World Coffee Roasting Championship

The World Coffee Roasting Championship is the world title for roasting — one of the seven World Coffee Championships run by the Specialty Coffee Association.¹

It is the odd one out of the seven. There is no stage routine, no fifteen-minute performance, no drink handed to a judge. The competitor is given unroasted coffee and has to do what a working roaster does: judge the raw beans, decide how to roast them, and then actually roast them — with everything resting on how the coffee tastes at the end.

The organisers describe it as “a 3-stage event” in which competitors are evaluated on “coffee grading, developing a roasting profile that best accentuates the desirable characteristics of that coffee, and on the ultimate cup quality of coffees roasted.”¹ More broadly, the championship tests “coffee evaluation, preparation, blending, and roasting skills.”¹

Older sources credit World Coffee Events, the body that ran the championships before the 2017 merger — see that note for why the two names describe the same competition.

The three stages

1. Grading the green. Before any heat is applied, competitors assess unroasted beans — sorting, classifying and judging what they have been handed. This is the same discipline the Q Grader licence certifies, and it decides everything downstream: you cannot pick a roast profile for a coffee you have misread.

2. Sample roasting — finding the profile. Small test roasts, used to work out how the coffee behaves and what curve brings out its best. This is the experimental stage, run on tiny batches so a mistake costs a handful of beans rather than a competition.

3. Production roasting — delivering it. The profile found on the sample roaster then has to be reproduced at volume, on a full production machine. Scaling a roast up is not a copy-paste job; a bigger drum carries more heat and more mass, and the curve that worked on 100 grams will not simply repeat on kilos. See Coffee roasting for why, and Maillard reaction for the chemistry the roaster is steering.

Judging is broad rather than headline-grabbing: “Certified Judges score competitors on dozens of criteria covering pre-roasting preparation and production roasting skills.”¹ The final verdict is a cupping — the roasted coffees are tasted and scored the way any lot would be.

The route in is the same as for all seven titles: win your national roasting championship first, and that seat is your place on the world stage. There is no wildcard entry.

What a competition week actually looks like

The 2026 edition in Brussels ran across three days, and the published schedule is the clearest picture of the shape of the event:²

Day	On the stage
25 June, 09:00–18:00	Sample, practice and production roasting
26 June, 09:00–17:00	Production roasting, competitor interviews
27 June, 11:00–13:00	Competitor cupping
27 June, 16:30–17:30	Awards ceremony

32 competitors were listed for Brussels.² Note the competitor interviews — roasting is judged partly on reasoning, not only on results. And note that the cupping comes last: everything the competitor did over two days is settled by a table of cups on the final morning.

Equipment and sponsor

Unusually among the seven, the machines are named. The championship’s title sponsor is InterAmerican Coffee, a green-coffee importer.¹³ For 2026 the official production roaster is the Stronghold Robotics S9X, and the official sample roaster is the LINK by Nucleus Coffee Tools and Kaffelogic, named as the sample roaster for 2024–2026.¹

That matters more than it sounds. Because every competitor roasts on the same machine, the title is a test of the person’s judgement rather than of their roastery’s equipment — the roasting equivalent of the World Brewers Cup’s compulsory round, where everyone brews the same beans.

The rules are revised year to year. The 2026 revision was announced as adjusting “coffee submission and green coffee quantities to better align with production roaster capacities,” expanding “eligible roasting machine sizes,” and refining “tie-breaks and penalties.”⁴

2026 champion — Benjamin Brassart

Benjamin Brassart of Belgium, head roaster at Boo Coffee Roasters in Anderlecht, is the 2026 World Coffee Roasting Champion, crowned at World of Coffee Brussels in June 2026 — described by the organisers as “our third new World Coffee Champion crowned in Brussels.”³

The official finalist ranking:³

	Rank	Competitor	Represents
1	1	Benjamin Brassart	Belgium
2	2	Li Zhong Xiang	China
3	3	Thanasis Angelopoulos	Greece
4	4	Ashton Huang	Chinese Taipei
5	5	Andrea Trevisan	Austria
6	6	Wang JianNing	China

Brussels was the heavy stop of the 2026 season, hosting three of the seven finals in one weekend — this one, the World Brewers Cup and the World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship.

To verify

Whether that six-name list is the whole published ranking. The organisers’ announcement gives six names, while the event page lists 32 competitors for Brussels.³² The natural reading is that six is the finals field and the other 26 were eliminated earlier, but the announcement does not say so and no full 32-place ranking was found on the official site. Do not describe anyone as having “placed 7th” on the strength of this note.

