Coffee Masters
Coffee Masters is a barista competition built like a sports bracket. Instead of one long judged routine, competitors are drawn against each other in head-to-head matches and knocked out round by round until one is left. The official framing is blunt: “16 CONTENDERS, 7 DISCIPLINES, 1 WINNER”, in what the organisers call a “fast-paced knockout battle format.”1
It runs inside a consumer coffee festival, not as a standalone championship — principally the London Coffee Festival and the New York Coffee Festival.12 That setting is the whole point: the matches happen on a stage in the middle of a ticketed public event, with a crowd watching, which is a different atmosphere from the quiet, scoresheet-driven world of the World Coffee Championships.
What it is not
Coffee Masters is not part of the World Coffee Events / Specialty Coffee Association family. There is no national-championship qualifying ladder feeding into it; competitors apply and a set number are selected.1 It is also not a green-coffee auction and has nothing in common with Cup of Excellence or Best of Panama — no lots are sold, no cupping scores are published, and no prices are recorded. If you are looking for lot-level data, this competition does not generate any.
The seven disciplines
The New York festival publishes the full list; the London page names the same events but stops at six in its summary text.12
| Discipline | What competitors have to do |
|---|---|
| The Cupping | Taste blind and identify coffees by profile, against the clock |
| The Brewing | Brew on a chosen manual method — Chemex, AeroPress, V60 and similar (Pour-over brewing) |
| The Origin | Point out where a set of coffees came from, on a world map |
| The Latte Art | Pour a pattern determined by the roll of a dice (Latte art) |
| The Order | Make ten [[Espresso |
| The Signature Drink | Invent and present an original multi-ingredient drink |
| The Espresso Blend | Build a custom blend — semi-finals only |
The spread is the interesting part. A World Barista Championship competitor is judged on one performance they have rehearsed for months. A Coffee Masters competitor has to cup like a cup taster, pour like a latte artist, work a bar rush like a working barista, and know their geography and flavour cold — with no chance to specialise their way to the title.
How a London edition runs
The 2026 London competition was spread across the four festival days at The Truman Brewery: Round One on Thursday 14 and Friday 15 May (four matches each day), Quarter Finals on Saturday 16, and Semi Finals plus the Final on Sunday 17 May.1
Prize money in London is modest by championship standards — £2,000 for first place, £600 for second, and £150 to each of the 16 finalists.1 The New York edition advertises a larger headline figure, a $5,000 grand prize, with 12 competitors at the Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 West 18th Street.2
Applications for the 2026 London edition opened 3 November 2025, closed 21 December 2025, and the selected competitors were announced on 26 February 2026.1
Champions
The London Coffee Festival maintains a Hall of Fame page listing its winners by year.3
| Year | Champion | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2015 | James Bailey |
| 2 | 2016 | Ben Morrow (St. Ali) |
| 3 | 2017 | James Wise |
| 4 | 2018 | Agnieszka Rojewska |
| 5 | 2019 | Rob Clarijs |
| 6 | 2021 | Agnese Sokolovska |
| 7 | 2022 | Rastislav Kasár |
| 8 | 2023 | Jānis Podiņš |
| 9 | 2024 | Ryohji Hope |
| 10 | 2025 | Kasey Headley |
| 11 | 2026 | Sharon Ip and Alejandro Griffin-Diaz |
No 2020 champion is listed.3 The 2026 line is unusual and is quoted directly from the official Coffee Masters page: “A big congratulations to our 2026 Coffee Masters Champions - Sharon Ip and Alejandro Griffin-Diaz!”1
Jānis Podiņš — a three-time Latvian Barista Champion — won the 2023 edition using a Bolivian coffee roasted by Coffee Collective, the Danish roastery.4 That is the only edition in this table for which any competitor’s coffee is documented anywhere.
