Benjamin Brassart

Benjamin Brassart is a Belgian coffee roaster based in Anderlecht, a district of Brussels, and the 2026 World Coffee Roasting Champion.¹ He is the first Belgian to win that title,²³ and he won it at home — the final was held at World of Coffee Brussels in June 2026.¹

He is not a lifer. He has worked in coffee for a little over six years, starting behind a bar as a barista and moving up through café manager to roaster, and he opened his own roastery only in 2024.⁴ In his own words on the official competitor profile, entering the world championship was “a statement that there is still room for new roasters, new approach, new visions.”⁴

The roastery

Brassart’s roastery is Boo Coffee Roasters — an independent specialty roaster in Anderlecht, Brussels, selling single-origin coffees for filter and espresso by mail order across Belgium and Europe, plus a wholesale programme for cafés.⁵ The business is registered in Belgium as BOO Modern Coffee Co, at Fernand Demetskaai 23, 1070 Anderlecht.⁶

To verify

What the roastery is actually called, and whether he founded it alone. Three names are in circulation for the same business: his own official competitor profile says “I opened my own roastery « Boo! Modern Coffee »” in 2024;⁴ the Belgian company register lists BOO Modern Coffee Co;⁶ the roastery’s own website trades as Boo Coffee Roasters.⁵ On ownership the sources also differ — the competitor profile has him opening it himself, while La DH/Les Sports calls him a co-founder.² Most likely one legal entity with a trading name that has shifted, but no source consulted spells that out. Partly resolved: the roastery’s own About page names two people behind it — Brassart as head roaster and a co-founder called Benoit — which supports the co-founder reading; Benoit’s surname is still not given anywhere consulted.⁷ See Boo Coffee Roasters.

The 2026 world title

The championship is the World Coffee Roasting Championship, one of the seven World Coffee Championships run by the Specialty Coffee Association. Unlike the barista titles there is no stage routine: competitors are handed unroasted coffee, have to grade it, work out a roast profile on tiny sample batches, then reproduce that profile at full production volume — and the whole thing is settled by a cupping of what they produced. See the championship note for how the format works.

The organisers’ published finalist ranking:¹

	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

The organisers themselves published no scores, only the order. The margin comes from Belgian press: Brassart scored 619 points out of a possible 720, two points ahead of the Chinese runner-up on 617.² On a 720-point scale, two points is essentially a photo finish.

For the coffees, he submitted a single origin from Ecuador and a blend of roughly 80% Tanzanian coffee with 10% Peruvian and 10% Nicaraguan.²

To verify

The exact day of the final. The organisers’ own announcement dates the win to 28 June 2026,¹ but the official Brussels event schedule — already recorded on the World Coffee Roasting Championship note — runs the competition 25–27 June with the awards ceremony at 16:30 on 27 June. Belgian coverage was published on 29 June.² The championship itself ran three days; which day the trophy was handed over is not settled here.

To verify

Farms, lots, altitudes, processing and prices for the competition coffees. Only the countries and blend percentages are reported.² No producer name, washing station, variety, processing method or purchase price for any of these coffees appears in the sources consulted — and the world championships do not publish competition-coffee lot data the way Best of Panama or Cup of Excellence publish auction results. Do not fill these in from guesswork.

To verify

A stray line on his official profile. The World Coffee Championships competitor page for Brassart, served under the Brussels roasting-championship section, also states that he is competing in the 2026 World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship for Belgium.⁴ That looks like site boilerplate rather than a real second entry — nothing else consulted places him in that competition — but it has not been ruled out.

Getting there

Before the world title Brassart won his national roasting championship in Belgium in late 2025, which is how anyone reaches a World Coffee Championships final — there is no wildcard entry.² Belgian regional coverage from his home town of Ath described him as the country’s first roasting champion, suggesting the national title was new.⁸

His competition record before that was in a different discipline entirely: the Belgian AeroPress Championship, where by his own account he finished 3rd in 2023 and 2nd in 2024.⁴ The AeroPress circuit — see World AeroPress Championship — is the deliberately scruffy, brew-one-cup-and-argue end of competitive coffee, about as far from a production roasting drum as the sport gets.

Why it matters

Belgium is a coffee-drinking country with a long trading history and almost no presence on the world championship podium; taking the roasting title there, in Brussels, with a roastery two years old, is the kind of result the trade notices. It also lands on the discipline nobody watches. Roasting is the least visible job in the chain and the one with the most leverage — a bad roast throws away a great farm’s work — and a world title is the clearest public statement a roaster can make about their own judgement. See Premiumisation for what a result like this does to what a bag of coffee can be sold for.

Related

• World Coffee Roasting Championship — the title he holds, and the full results archive
• World Coffee Championships · Specialty Coffee Association — the circuit and the body behind it
• Boo Coffee Roasters — his roastery in Anderlecht
• Coffee roasting · Cupping · Agtron scale — the craft being judged, and how roast level gets measured
• World AeroPress Championship — the circuit he competed on before roasting
• Coffee trade shows — the World of Coffee show his final was part of
• Gardelli Specialty Coffees · Tim Wendelboe — other roasters who built a name on competition judgement
• Premiumisation — why a title changes the price of a bag

Official links

• Official site — Boo Coffee Roasters
• Official — World Coffee Championships competitor profile, Benjamin Brassart

Footnotes

1. World Coffee Championships — Introducing the 2026 World Coffee Roasting Champion, Benjamin Brassart (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the win, the six-name finalist ranking and the 28 June date ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. La DH/Les Sports — Benjamin Brassart, de Boo Coffee Roasters à Anderlecht, premier Belge champion du monde de torréfaction — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the 619/617 scores, the competition coffees, the 2025 national title and his home town ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

3. BX1 — Benjamin Brassart, champion du monde de la torréfaction, nous dévoile son atelier à Anderlecht ↩

4. World Coffee Championships — Benjamin Brassart, Belgium (official competitor profile) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the six-year career, the 2024 roastery opening, the roastery name in his own words and the AeroPress placings ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. Boo Coffee Roasters — official site — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the Anderlecht base, the business description and the roastery’s own account of the win ↩ ↩²

6. Golden Pages Belgium — BOO Modern Coffee Co, Anderlecht — Belgian business directory listing; source of the registered trading name and address ↩ ↩²

7. Boo! — About us — confirmed via WebFetch; names both founders ↩

8. Notélé — Ath : Benjamin Brassart sacré premier champion de Belgique de torréfaction de café ↩