Earlier champions are not established here

This wiki cannot yet state the pre-2026 winners as fact. The organisers publish results as year-by-year rankings rather than one browsable history, and the past-rankings page consulted for this note carried Brewers Cup data only — no roasting championship archive.

To verify

The 2023, 2024 and 2025 champions. The research behind this note reports, from secondary sources that could not be independently confirmed, that the champions were:

• 2025 — Mikaël Portannier (Texture Coffee, France), score 569, at the SCA Expo in Houston, from a field of 23 national champions. Sourced to Daily Coffee News, which returned an access error (HTTP 403) when opened for this note.
• 2024 — 刘太阳 (TaiYang Liu) (Pincle Coffee, China), score 586, reported as Copenhagen, 27 June 2024.
• 2023 — Taufan Mokoginta (Ultra Coffee, Indonesia), score 561, reported as Athens, 22 June 2023; runner-up Talha Erdinc Bas (Turkey, 550), third Andrew Coe (United States, 527).

The 2023 and 2024 tables come from Canada Coffee Championships, a national-body aggregator, and were not opened for this note. One weak cross-check does exist: Ashton Huang, reported as 2025 runner-up, appears in the official 2026 ranking above — so the secondary tables are at least naming real competitors. That is not verification. None of these names, scores, dates or venues should be quoted as fact without the organisers’ own results.

To verify

The founding year and full history. No source consulted gives the first year the championship was held, its first champion, or a complete winners list. The event plainly has a back catalogue — the sample roaster is named for 2024–2026, implying earlier editions — but the specifics are not established here.

No coffees, no lot prices — and that is the point

A reader arriving from Best of Panama or Cup of Excellence will look for the competition coffees: the farms, the altitudes, the processing, the cupping scores, the auction prices. None of that is published, and none should be invented.

The organisers’ description of the format mentions green grading and cup quality but never names the origins or varieties used in a given year.¹ There is no documented link between this championship and any auction platform — no evidence that its coffees come from Best of Panama, Cup of Excellence or any CQI-associated programme. A sentence like “the 2024 championship used a washed Geisha at 1,800 m that sold for $X a pound” would be pure fabrication.

The reason is structural. The green-coffee auctions judge a lot and publish a price. The seven world championships judge a person and publish a name — the coffee here is a test instrument, not a product for sale, so there is no lot number, no buyer and no per-kilo figure attached to it.

Where it goes next

The championship travels with the World of Coffee show circuit. After Brussels in June 2026, the official calendar puts it in New Orleans, Louisiana, 25–27 June 2027.¹

Why it matters

Roasting is the least visible job in specialty coffee and the one with the most leverage. A farm can grow an extraordinary coffee and a barista can brew it perfectly, and a bad roast in the middle will still throw it away. Yet roasters mostly work out of sight, and their skill is normally described in the vaguest terms the trade has — “light,” “medium,” “dark” — which is exactly why the industry reached for measured numbers like the Agtron scale.

This championship is the trade’s answer to that invisibility: it puts the roaster on a stage, hands everyone the same machine and the same green coffee, and settles the argument by cupping. And like the rest of the seven, the verdict reprices things — a title is a public certification of judgement, and that is the premiumisation engine this wiki keeps running into, pointed at the person in the middle of the chain rather than the farm at the start of it.

Champion history

	Year	Champion	Country	Company	Score	Host city
1	2025	Mikaël Portannier	France	Texture coffee	569	Houston, USA
2	2024	刘太阳 - TaiYang Liu	China	Pincle Coffee	586	Copenhagen, Denmark
3	2023	Taufan Mokoginta	Indonesia	Ultra Coffee	561	Athens, Greece
4	2022	Felix Teiretzbacher	Austria	Felix Kaffee	482	Milan, Italy
5	2019	Arseny Kuznetov	Russia	Traveler’s Coffee	510.75	Taipei, Taiwan
6	2018	Vladimir Nenashev	Russia	Mosaic Coffee	486.25	Belo Horizonte, Brazil
7	2017	Rubens Gardelli	Italy	—	479.25	Budapest, Hungary
8	2016	Alexandru Nicolaie	Romania	—	493.5	Dublin, Ireland
9	2015	Audun Sørbotten	Norway	Audun Coffee	193.35	Gothenburg, Sweden
10	2014	Yu-Chuan Jacky	Taiwan	OH! Café	125.4	Rimini, Italy
11	2013	Naoki Goto	Japan	—	137.1	Nice, France

Results archive (every edition)

Final-round placings for every World Coffee Roasting Championship edition on record — 11 editions, 2013–2025. Earlier rounds (the full field, 194 rows in total) are kept as data in data/competitions/wcc/wcrc.json.

