Cezve/Ibrik Championship
The Cezve/Ibrik Championship is one of the seven World Coffee Championships, and the only one built around a way of making coffee that is older than the espresso machine by centuries.
A cezve — the same object is called an ibrik — is, in the organisers’ own words, “a pot designed specifically designed to make a particular style of coffee that is largely consumed in parts of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.”1 It is small, has a long handle and a pouring brim, and is made of metal, brass, copper or ceramic.1 You grind the coffee to a powder, heat it in water in the pot, and serve it unfiltered, grounds and all.
The championship’s stated purpose is not to standardise that. The official page says the event is “set in a competition format that celebrates the cultural tradition,” and that competitors are encouraged to “bring their own style/cultural element to their performance to showcase what is one of the oldest forms of preparing coffee.”1 Where the World Barista Championship rewards a globally legible routine, this one deliberately rewards a local one.
Like the other six, it is run by the Specialty Coffee Association and staged at a World of Coffee trade show, and you get in by winning your own national championship first — see World Coffee Championships for the shared machinery.
Recent champions
| Year | Champion | Country | Host city | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026 | Jane Espante | United Arab Emirates | Dubai |
| 2 | 2025 | Charles Boyenval | France | Geneva |
| 3 | 2024 | Jordan Tachnakian | France | Copenhagen |
The 2026 and 2025 lines come from the organisers’ own championship announcements.23 The 2024 line does not — see the flag below it.
2026 — Dubai. The championship ran at World of Coffee Dubai on 18–20 January 2026 and was, in the organisers’ words, “the first championship event of the 2026 World Coffee Championships (WCC) season.”12 The podium:245
- Jane Espante, United Arab Emirates
- Angel Kotsifakis, Greece
- Wael Hachem, France
2025 — Geneva. Charles Boyenval of France took the title after a first round and a final in Geneva. The full published ranking:3
- Charles Boyenval, France
- Paul Ungureanu, Romania
- Angel Kotsifakis, Greece
- Talal Bitar, Italy
Kotsifakis appears on both podiums — third in Geneva, second in Dubai — which is the closest thing the recent record has to a running story.
To verify
The 2024 Copenhagen result. Qahwa World, a regional specialty-coffee news site, reports Jordan Tachnakian of France as the 2024 champion in Copenhagen, with Kevser Atmaca (Turkey) second, Ivan Bilousov (Ukraine) third, Emanuele Bernabei (Italy) fourth and “Ply” (Canada) fifth, and names Arzum Okka as a sponsor.6 No organisers’ announcement or ranking sheet for 2024 was reachable — the official rankings page offers 2024 only as a downloadable PDF, which was not opened.7 One secondary source, no exact dates, and a single-word name for the Canadian competitor. Treat the ordering as likely but unconfirmed.
What Jane Espante actually brewed
The 2026 winning routine is the best-documented thing about this championship, and it is documented in an unusual place — a video of the routine rather than a scoresheet.
Espante works as a barista training manager at Family First Cafe and had previously represented the UAE in the World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship before switching disciplines.5 Her routine used a blend of two Geisha lots — a carbonic-macerated Colombian Geisha and a natural Panamanian Geisha.5 Carbonic maceration is a fermentation done in a sealed, carbon-dioxide-filled tank; the natural process dries the cherry whole around the bean. Both are the loud, fruit-forward end of processing, and both are what competitors reach for when a signature drink has to land in one sip.
To verify
The brew parameters of the winning routine. A single source — the organisers’ video of Espante’s routine, which was not viewed for this note — is reported to give: 15 g of coffee to 90 ml of water, brewing water at 60 ppm dissolved minerals (see Total dissolved solids), the coffee frozen for 12 hours then thawed for one hour, a guided fermentation with 1% Saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewer’s yeast) and 5% sugar, filtration through a Hario Switch with fast filter paper, rapid chilling to 10 °C, and a 50 ml final beverage built from 3 ml coffee cryo-concentrate, 6 ml cryo-fermented strawberry, 3 ml dark-brown-sugar syrup, carbonated and served in a frozen cup.8 That is one unverified source for a long chain of numbers. The two-Geisha blend and the cryo-concentrate are separately corroborated by a Spanish-language trade report.5 The rest is not.
