> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://youngjuncho.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Why Do We Hold Barista Competitions? - URL: https://youngjuncho.ghost.io/why-barista-competitions-matter-en/ - Published: 2026-10-21T14:12:48.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-27T11:33:06.000Z - Description: What can we learn from a competition we cannot taste? A guide to the choices, teamwork and craft behind the World Barista Championship. - Author: Youngjun Cho - Tags: wbc, en, competiton, barista A viewer’s guide to WBC 2026 — understanding the choices and work behind fifteen minutes on stage Watch a World Barista Championship routine and a great deal happens before a single cup is finished. The competitor introduces where the coffee grew, adjusts the extraction and guides the judges on when and how to drink. With unfamiliar varieties and tools appearing in quick succession, it can be difficult to know where to look. We cannot taste through a screen, which makes following the explanation all the more important. Focusing on one choice at a time makes the routine easier to read. Why this coffee? What changes when milk is added? Why transfer the espresso after extraction or give instructions about the order of drinking? Connecting each action to its purpose turns fifteen minutes into an opportunity to see how someone understands and communicates coffee. Why do we hold these competitions? For me, their value lies in giving baristas a place to turn an idea into a drink, have it assessed against shared criteria and share the approach with others. Competing for a placing gives preparation a direction. A public performance lets the industry and consumers examine the choices that emerge from that work. Understanding a competitor’s achievement means looking at the problem they wanted to solve as well as the result. Ahead of the 2026 championship in Panama, I want to follow several choices from earlier competitions: selecting a coffee, refining the moment of drinking and thinking about producers and the next harvest. Understanding these processes makes the judgment and effort behind unfamiliar names more visible. Even viewers without professional coffee training can connect the competition to their own cup. ## The skill expressed in twelve drinks At WBC, a competitor has fifteen minutes to serve four sensory judges an espresso, a milk beverage and a signature beverage each: twelve drinks in total. A signature beverage combines espresso with other ingredients to express the competitor’s idea of a drink. The routine reveals both extraction skills and an understanding of how coffee behaves alongside milk and other ingredients. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8e/7b/8e7b9d3e-d203-4f12-8fca-fa8a30e42197/content/images/2026/10/format-en.png) Four sensory judges receive three drinks each within fifteen minutes. Judging distinguishes the actual sensory experience from the accuracy of its description. If a competitor announces a peach-like aroma, for example, judges assess whether they can find an impression that matches it. Espresso texture is also assessed in terms of both experience and descriptive accuracy. Making a good drink and understanding and communicating that drink each contribute to the assessment. Knowing this makes the simultaneous demands on a barista clearer. They must prepare the intended taste, serve it to four people and explain it in a way that helps those people recognize it. Bringing description and experience together requires close attention to the coffee they have made. Viewers can read that preparation in the order of service and the specificity of the explanation, as well as in the extraction itself. This is one way I think competition gives us a closer look at professional practice. Decisions about coffee, extraction and service that pass quickly in a café receive concentrated attention on stage. Shared criteria offer a framework for examining those decisions. They let competitors compare and learn from different approaches, even when each brings a different coffee and idea. The first thing to watch is the connection between the taste a competitor promises and the actions that follow. What extraction and service choices accompany a claim of smooth texture? Which aromas are they trying to bring forward in milk? We cannot judge the taste from a screen, but we can follow the decisions made to prepare it. ## The effort to understand a guest also reaches the stage Earlier presentations show the kinds of questions competitors bring with them. In an interview after the 2018 championship, Agnieszka Rojewska discussed the confusion that can arise when café guests are treated as coffee experts. She had seen customers fail to return because they did not understand why the coffee tasted different from what they usually drank. Her work on service and explanation grew out of encounters at the counter. In the 2022 final, Anthony Douglas approached this through trust. Creating an expectation of coffee and answering that expectation with the drink itself stood at the center of his presentation. When discussing a tool that distributes ground coffee evenly, he connected it to reliably delivering the taste he had described. Viewers could understand both the elaborate tool and the reason he needed it. Together, these examples bring competition closer to daily life. An explanation a guest can understand, followed by an experience that resembles it, is also what we hope for in a café. The stage offers a chance to prepare and demonstrate that work in detail. Watching the hands operating the equipment alongside the words addressed to the guest gives us a fuller picture of the barista’s skill. In 2024, Mikael Jasin also attended to the drinker’s attention. During the final, he invited the judges to close their eyes, breathe and focus on the coffee they were about to drink. His presentation made room for a pause in which to receive the experience. Notice when and how these instructions