2025 — Houston, USA

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	Mikaël Portannier	France	Texture coffee	569
2	2	Ashton Huang	Taiwan	Rritrovare Coffee	551
3	3	Naruepon Wuttipappinyo	Thailand	Factory Coffee	546
4	4	宋春丹 Song Chundan	China	尽力而为咖啡	535
5	5	Amber (Ning Chi) Cheng	Australia	Code Black Coffee	534
6	6	馬振星 Zhenxing Ma	China	OLDGUANG COFFEE ROASTERS	531
7	7	Gianluca Lavacca	Italy	IL MANOVALE	521.5
8	8	Robert Rybczyński	Poland	STORY Coffee Roasters	514
9	9	Dorin Costea	Romania	Independent	506
10	10	Takeharu Onuki	Japan	MOOD coffee&espresso	487
11	11	Jeong Jin Jae	South Korea	JJJ	479.001
12	12	Diego Guartan	United States	Big Shoulders coffee	479
13	13	Jakub Kovac	Czech Republic	Poppy Beans Coffee	460
14	14	Martin Kribitsch	Austria	K & K Kaffeeteria GmbH	459
15	15	Philip Weller	Germany	Günter Coffee Roasters	456
16	16	Ajeyudu Pathuri	United Arab Emirates	Brewing Gadgets	440
17	17	Wandi Wijaya	Indonesia	Sabar Menanti Coffee Roaster	433
18	18	Beca Silva	Spain	Nomad Coffee	423
19	19	Simo Christidi	Norway	Solberg & Hansen AS	418
20	20	Yurii Kvasniuk	Ukraine	Essco Coffee	417
21	21	Anargyros Fakos	Greece	Darg	360
22	22	Julian Grajales Zilli	Mexico	AMCCE	338
23	23	Sofia Heuri	Switzerland	Kaffeemacher	328

2024 — Copenhagen, Denmark

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	刘太阳 - TaiYang Liu	China	Pincle Coffee	586
2	2	Mateusz Derkacz	Poland	Trigger Roastery	541
3	3	Andrea Trevisan	Austria	TREVO Coffee Roastery	513
4	4	成磊/Chenglei 刁/Diao	China	Beijing Yulong Science and Trade C	511
5	5	Myunggi Jin	South Korea	exitcoffee_roasters	506
6	6	Emanuele Tomassi	Italy	Tomassi Coffee Roastery	500
7	7	Sangchul Lee	Australia	ONA Coffee	498
8	8	Alireza Razzaghzadeh	Turkey	Niji Coffee Co.	491
9	9	Philip Weller	Germany	Günter Coffee Roasters	484
10	10	Steven Nurcahyana	Indonesia	Hana roastery	441
11	11	Andreea Duda	Romania	Olivo Coffee Culture	429
12	12	Erwan Alonso	France	Coeur coffee Roasters	426
13	13	Simmy LU	Taiwan	Independent	422
14	14	Ludvik Bonna Hopstock	Norway	Fuglen Coffee Roasters Oslo	420
15	15	Ikko Temma	Japan	GARDEN BAR & COFFEE JAPAN CO.,	419
16	16	Theodoros Galazoulas	Greece	Independent	405
17	17	Matías Durán	Mexico	The Quantum Crack Coffee Roaster	384
18	18	Warot	Thailand	WONDERROOM.BKK	361
19	19	Eduardo Choza	United States	Mayorga Coffee	348
20	20	Igor Protsko	Ukraine	Three Mississippi	272
21	21	Pedro Anjos	Brazil	Mokado Lab de Cafes	246