The record before 2024 is mostly missing
This is the honest headline of the note. The organisers publish no year-by-year list of past Cezve/Ibrik champions anywhere on their site. The championship’s rankings page offers downloadable PDFs for 2024, 2023, 2022, 2019 and 2018 and a link out to a UC Davis digital collection for anything older; the general past-rankings page points to the same archive.79 There is no browsable table, no founding year stated, and no continuous champions list of the kind World Barista Championship has.
So this wiki cannot tell you when the championship started, who won it in its first decade, or how the rules have changed. That is a gap in the public record, not an oversight here.
The official page is also silent on format: it gives no round structure, no time limit, no tie-break and no scoring weights, deferring instead to a separate Rules & Regulations document.1 Do not quote a time allowance for this event from anywhere on this wiki.
To verify
How many times the UAE has won, and what happened in 2022. A Spanish-language trade report describes Espante’s win as the UAE’s third title in this championship and its first since 2022.5 Neither claim is confirmed by any organisers’ page, and no source consulted names the 2022 champion. Separately, this wiki’s Agnieszka Rojewska note records a World Cezve/Ibrik Championship in Milan in 2022 at which she placed fourth — itself carried by a single unreachable page. A Milan 2022 edition is therefore consistent with a UAE win that year, but nothing here confirms either.
To verify
Scores, and one date wobble. The only scores available for this championship come from Canada Coffee Championships, a national-championship site that aggregates world rankings rather than publishing them. It gives the Dubai 2026 final as Espante 302, Kotsifakis 291.5, Hachem 228, with a preliminary round of Kotsifakis 317, Espante 306, Hachem 272, Filip Valentin (Romania) 189.5, Koray Erdoğdu (Turkey) 163;10 and a Budapest, 13 June 2017 edition won by Karthikeyan Rajendram (UAE, 253) ahead of Dionisis Moustis (Greece, 233.5), Marina Khyuppenen (Russia, 229), Simone Cattani (Italy, 218.5), Anna Podoliak (Ukraine, 200) and Sara Al-Ali (Saudi Arabia, 170).11 The names and ordering match the official 2026 podium, so the page is plainly well-sourced — but the numbers are not from the scoring authority and no official sheet was seen. Separately, the same trade report that covers the 2026 final places it on “the weekend of 22 January 2026” while the organisers give 18–20 January;125 the official dates are the ones used above. The 2025 Geneva announcement carries a 29 June 2025 date on the page, but that may be the publication date rather than the competition date, so no exact date is given for Geneva here.3
Why it is the odd one out
Six of the seven world championships test a skill that specialty coffee invented or professionalised — espresso, latte art, filter brewing, roast profiling, triangulation, coffee cocktails. This one tests a domestic tradition that has been running in Turkish, Greek, Balkan, Levantine and North African kitchens for centuries and never needed a trade body’s permission.
That produces a different map of who wins. The recent podiums run through the UAE, Greece, France, Romania, Italy, Turkey and Ukraine — a competitor geography that looks nothing like the World Barista Championship’s, and much more like the actual geography of the drink. It is also, as of 2026, the championship whose winner served two Geishas from Colombia and Panama in a pot from Anatolia, which is either the tradition being honoured or the tradition being colonised by specialty coffee’s usual shopping list, depending on who you ask.
