The Aotearoa Brewers Cup Championship has returned for 2026 and will be hosted alongside the Aotearoa Cup Tasters Championship at The Tuesday Club in Auckland.
Held between 1 to 3 May, the pair of competitions will kick off the New Zealand Specialty Coffee Association’s (NZSCA) competition calendar for the year.
This year’s edition of the Brewers Cup will be the first hosted in New Zealand since 2017, with Nara Lee the last champion to represent the nation on the world stage in Budapest that same year.
The first Aotearoa Brewers Cup Championship was hosted at Auckland’s Atomic Coffee Roasters back in 2014.
The NZSCA called on sponsors to help reignite the Brewers Cup back in 2024 with a view of once again holding the competition in 2026.
Atomic Coffee’s August Hislop was named the 2025 Aotearoa Cup Tasters Champion in 2025, where she achieved a perfect 8/8 score in just one minute and 53 seconds. Toby Olivier Chen and Woohyung Lee rounded out the podium.
Dove Chen was New Zealand’s representative at the 2025 World Cup Tasters Championship, finishing 25th in the preliminary round with a score of 7/8 in seven minutes and 18 seconds.
Kristiane McGregor made it all the way to the semi-finals at the 2013 Cup Tasters Championship in Nice, France, where she finished sixth, before finishing fourth in the final round in Costa Rica in 2015.
New Zealand’s best performer in World Brewers Cup history is Guy McCracken, who finished seventh in the opening round in Melbourne in 2013, missing the final round by just one place.