2023 — Athens, Greece

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	Taufan Mokoginta	Indonesia	Ultra Coffee	561
2	2	Talha Erdinc Bas	Turkey	Khaldi Coffee	550
3	3	Andrew Coe	United States	Elevator Coffee	527
4	4	Yoshiyuki Nakamura	Japan	mamepolepole	520
5	5	Razvan Oniga	Romania	Olivo Coffee Culture	500
6	6	André Kirberg	Germany	Seekind Coffee	491.67
7	7	Choi Jeonju	South Korea	kalascoffee	489
8	8	Ashton Huang	Taiwan	Ritrovare Coffee	486
9	9	Diana Johnston Ledezma	United Kingdom	Saint Espresso / Sense It London	472.33
10	10	Josef Holub	Czech Republic	doubleshot s.r.o.	471.75
11	11	Uriel Oropeza	Mexico	Pólvora Fábrica De Cafés Especiales	466
12	12	Roberto Breno	Italy	Bugan Coffee Lab	451
13	13	Alek Smet	Poland	LaCava	448
14	14	Artem Kryuchenkov	Australia	Bench Coffee Co.	447
15	15	Mikel Duynisveld	Norway	Romerike Kaffebrenneri	434.5
16	16	Mattheus Narcizo	Brazil	EXPOCACCER	423
17	17	Ignat Turenko	Ukraine	Perea Family Roasters	406
18	18	Paul Arnephy	France	Independent	392
19	19	Lukas Stolner	Austria	DeLuks Kaffee	336
20	20	Varangkana Changsirikulchai	Thailand	NIP COFFEE	308.33

2022 — Milan, Italy

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	Felix Teiretzbacher	Austria	Felix Kaffee	482
2	2	Simo Christidi	Norway	Solberg & Hansen	479
3	3	Wisnu Aji	Indonesia	Pratter Coffee Roaster	478.75
4	4	Alex Nerantzis	Greece	Cafetierra Coffee Roasters	476.25
5	5	Laurent Baysse	France	Brulerie Du Cantin	476
6	6	Minho Kim	South Korea	Camu &Co	474
7	7	Davide Cobelli	Italy	Garage Coffee Bros.	463.75
8	8	Tsai, Kuen-Pei	Taiwan	Second Coffee 老二咖啡	463.25
9	9	Natalia Doroshenko	Ukraine	Mad Heads Coffee Roasters	463
10	10	Ante Bikic	Denmark	Amokka	461.75
11	11	Nick Berardi	United States	Mostra Coffee	460.17
12	12	Daniel Shadbolt	Australia	Nomad Coffee Group, Veneziano Coffee Roasters	458.08
13	13	Paweł Drzażdżewski	Poland	Qualia Caffe	457.5
14	14	Oniga Razvan	Romania	Olivo Coffee Roasters	455.5
15	15	Túlio Fernando de Souza	Brazil	Nerd Coffee House	449.25
16	16	Nat Huadsoontorn	Thailand	Tobo’ Coffee Roaster	443
17	17	Warrick Matthew Masfen	Turkey	Kungpow Coffee	441
18	18	Jorge Sotomayor	Mexico	Café estelar and palReal café	438.5
19	19	Juan Espinel	Colombia	’Cafe de Colombia + Inconexus Specialty Coffee	433.33
20	20	André Kirberg	Germany	Seekind	427.5
21	21	Masakuni Sakata	Japan	Koto Coffee Roasters	420

2019 — Taipei, Taiwan

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	Arseny Kuznetov	Russia	Traveler’s Coffee	510.75
2	2	Bogdan Georgescu	Romania	Coffeeville Roastery SRL	498.75
3	3	Mateusz Karczewski	Poland	Audun Coffee - Norwegian Roast	493
4	4	Benjamin Pozsgai	Germany	Benson Coffee	492.5
5	5	Eduardo Juárez	Mexico	Sonata Coffee Roasters	488.92
6	6	Shenghao Chen	China	THE FEW COFFEE AND GOODS	487.75
7	7	Simo Christidi	Norway	Solberg & Hansen	487.75
8	8	Jason Hua (Ming-Hsuan Hua )	Taiwan	RebA CoffeE	487.25
9	9	Oleskii Konovalov	Ukraine	UKRCOFFEE Ltd	486.75
10	10	Michele Anedotti	Italy	Caffe Corsini - Ditta Artigianale	486.25
11	11	Alexandros Ferras	Greece	Kudu Coffee	483.75
12	12	Anthony Guy Nguyen	Sweden	The Coffee Connections	483.25
13	13	Koji Ida	Japan	ROKUMEI COFFEE CO.	483
14	14	Rasmus Madsen	Denmark	April Coffee Roaster	482.25
15	15	Takumi Sakamoto	Australia	Brut Coffee	475.67
16	16	Donghan Hwang	South Korea	Caffe MUSEO	473.5
17	17	Jonathan Piazarolo	Brazil	Trentino Cafés Especiais	471
18	18	Diana Johnston	United Kingdom	DRWakefield	468.08
19	19	Shelby Williamson	United States	Huckleberry Roasters	467.75
20	20	Felix Teiretzbacher	Austria	FELIX KAFFEE	459.5
21	21	Connor Bramley	France	Mana Coffee	450
22	22	Warrick Masfen	Turkey	Kungpow Coffee	446.5
23	23	Fuu Panratee	Thailand	Maled Coffee Roasters	441.5

