to grasp why a hand-brew competition or a roasting contest generates genuine excitement. The answer lies in what these competitions actually test — and what they teach.
Competitors routinely explain bean origins, preparation processes, and tasting notes during their routines, providing real-time insights that educate judges, spectators, and viewers worldwide via live streams and broadcasts. These public performances have democratized expertise, enabling home brewers and industry newcomers to replicate and refine methods, thereby strengthening global coffee literacy and professional development.
In other words, watching Andy Philein build a cosmically themed coffee cocktail isn't just entertainment — it's a masterclass in flavor pairing, beverage construction, and narrative presentation. Watching Nas Jaafar navigate the compulsory and open service rounds of the Brewers Cup reveals exactly how variables like grind distribution, water temperature, and pour technique interact at the highest level. By prioritizing whole-bean, origin-specific selections in its formats, the competition has reinforced the specialty sector's focus on traceability and terroir, influencing café menus and consumer preferences toward more intentional, high-quality brews.
There's also a competitive integrity story worth noting. The rules and regulations for each competition are used at national and world-level competitions, and updated each year with oversight by the Competitions Strategic Committee. In 2025, updates to the World Brewers Cup rules addressed logistical aspects, such as permitting water spraying only with defined potable water prior to grinding and clarifying the use of personal or provided service vessels and cupping spoons to streamline preparation. These aren't bureaucratic footnotes — they reflect the constant calibration required to keep competition fair as brewing science evolves and competitor ingenuity finds new edges to exploit.
The Administrative Controversy Lurking in the Background
Not everything from Brussels was straightforward celebration. Alongside the championship results came an administrative change that has sparked genuine debate within the global coffee community. Effective April 28, the World Coffee Championships designated competitors as representing the Competition Body of Chinese Taipei, in alignment with the naming conventions used by international sporting bodies including the International Olympic Committee and FIFA. This is an update to how competitors are recorded, administratively. It does not change who can compete, how they qualify, or the experience they have on the WCC stage.
The WCC acknowledged directly that the change carries emotional weight. The organization recognized that "administrative decisions, however technical, can feel personal, especially when they touch on identity and belonging." Several Taiwanese competitors finished at the top of the Brussels finals — Sion Wu of Taiwan finished second in the World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship — meaning the name change was immediately visible in the official results. The coffee community, known for its progressive and community-first values, has been vocal about the policy. The WCC's decision to address the Taiwanese community directly in an open statement reflects both the sensitivity of the issue and the organization's awareness that its platform carries cultural weight far beyond the competition floor.
Looking Ahead: Panama City and the World Barista Championship
With three new world champions crowned in Brussels, attention now shifts to the final and most prestigious event of the 2026 season. The World Barista Championship serves as both a showcase and a springboard for the world's most talented baristas, where more than 50 talented champions from around the globe meticulously craft four espressos, four milk-based drinks, and four unique signature beverages during a highly time-sensitive 15-minute performance rigorously judged based on key criteria that include taste, cleanliness, creativity, technical proficiency, and overall presentation.
The WBC is widely considered the most prestigious of the seven competitions sponsored by World Coffee Championships. Its history stretches back to 2000, when the World Barista Championship began tucked away in the corner of a Monte Carlo convention centre with just 14 baristas, and has since grown into a globally revered stage with participants from over 50 Competition Bodies, celebrating 25 editions in Milan, Italy in October of 2025.
The story of what that competition has meant to people is perhaps best captured by what Jack Simpson said on stage during his winning performance in Milan — crediting coffee producer Jonathan Gasca Serna and noting that "his coffee deserved to be there," adding that "Jonathan reminded me that coffee is about people and human connections, not just results." That sentiment — that behind every competition cup is a farm, a farmer, a story — is the thread connecting every one of the world championships, whether the discipline is brewing, roasting, or cocktail-making.
The three new champions from Brussels — Nas Jaafar, Andy Philein, and Benjamin Brassart — will now carry their titles through an industry that is watching more closely than ever. The specialty coffee world is not a niche anymore. It is a global culture with its own athletes, its own rivalries, and its own moments of genuine drama. Brussels just delivered three of them.