Separate New York and Los Angeles editions have produced their own champions, reported by Sprudge: Remy Molina (2018, New York), Carlos De La Torre (2019, Los Angeles) and Davide Orazi (2022, New York).5
To verify
Whether the Hall of Fame list is London-only, and whether 2026 really had two champions. The London Coffee Festival’s Hall of Fame page gives names and years but no city,3 so it is not established here whether the 2015–2025 rows are all London titles or a merged list across the London, New York and Los Angeles editions. Since Sprudge separately reports New York champions in 2018 and 2022 and a Los Angeles champion in 20195 — years that also appear in the Hall of Fame under different names — the two lists are almost certainly tracking different city editions, but no official page states that. Separately, two co-champions in 2026 is not a normal outcome for a knockout bracket; the official wording is quoted above verbatim, but no source explains how a single-elimination final produced two winners.
To verify
A conflict with this wiki’s own St. Ali note. That note records Ben Morrow’s 2016 Coffee Masters title as “his second win.” The London Hall of Fame lists Morrow once, in 2016, and gives 2015 to James Bailey.3 If Morrow did win twice, the earlier title must have been a different city’s edition — which no source consulted confirms. Treat “his second win” as unresolved rather than as evidence of a missing London title.
To verify
Who owns and runs the competition. The research report behind this note attributed the festivals to Allegra Events, but no primary document was found saying so. The Coffee Masters page itself carries the footer ”© William Reed Ltd 2026”,1 the trade-publishing group — so the operator today appears to be William Reed, not Allegra. No corporate announcement of a transfer, and no page naming the competition’s legal owner, was reachable here. The festival site also mixes editions on one page, showing 13–16 May 2027 as festival dates alongside the 2026 match schedule,1 so treat any forward-looking date as provisional.
To verify
Whether the New York and Los Angeles editions still run. The New York Coffee Festival’s Coffee Masters page says “2027 Dates Coming Soon” while its most recent application deadline text refers to applications closing 1 September 2023,2 and it names no past winners at all. The Los Angeles edition appears only in a 2019 Sprudge headline.5 The 12–14 October dates and the Remy Molina win reported for New York rest on secondary coffee media, not an official results page.
To verify
No coffee data exists for this competition. Beyond the Bolivian/Coffee Collective mention for Podiņš, no farm, variety, altitude, processing method, cupping score or price is published for any coffee used in any Coffee Masters routine, in any edition, by any source consulted. Do not attach a lot or a score to a Coffee Masters year. Even the Podiņš detail comes from a single secondary news recap,4 not from the competitor, the roastery, or the organisers.
Why it matters
Coffee Masters is the clearest example of specialty coffee competition designed as entertainment first. The knockout bracket, the dice roll for latte art, the nine-minute drink rush, the crowd — all of it exists because a paying festival audience needs something to watch. The formal championships were built for judges; this one was built for spectators, which is why it lives inside a consumer festival rather than a trade hall.
It also functions as a second door into a competition career. Agnieszka Rojewska won it in 2018, the same year she became the first woman to take the World Barista Championship — a reminder that the London title sits alongside the world championships rather than beneath them in prestige, even though it carries no Specialty Coffee Association sanction. The World AeroPress Championship occupies similar ground: fan-facing, fast, and deliberately outside the official ladder.
What it does not do is move money at origin. A competition win that reprices a lot needs a named, traceable coffee behind it. Coffee Masters publishes none.
Related
- World Coffee Championships — the official, nationally-qualified championship family this one sits outside
- World Barista Championship — the scored-routine format Coffee Masters deliberately inverts
- World AeroPress Championship — the other big competition run outside the official ladder
- World Cup Tasters Championship · World Latte Art Championship — the specialised titles whose skills appear here as single rounds
- Agnieszka Rojewska — 2018 champion, and a World Barista Champion the same year
- St. Ali — the Melbourne roastery whose barista Ben Morrow won in 2016
- Coffee trade shows — the festival-versus-trade-show distinction that explains where this competition lives
- Barista · Latte art · Cupping · AeroPress — the disciplines it tests
- Sprudge · Perfect Daily Grind — the coffee media that report its results
- Cup of Excellence · Best of Panama — green-coffee competitions, for contrast with what this one is not
Official links
- Official site — Coffee Masters (London Coffee Festival)
- Official site — Coffee Masters (New York Coffee Festival)
- Official — London Coffee Festival Hall of Fame (past champions)