2018 — Belo Horizonte, Brazil

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	Vladimir Nenashev	Russia	Mosaic Coffee	486.25
2	2	Yoshiyuki Nakamura	Japan	Mamepolepole	483.5
3	3	Veda Viraswami	France	Le Café Alain Ducasse	482
4	4	Ben Toovey	Australia	Genovese Coffee	480.17
5	5	Panagiotis Megalessis	Switzerland	Stadtrösterei	475.75
6	6	Simo Christidi	Norway	Solberg & Hansen	471.75
7	7	George Delichristos	Greece	The Underdog	471.5
8	8	Rafal Kaniewski	Poland	Java Coffee Poland	471.33
9	9	Kilian Seger	Germany	Hoppenworth & Ploch	468.75
10	10	Emanuele Tomassi	Italy	Tomassi Coffee	468.5
11	11	Pornprasit Paisansinsakul	Thailand	Koff&Bun	468
12	12	Salvador Benítez	Mexico	Passmar	466.75
13	13	Nobuaki Matsui	Denmark	Democratic Coffee Bar	465.67
14	14	Taehwan Kwon	South Korea	Signature Roasters	464.5
15	15	Nick Mabey	United Kingdom	Assembly Coffee and Volcano Coffee Works	463.75
16	16	Liang Yin	China	In Coffee	462
17	17	Joanna Alm	Sweden	Drop Coffee	459.25
18	18	Ian Picco	United States	Topeca Coffee Roasters	458
19	19	Cagatay Gulabi̇oglu	Turkey	Probador Colectiva	457.5
20	20	Kristina Radchuk	Ukraine	LCC UKRCOFFEE	455.75
21	21	Andrei Oprisan	Romania	SC Mister Tosh Cafe	452.75
22	22	Donieverson Afrânio Dos Santos	Brazil	Bourbon Specialty Coffees	450
23	23	Jerry Huang	Taiwan	Woots Roaster / Cafetaster咖啡嗜者	436.83

2017 — Budapest, Hungary

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	Rubens Gardelli	Italy	—	479.25
2	2	Jack Allisey	Australia	—	472.67
3	3	Benjamin Pozsgai	Germany	—	468.75
4	4	Henrik Arvidsson	Sweden	—	466.75
5	5	Yulia Saichuk	Ukraine	—	462.67
6	6	Denis Sigulin	Russia	—	461.75
7	7	Hiraku Kondo	Japan	—	457.5
8	8	Simo Christidi	Norway	—	452.5
9	9	Serkan Sagsoz	Turkey	—	449
10	10	Weiwei Ye	China	—	446.5
11	11	Mark Michaelson	United States	—	444.25
12	12	Joaquín Parra	Spain	—	443.17
13	13	Veda Viraswami	France	—	442
14	14	Joo Sunghyun	South Korea	—	442
15	15	Matthew Robley-Siemonsma	United Kingdom	—	438.33
16	16	Théo Maitre	Denmark	—	435.5
17	17	Ming Hsuan Hua	Taiwan	—	433.75
18	18	Roberto Espinoza Ramírez	Mexico	—	432.92
19	19	Robson Ribeiro	Brazil	—	427.42
20	20	Katy Szasz	Romania	—	426.75
21	21	Panagiotis Matziounis	Greece	—	409.75

2016 — Dublin, Ireland

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	Alexandru Nicolaie	Romania	—	493.5
2	2	Dmitrii Borodai	Russia	—	492.5
3	3	Matthew Robley-Simeonsma	United Kingdom	—	491.5
4	4	Joanna Alm	Sweden	—	486
5	5	Rubens Gardelli	Italy	—	485.5
6	6	Özgün Sarisoy	Turkey	—	485.25
7	7	Salvador Benitez	Mexico	—	479.25
8	8	Yuya Kawai	Japan	—	476.75
9	9	Seong Jun	South Korea	—	475.25
10	10	Alec Pfuhl	Germany	—	474.92
11	11	Crazy Veiser	China	—	471
12	12	Stanley Wu	Taiwan	—	461.75