Champion history
| Year | Champion | Country | Company | Score | Host city | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026 | Jane Espante | United Arab Emirates | Family First Café | 302 | Dubai, UAE |
| 2 | 2025 | Charles Boyenval | France | MaxiCoffee | 274 | Geneva, Switzerland |
| 3 | 2024 | Jordan Tachnakian | France | Terres de Café | 310 | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| 4 | 2023 | Pierre de Chanterac | France | Terres de Café | 291.5 | Athens, Greece |
| 5 | 2022 | Michaela Ruazol-Recera | United Arab Emirates | TYPICA CAFE DUBAI & RAS AL KHAIMAH | 256.5 | Milan, Italy |
| 6 | 2017 | Karthikeyan Rajendram | United Arab Emirates | — | 253 | Budapest, Hungary |
| 7 | 2014 | Stavros Lamprinidis | Greece | — | — | Rimini, Italy |
| 8 | 2012 | Zoltan Kis | Hungary | — | 385 | Vienna, Austria |
| 9 | 2011 | Bae Jin-Seol | South Korea | Cuchasa | 374 | Maastricht, Netherlands |
Results archive (every edition)
Final-round placings for every World Cezve/Ibrik Championship edition on record — 9 editions, 2011–2026. Earlier rounds (the full field, 80 rows in total) are kept as data in data/competitions/wcc/cic.json.
2026 — Dubai, UAE
| Place | Competitor | Country | Company | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Jane Espante | United Arab Emirates | Family First Café | 302 |
| 2 | 2 | Angel Kotsifakis | Greece | VK Quality Brands | 291.5 |
| 3 | 3 | Wael Hachem | France | Terres De Café | 228 |
Earlier rounds: Preliminary (5).
2025 — Geneva, Switzerland
| Place | Competitor | Country | Company | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Charles Boyenval | France | MaxiCoffee | 274 |
| 2 | 2 | Paul Ungureanu | Romania | Bob Coffee Lab | 247 |
| 3 | 3 | Angel Kotsifakis | Greece | VK Quality Brands | 237 |
| 4 | 4 | Talal Bitar | Italy | Checchi Brunch & Specialty Coffee | 226.5 |
Earlier rounds: Preliminary (5).
2024 — Copenhagen, Denmark
| Place | Competitor | Country | Company | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Jordan Tachnakian | France | Terres de Café | 310 |
| 2 | 2 | Kevser Atmaca | Turkey | NİJİ COFFEE CO. | 237 |
| 3 | 3 | Ivan Bilousov | Ukraine | IDEALIST COFFEE CO. | 235.5 |
| 4 | 4 | Emanuele Bernabei | Italy | Picapau Coffee Roastery | 224.5 |
Earlier rounds: Preliminary (5).
2023 — Athens, Greece
| Place | Competitor | Country | Company | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Pierre de Chanterac | France | Terres de Café | 291.5 |
| 2 | 2 | Cezara Cartes | Romania | Coca-Cola | 274.5 |
| 3 | 3 | Mariam Erin Pinza | United Arab Emirates | Cosmic Garden Coffee Roasters | 266 |
| 4 | 4 | Dimitris Karampas | Greece | AVEK | 260.5 |
Earlier rounds: Preliminary (6).
2022 — Milan, Italy
| Place | Competitor | Country | Company | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Michaela Ruazol-Recera | United Arab Emirates | TYPICA CAFE DUBAI & RAS AL KHAIMAH | 256.5 |
| 2 | 2 | Paul Ungureanu | Romania | BOB COFFEE LAB / Viva Cafe | 233.5 |
| 3 | 3 | Dimitris Baigkousis | Greece | Independent | 212 |
| 4 | 4 | Agnieszka Rojewska | Poland | Independent | 203 |
Earlier rounds: Preliminary (7).
