Competitors are putting emerging specialty coffee markets on the map

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Key takeaways

• Established markets still dominate coffee competitions such as the World Barista Championship and the World Brewers Cup, but winners from emerging markets are increasingly common.
• El Salvador, Guatemala, Poland, and Indonesia have all produced World Barista Champions.
• Nas Jaafar recently became the first-ever Malaysian World Brewers Cup winner.
• Cost, coaching, and visas remain the biggest barriers to wider representation.

Watch the finals of the World Barista Championship, and a familiar pattern emerges. Competitors from the US, Australia, the Nordic countries, the UK, and Japan dominate the finals, a reflection of where specialty coffee took root in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

Of the 25 champions crowned since the event began in Monte Carlo in 2000, roughly three-quarters have come from these established specialty coffee markets.

But a handful of results are rewriting this story. In 2011, El Salvador’s Alejandro Mendez became the first Latin American to win the title of World Barista Champion. Guatemala’s Raúl Rodas and Colombia’s Diego Campos also won in 2012 and 2021, respectively. In 2018, Agnieszka Rojewska became the first woman to win the World Barista Championship, representing Poland and opening the door for competitors from Eastern Europe.

The recent run has continued. Brazil’s Boram Um won in 2023, and Indonesia’s Mikael Jasin won in 2024, marking the first time both a Brazilian barista and an Indonesian barista had claimed the trophy.

You may also like our article on why roasters should look to emerging markets for inspiration.

Leaving lasting impressions at coffee competitions

A similar shift is playing out at the World Brewers Cup. Malaysian barista Nas Jaafar won the 2026 World Brewers Cup, the first time a Malaysian competitor has taken the title, beating finalists from Australia, Hong Kong, South Korea, and France in Brussels. In 2023, Chile’s Carlos Medina became the first Latin American to win the World Brewers Cup.

Even so, the roll of honour still leans heavily towards countries such as Australia, Taiwan, and Switzerland, whose competitors have claimed the title multiple times since the Brewers Cup launched in 2011.

There’s a strong appetite for specialty coffee in emerging markets such as India, Eastern Europe, and Turkey, and this passion is increasingly translating into support for national champions. India’s coffee industry is set to double in value by 2030, and specialty coffee is expected to account for nearly 18% of this growth. As local scenes mature, fans have more reason to rally behind their representatives on the world stage.

But competitors from these countries often receive less attention than their counterparts from countries like the US or Australia, where media coverage of coffee competitions is more established and social media followings tend to be larger. This imbalance is slowly narrowing, but it hasn’t disappeared.

For competitors from emerging scenes, the value of taking part often outweighs the result itself. “Compete no matter what; the amount of coffee experience alongside life experience you get from those competitions is priceless,” says Cristi Oltean, three-time Romanian Barista Champion, two-time Romanian Latte Art Champion, and Romanian Cup Tasting Champion. “Train, taste, think, and put a lot of effort into the stage presentation. You will be another person after you enter the World Stage.”

Improving representation 

Recent WBC routines suggest that innovation isn’t only about rare varieties or expensive equipment. Mikael Jasin’s winning 2024 performance centred on mindfulness and presence rather than the showmanship that defines the competition.

A national win can also change how people at home see specialty coffee. Malaysia’s Specialty Coffee Association credited Nas Jaafar’s win with strengthening pride across the country’s café scene, and wins like this tend to encourage more national competitors to enter local championships the following year. 

“Following a win, the people we know and our social media followers believe in us more,” says Suhas Dwarkanath, founder of Benki Brewing Tools and three-time Indian Barista Champion. “They are willing to experiment or even try specialty coffee because we are talking about it. This has definitely influenced the national coffee scene.”

When a country produces a global finalist or champion, it often sparks a wave of investment in training, roasting, and café culture, as more consumers connect the win to their own local coffee identity.

Whether representation continues to improve is a separate question. There’s no reason an Indian or Romanian barista champion couldn’t emerge on the world stage in the coming years, given the pace of market growth, but progress depends on more than passion alone. “Dedicated effort and taste improvement will definitely be decisive for a Romanian competitor to be a world champion, alongside creativity and a bit of luck,” Cristi says.

Looking at recent top-six finishes at the WBC shows that competitors from Eastern Europe and parts of Asia are appearing more regularly in semi-finals, even where they haven’t yet reached the final round.

Cost remains the biggest barrier to entry

Suhas points to import rules as one of the biggest obstacles Indian competitors face.

“Indian winners can’t easily import foreign-origin coffees into India,” he explains. “Indian coffees aren’t yet up to the mark for the World Championships, even though they are much better compared to ten years ago. This is one of the biggest barriers. Even importing a sample involves many procedures, and importing actual coffee presents another challenge. 

“Other baristas around the world get to play around with these amazing competition-level coffees and import them throughout the year. However, due to huge duty structures, Indian baristas don’t have exposure to foreign-origin coffees.”

Funding compounds the problem. As Suhas explains: “Indian baristas really struggle for funding and sponsorship, as not many companies in the country back barista champions financially. It is very difficult for them to buy the equipment needed to compete in such competitions, and they must also bear significant expenses, including airline tickets, hotels and accommodation, taking the team along and their expenses, visas, and food.”

World Barista Championship rules require licensed Competition Bodies to pay their champion’s reasonable travel and accommodation expenses, but every other cost falls to the competitor. Coaching, rare coffee, specialist equipment, and visa costs can add up quickly.

This financial gap disproportionately affects competitors from producing countries generally. Latin America accounted for more than half of global coffee production in the 2023-24 harvest season, yet fewer than 10 Latin American roasters have participated in the world finals since 2015.

As specialty coffee consumption grows in India, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the pipeline of talented baristas will only deepen.

Whether that talent reaches the world final stage largely depends on whether World Coffee Events, national associations, and sponsors close the resource gap that still separates emerging markets from established ones.

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Coffee competitions FAQs

Which countries have won the World Barista Championship outside the usual finalists?
El Salvador, Guatemala, Poland, Colombia, Brazil, and Indonesia have all produced champions since 2011, alongside more frequent winners from the US, Australia, the Nordics, the UK, and Japan.

Who won the 2026 World Brewers Cup?
Malaysia’s Nas Jaafar won the 2026 World Brewers Cup in Brussels, beating finalists from Australia, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, South Korea, and France, marking Malaysia’s first-ever World Brewers Cup title.

Why do baristas from emerging markets struggle to reach world finals?
Cost is the main barrier. Coaching, rare coffee, equipment, and travel expenses fall largely on competitors, disadvantaging those from countries with less-established sponsorship and funding networks.

Photo credits: Specialty Coffee Association

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