2015 — Gothenburg, Sweden

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	Audun Sørbotten	Norway	Audun Coffee	193.35
2	2	Joanna Alm	Sweden	Drop Coffee	186.4
3	3	Min Keun Chol	South Korea	Coffee HOW’S Company	185.45
4	4	Çağatay Gülabioğlu	Turkey	Probador Colectiva	183.25
5	5	Shih-Hsien Lo	Taiwan	Alton Coffee	182.85
6	6	Rubens Gardelli	Italy	Gardelli Specialty Coffees	182.55
7	7	Aleksandr Shevkunov	Russia	Travelers Coffee	182.4
8	8	Alexandru Niculaie	Romania	Hotspot Coffee Roastery	180.25
9	9	Takaomi Eguchi	Japan	Tokado Coffee	173.93
10	10	Nicolas Martinez Demetrio	Mexico	Café Solemnus	172.7

2014 — Rimini, Italy

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	Yu-Chuan Jacky	Taiwan	OH! Café	125.4
2	2	Moonkyu Jang	South Korea	5Brewing Coffee	121.4
3	3	Joanna Alm	Sweden	Drop Coffee	118.85
4	4	Kaan Bergsen	Turkey	Petra Roasting Co.	117.6
5	5	Borodai Dmitrii	Russia	Russian Barista Association	117.25
6	6	Eijiro Goto	Japan	Marumi Coffee	116.6
7	7	Rubens Gardelli	Italy	Gardelli Specialty Coffees	115.9
8	8	Ivica Cvetanovki	Norway	Torungen Kaffe / Coffea Circulor	112.6
9	9	Bjorn Aarts	Netherlands	Dutch Barista Coffee	108

2013 — Nice, France

	Place	Competitor	Country	Company	Score
1	1	Naoki Goto	Japan	—	137.1
2	2	Cheng-che Chiang	Taiwan	—	134
3	3	Shih Ru Wang	Taiwan	—	132.15
4	4	Janove Thorbjørnsen	Norway	—	131.2
5	5	Seung Jin Lee	South Korea	—	128.35
6	6	Joaquin Parra	Spain	—	126.7
7	7	Iegor Polianskyi	Ukraine	—	124.5
8	8	Vitaliy Alemaskin	Russia	—	124.3
9	9	Tomáš Hospodářský	Czech Republic	—	123.75
10	10	Yves Aubert-Moulin	France	—	122.1
11	11	Emre Tolan	Turkey	—	110.3

Source conflicts

No disagreements between this page’s hand-written World Coffee Roasting Championship table and the imported archive.

Related

• World Coffee Championships — the seven-title circuit this one belongs to
• World Barista Championship · World Brewers Cup · World Cup Tasters Championship — the best-documented siblings
• World Coffee Events · Specialty Coffee Association — who runs it, before and after the 2017 merger
• Coffee roasting · Maillard reaction · Agtron scale — what the competitors are actually doing, and how roast is measured
• Cupping · Coffee scoring · Q Grader — the sensory and grading groundwork the judging rests on
• Benjamin Brassart — the 2026 champion
• InterAmerican Coffee — the championship’s title sponsor
• Coffee trade shows — the World of Coffee circuit the finals travel with
• Best of Panama · Cup of Excellence — the green-coffee equivalents, judged on lots rather than people
• Premiumisation · Simple Kaffa — why a competition result moves money

Official links

• Official site — World Coffee Roasting Championship
• Official — 2026 World Coffee Roasting Champion announcement
• Official — World Coffee Championships past rankings
• Official site — Specialty Coffee Association

Footnotes

1. World Coffee Championships — World Coffee Roasting Championship (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the three-stage format, the judging wording, the sponsor and machines, and the Brussels 2026 / New Orleans 2027 dates ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

2. World Coffee Championships — Brussels WCRC event info (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the three-day schedule and the 32-competitor field ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. World Coffee Championships — Introducing the 2026 World Coffee Roasting Champion, Benjamin Brassart (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the champion, his country and the six-name finalist ranking ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. World Coffee Championships — 2026 Coffee in Good Spirits and Coffee Roasting Championships rules and regulations (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the 2026 rule-change summary ↩