2017 — Budapest, Hungary
| Place | Competitor | Country | Company | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Karthikeyan Rajendram | United Arab Emirates | — | 253 |
| 2 | 2 | Dionisis Moustis | Greece | — | 233.5 |
| 3 | 3 | Marina Khyuppenen | Russia | — | 229 |
| 4 | 4 | Simone Cattani | Italy | — | 218.5 |
| 5 | 5 | Anna Podoliak | Ukraine | — | 200 |
| 6 | 6 | Sara Al-Ali | Saudi Arabia | — | 170 |
2014 — Rimini, Italy
| Place | Competitor | Country | Company | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Stavros Lamprinidis | Greece | — | — |
| 2 | 2 | Anna Mrazova | Czech Republic | — | — |
| 3 | 3 | Matt Toogood | United Arab Emirates | — | — |
| 4 | 4 | Davide Berti | Italy | — | — |
| 5 | 5 | Ecaterina Beatrice Szasz | Romania | — | — |
| 6 | 6 | Vadym Granovskiy | United Kingdom | — | — |
2012 — Vienna, Austria
| Place | Competitor | Country | Company | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Zoltan Kis | Hungary | — | 385 |
| 2 | 2 | Stavros Lamprinidis | Greece | — | 381 |
| 3 | 3 | Havva Kaba | United Kingdom | — | 363.5 |
| 4 | 4 | Ever Bernal Echavarria | Colombia | — | 356.5 |
Earlier rounds: Round One (10).
2011 — Maastricht, Netherlands
| Place | Competitor | Country | Company | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Bae Jin-Seol | South Korea | Cuchasa | 374 |
| 2 | 2 | Zoltan Kis | Hungary | Independent | 354 |
| 3 | 3 | Kostas Arapoglou | Greece | Club Hotel Casino Loutraki | 353 |
| 4 | 4 | Turgay Yildizli | Netherlands | Independent | 332 |
| 5 | 5 | Andy Freeman | United Kingdom | Coffeesnobs.com | 271 |
| 6 | 6 | Kiona Malinka | Germany | Crusio | 263 |
| 7 | DQ | Havva Kabba | Turkey | Independent | — |
Source conflicts
No disagreements between this page’s hand-written World Cezve/Ibrik Championship table and the imported archive.
Related
- World Coffee Championships — the umbrella note covering all seven titles and the 2026 season
- World Barista Championship · World Brewers Cup · World Latte Art Championship · World Cup Tasters Championship · World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship · World Coffee Roasting Championship — the six siblings
- Specialty Coffee Association · World Coffee Events — who runs it now, and who created it
- Agnieszka Rojewska — competed in this championship in Milan in 2022
- Serkan Sağsöz — Turkish barista champion turned Dubai roaster, on the same national-championship ladder
- Geisha · Carbonic maceration · Natural process — the coffee behind the 2026 winning routine
- Total dissolved solids · Hario — the water measurement and the brewer named in that routine
- Coffee trade shows — World of Coffee, the show the championship travels with
Official links
- Official — Cezve/Ibrik Championship (World Coffee Championships)
- Official — Cezve/Ibrik rankings and past-year PDFs
- Official site — World Coffee Championships
Footnotes
-
World Coffee Championships — Cezve/Ibrik Championship (official) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6
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World Coffee Championships — Announcing the 2026 Cezve/Ibrik Champion: Jane Espante (official) ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
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World Coffee Championships — Announcing the 2025 Cezve/Ibrik Champion: Charles Boyenval (official) ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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World Coffee Championships — 2026 Cezve/Ibrik champion announcement (official Facebook page) ↩
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Café y Métodos — Jane Espante of the United Arab Emirates wins the 2026 World Cezve/Ibrik Championship ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6
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Qahwa World — Jordan Tachnakian wins 2024 Cezve/Ibrik Championship in Copenhagen ↩
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World Coffee Championships — Cezve/Ibrik rankings (official) ↩ ↩2
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World Coffee Championships — Jane Espante, United Arab Emirates, winner of the 2026 Cezve/Ibrik Championship (routine video) ↩
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Canada Coffee Championships — Cezve/Ibrik Championship 2026 results and rankings ↩
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Canada Coffee Championships — Cezve/Ibrik Championship 2017 results and rankings ↩