Cup of Excellence records by country

The Cup of Excellence (COE) runs as a separate national competition in each participating country, and each one ends in its own online auction. That means there is no single “COE record” — there is a record for Ethiopia, a record for Costa Rica, a record for El Salvador, and so on, plus one all-time high that happens to sit on top of them all.

This note is the country-by-country ledger. It exists because the headline numbers travel badly: news stories drop the country, mix up a COE auction with a private one, or quote a price per kilo in one story and per pound in the next.

Two things to hold onto before reading the table:

• These are tiny lots. A record price is what one determined bidder paid for one small bag, not a market rate.
• Per kilo and per pound are both used. A kilo is about 2.2 pounds, so a $1,000/kgheadlineanda$450/lb headline can be the same coffee.

Where the countries stand

As of mid-2026 the Alliance for Coffee Excellence lists COE competitions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil, and Peru (ACE competition & auction results, accessed 2026-07-22).

To verify

Ethiopia is not on that 2026 list — even though Ethiopia holds the all-time record price and ran a competition in 2024. The Cup of Excellence note records that Ethiopia’s programme was suspended in 2023 and returned in 2024; whether it is paused again, simply between editions, or listed elsewhere on ACE’s site is unresolved here. Check ACE’s country pages before saying Ethiopia “currently” runs COE.

The all-time high: Ethiopia, 2024

The highest price ever paid at a COE auction is $980.64/kg—about$445/lb, at the 2024 Ethiopia competition. Confirmed details:

• Producer: Basha Bekele, a smallholder farmer in Sidama
• Score: 90.5 points (see Coffee scoring)
• Buyer: Angelino’s Coffee, a California specialty roaster
• Whole auction: all 27 winning lots sold, 4,870 bids, $906,921.81\ast \ast total,weightedaverage\ast \ast$24.64/lb

It beat the previous COE high, set at the 2022 Ethiopia auction, where a UAE company paid $884.10/kg (Ethiopian Monitor, accessed 2026-07-22).

To verify

That 2022 record appears in two forms: **$884.10/kg\ast \ast (EthiopianMonitor,whichconvertstoroughly$401/lb) and a flat $400.50/lb quoted on the Cup of Excellence note. They are within a rounding error of each other but are not the same number. Pick one primary source before quoting a precise figure.

Country by country

Country	Year	Top price	Buyer	Notes
Ethiopia	2024	$980.64/kg($445/lb)	Angelino’s Coffee (USA)	All-time COE high; Basha Bekele, Sidama, 90.5 pts
Ethiopia	2022	$884.10/kg($401/lb)	UAE company	The record 2024 broke
Costa Rica	2018	$300.09/lb	not named in the ACE announcement	Honey-process Geisha; the benchmark before Ethiopia
Brazil	pre-2018	$126.10/lb	not named	Experimental yellow Bourbon — the record Costa Rica 2018 broke
El Salvador	2024	$122/lb (claimed)	Angelino’s Coffee (USA), reportedly 1st and 2nd place	See warning below
Nicaragua	2025	$15/lb	not named	Ramón Jarquín, El Porvenir — 2nd place; ten times his usual price

Costa Rica, 2018

Costa Rica’s $300.09/lb\ast \ast honey-process[[Geisha]]nearlytripledthestandingCOErecordatthetime,a\ast \ast$126.10/lb experimental yellow Bourbon from Brazil (Alliance for Coffee Excellence, accessed 2026-07-22). “Honey process” means the fruit’s skin is stripped but the sticky mucilage is left on the bean while it dries — a middle road between washed and natural that tends to add sweetness and body.

To verify

The ACE announcement does not name the buyer, the farm, or the cupping score for that lot. A secondary summary describes the winner as going to an “East Asian group”; nothing found here supports that attribution. Also unverified: claims that a 2026 Costa Rica auction returned “nearly $800,000"tothesectorwithexperimentalGeishasaround$250–300/lb, and an often-repeated typical range of $20–132/lbfortopCostaRicanlotsagainst$5–7/lb for lower-scoring ones (the latter traces to a 2012 Tico Times report, accessed 2026-07-22, and is old enough to be useless as a current figure).

Nicaragua, 2025

Nicaragua shows what COE does at the ordinary end of the scale rather than the record end. Ramón Jarquín, a producer in El Porvenir, placed second in the 2025 Nicaragua COE and sold at $15/lb\ast \ast —againstthe\ast \ast$1.50/lb he normally receives selling through intermediaries. Ten times the price, for the same farm and the same year (Qahwa World, accessed 2026-07-22; auction results published May 2026). The buyer is not named in that report.

El Salvador, 2024

To verify

The claim that **Angelino’s Coffee took both 1st and 2nd place at the 2024 El Salvador COE with a $122/lbwinningbid\ast \ast ,andtherelatedclaimthat\ast \ast tenElSalvadorlotsscoredabove90pointsthatyear\ast \ast ,restonasinglesource—Angelin{o}^{\prime }sownmarketingblog,whichisbothself-interestedandunreachableatthetimeofwriting(HTTP429).Treatthe$122/lb figure as a reported claim until an ACE results page confirms it.

The number that isn’t a COE record

To verify — the $1,739/kg Ethiopia headline

A widely shared 2025 story reports Ethiopian coffee hitting $1,739/kg($789/lb), which would dwarf the 2024 COE record. It is not a Cup of Excellence result. The auction was “Echoes of the Peak,” a private auction run by Alo Coffee — 20 lots grown at 2,400–2,580 m, weighted average $625/kg,6,457bids,$135,922.50 total (Addis Insight, accessed 2026-07-22). Private auctions and COE auctions are different events with different rules, so their prices should never be put in the same table. Flagged because the research feeding this note came close to doing exactly that.

Also unconfirmed

To verify

Two frequently repeated Ethiopia details are single-sourced to roaster blogs and not confirmed here: that the inaugural 2020 Ethiopia COE topped out at $185/lb to Saza Coffee (Japan), and that the 2024 edition drew 600+ samples with a top 30 all above 87 points and every winning lot natural-processed.

Related

• Cup of Excellence · Alliance for Coffee Excellence · Angelino’s Coffee · Saza Coffee
• Premiumisation — why a handful of buyers push these prices so high
• Best of Panama · Best of Panama results archive — the other auction that sets records, and its own ledger
• Coffee scoring · Cupping · Geisha

Official links

• Official site — Alliance for Coffee Excellence: competition & auction results
• Official site — Cup of Excellence

Sources

1. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — competition & auction results — accessed 2026-07-23
2. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Costa Rican Gesha shatters Cup of Excellence record at $300 per pound — accessed 2026-07-23
3. Cup of Excellence — official site — accessed 2026-07-23
4. Ethiopian Monitor — Ethiopian coffee smashes Cup of Excellence auction record — accessed 2026-07-23
5. Qahwa World — Cup of Excellence changes a life in Nicaragua — accessed 2026-07-23
6. Addis Insight — Ethiopian coffee hits $1,739 per kilo in record-breaking auction — accessed 2026-07-23
7. Tico Times — Coffee auction offers taste of excellence (2012) — accessed 2026-07-23