appear. The competitor is preparing both information about taste and the moment in which it will be received. ## Reading an unfamiliar coffee choice through its intended taste When competitors introduce rare varieties and complex processes, the names are often what viewers remember first. Yet the competitor has a result in mind for the cup. Listening for that result helps us understand an unfamiliar name as a possibility they have explored. In the 2025 final, Christopher Sahyoun Hoff introduced Wush Wush while discussing the pressure he had felt to choose Gesha. Wush Wush and Gesha are coffee varieties. His coffee was produced by Mauricio Shattah at La Negrita in Colombia; the official coffee information records a two-stage natural process using nuruk. A natural process generally involves drying the coffee fruit with its flesh intact. Here, a fermentation stage using nuruk was part of the processing. Separating the roles of variety and processing helps a consumer read this information. Variety tells us what plant the coffee comes from; processing tells us how it was handled after harvest. Against that background, the competitor describes what they found in the cup. Hoff’s presentation and subsequent interview matter because they explain the characteristics of his choice. They encourage us to ask what kind of coffee the unfamiliar ingredient, nuruk, was intended to help produce. Blending reveals this kind of decision too. In 2022, Takayuki Ishitani combined Gesha from Panama’s Hartmann farm with Vietnamese Robusta. The aim was to use lactic-fermented Robusta with a less harsh impression while adding body to the Gesha. Body describes the sense of weight and thickness a coffee has in the mouth. What matters here is how the two coffees were intended to complement each other. In 2024, that judgment becomes especially clear in his blends for different courses. Ishitani used 16 g of Gesha from Finca Deborah in Panama and 2 g of Caturra from Finca Milan in Colombia for espresso. For the milk beverage, he shifted the emphasis to 17 g of Caturra and 2 g of Gesha. In a post-competition interview, he explained that he sought a balance between flavor and tactile sensation, and that he chose the milk through tasting and testing too. The same two coffees were given different roles when served on their own and with milk. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8e/7b/8e7b9d3e-d203-4f12-8fca-fa8a30e42197/content/images/2026/10/blend-en.png) Ishitani’s 2024 blends: different proportions for espresso and milk. Jason Loo’s use of Panama Gesha and Malaysian Liberica in different blends in the 2025 final can be read in the same way. Liberica is a different coffee species from Arabica. Alongside the names, watch for moments when the blend changes. Following which aromas a competitor wants to foreground and which textures they want to supplement turns a list of beans into a story about designing a drink. It also gives us something to ask about a café blend: what taste is this combination intended to create? Earlier competitors’ experiments form part of the background to this exploration. In 2015, Saša Šestić introduced a coffee processed using carbonic maceration at WBC. Writing later, he explained that he had collaborated with winemakers to address differences in the results of coffees treated with the same processing method. He recalled continuing the work through presentations and experiments at origin after the competition. Behind an unfamiliar process name was a question about understanding and managing the outcome more closely. Such presentations can expand a viewer’s vocabulary for coffee. We may discover a variety called Wush Wush, or come to understand blending as a way to compose a desired taste. The competitor explains a possibility in public; the viewer gains a new point of reference for the next cup. This is part of what I value in the sharing that competition makes possible. ## What changes when crema is removed? The decisions continue after the beans have been chosen. One concerns crema, the brown foam on top of espresso. How might the drink change if that familiar-looking layer were separated before drinking? In the 2025 semifinal, Michael Harris of the Philippines asked the judges to assess the crema first and then wait for his instructions. He next asked them to place the vessel holding the espresso above the cup. His Better Vessel retains crema at the top while releasing liquid below. It offers another way to adjust what reaches the drinker after extraction is complete. Harris described a goal of reducing bitterness and harshness to serve an espresso that felt sweeter and smoother. He connected it to attempting a longer, higher extraction. Sweeter here does not mean adding sugar. It describes a sensory aim: bringing sweetness and texture forward by reducing impressions he found undesirable in the coffee he had prepared. The example shows why an extraction recipe alone cannot fully describe a cup. Even with the same dose and beverage yield, the final transfer can change. Harris connected extraction and service to design the experience he wanted. For a viewer, understanding that purpose matters alongside learning the tool’s name. Earlier performances also explored the moments immediately after extraction. In 2021, Hugh Kelly passed espresso over frozen metal to cool it rapidly. In his first-round presentation, he described this as a choice intended to bring out aroma. Frozen metal spheres also appeared in Boram Um’s 2023 final. Nucleus, the manufacturer, explains that it developed Paragon Espresso from Kelly’s prototype by refining the support structure and stability. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8e/7b/8e7b9d3e-d203-4f12-8fca-fa8a30e42197/content/images/2026/10/after-extraction-en-1.png) Crema separation and rapid cooling address different aspects of the drinking experience. Here we can follow an idea becoming a specific way of working. Crema separation and rapid cooling are different methods, but both pay close attention to the journey between extraction and the mouth. Listening to the impression the competitor wants to communicate, then watching the tool in use, helps us see how a small device fits the overall plan. The Better Vessel is now available as a commercial product. That creates a route for comparing a competition method in cafés or at home. To use it in a café, it would make sense to compare the same coffee with and without crema and find out which customers prefer. Waiting time and cleaning also matter when deciding whether the approach can be repeated in service. I see practical value here in being able to compare one component of a familiar espresso separately. We can move beyond the foam’s visual appeal and examine its role in what we drink. Harris’s choice leaves us a way to make a more precise comparison. The effort to refine even the brief interval after extraction can continue beyond the stage. ## Seeing the people who help make a cup A competitor’s coffee also carries decisions made on the farm. Growing a variety, harvesting it, fermenting it and drying it all lead toward the drink on stage. Listening for the work mentioned alongside a producer’s name reveals the contributions connected to the one person we see performing. Boram Um placed teamwork at the center of his 2023 final. He introduced the roles of producers, roasters and collaborators in beverage development, and invited the judges to join the team as drinkers. The structure of the routine expressed the collaboration behind a cup. Listening for what was exchanged and developed, alongside the farm’s name, makes those contributions more tangible. In 2025, Jack Simpson told the story of producer Jonathan Gasca acquiring a new bioreactor ahead of his visit. A bioreactor is equipment used to manage the environment in which fermentation takes place. Reflecting on the expectations his interest had created, Simpson asked whether he would keep buying a coffee each year after seeking out a new variety or process. By including the question of the next purchase, Simpson brought the producer’s investment and time into the presentation. Even if a buyer’s interest changes, the producer still has equipment in place and another harvest to prepare. A one-off competition purchase and recurring orders give a farm different room to plan. What I find important in Simpson’s account is the conditions that allow buying to continue. Discussing which coffee can be bought, in what quantity and over what period helps establish a basis for sustained experimentation. This also concerns consumers. The pleasure of encountering a remarkable coffee once differs from the pleasure of being able to drink a favorite again. For a competition discovery to lead to the latter, production and buying relationships must follow the barista’s choice. A café that explains those relationships can show how a new taste became part of its menu. ## Following the choices at the 2026 championship The 2026 WBC takes place in Panama from October 22 to 25\. One useful change for viewers is the removal of the recommended 20–30-second espresso extraction time from this year’s rules. The official summary explains that the timing was not tied to evaluation. Rather than treating the stopwatch as an answer key, listen for the taste and texture the competitor has prepared with that extraction. The conditions for omitting spoons and giving alternative drinking instructions have also been clarified. The official explanation describes this as a clarification of existing practice. As Harris’s example suggests, noticing what a competitor asks the judges to do after extraction helps us understand the intended experience. The drinking sequence can be the final stage of putting a recipe into practice. This year, I want to hear the explanation that follows the names of beans and tools. What taste led someone to choose Wush Wush? What are they trying to change by separating crema? How might an experiment with a producer lead to the next purchase? The more specific the explanation, the more closely viewers outside the venue can follow the judgment behind it. Watching this way leaves us with more to remember alongside the rankings: a possibility discovered in an unfamiliar variety, a tool devised to change the moment of drinking, an intention to keep working with a producer. Making these attempts public can open the way to another person’s experiment or conversation. Why do we hold barista competitions? My answer is that they offer a place to turn thoughts about a better cup into real drinks, to have them assessed and to learn from one another. Competitors fill that space by showing their choices. Recognizing their effort does not require us to understand every unfamiliar technique. It begins with following what they hoped to improve and how they tried to do it. A winner will be decided on this year’s stage. While waiting for that result, I also want to listen to the reasons behind each competitor’s cup. If we discover that the coffee we drink every day contains choices worth examining in the same way, the pleasure of watching the championship can continue into the next cup. ## Notes & Sources - WCC official 2026 rules and change summary - WCC announcement of the 2026 rules (April 28, 2026) - WCC 2025 rankings and coffee information - Official 2025 final routines: Jack Simpson ; Christopher Sahyoun Hoff ; Jason Loo. Competitors’ statements, not independent evidence of processing effects. - Thomas Wensma, Perfect Daily Grind, August 26, 2026: - Official Michael Harris 2025 semifinal - Henry & Sons / The Vault - Lily Kubota, Daily Coffee News, July 5, 2018 - Official Anthony Douglas 2022 final - Official Mikael Jasin 2024 final - Saša Šestić’s own retrospective - Official Hugh Kelly 2021 first round - Nucleus Coffee Tools, September 20, 2024 - Takayuki Ishitani’s direct post-WBC interview, July 16, 2024 - Coffee Journal’s account of the 2022 competition coffee served after the event Sources checked: October 21, 2026.