The visible story of this week was Brussels — the first World of Coffee ever held in Belgium, three world finals in 72 hours, and a Best New Product showcase covering everything from AI repair platforms to single-dose tabletop bars. The invisible story was the one happening in boardrooms while the cuppers were judging in the Expo halls. Keurig Dr Pepper’s much-trumpeted Global Coffee Co. — the $16-billion publicly-traded business that’s supposed to be the future of mainstream coffee — just lost the CEO it was built around. And the UK confirmed it will start regulating coffee for deforestation, joining the EU. Here’s what shaped the industry between June 22 and 28.
1. Brussels Crowns Three Champions — Malaysia and Belgium Both Land Firsts
The 2026 World Coffee Championships ran June 25–27 at Brussels Expo, the first time the SCA’s flagship European event has ever been held in Belgium. Three world titles changed hands across the long weekend, and two of them are firsts for the winning country.
World Brewers Cup — Nas Jaafar (Malaysia). Jaafar took the title after three days of competition, beating finalists from Australia, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, South Korea and France. It is Malaysia’s first-ever world coffee championship win in any discipline — a milestone the country’s specialty scene has been chasing for nearly a decade. He earned his ticket to Brussels by winning the Malaysia Brewers Cup in 2025.
World Coffee Roasting Championship — Benjamin Brassart (Belgium). Brassart won on home soil with a score of 619, ahead of Li Zhong Xiang (China), Thanasis Angelopoulos (Greece), Ashton Huang (Taiwan), Andrea Trevisan (Austria) and Wang JianNing (China). Belgium hadn’t produced a WCRC winner before either — the optics of a Belgian roaster crowned in Brussels in the host country’s first-ever World of Coffee were not lost on anyone.
World Coffee in Good Spirits — Andy Philein (China). Philein closed out the weekend with a cosmos-themed routine: a signature cold drink called “Saturn” and an Irish coffee titled “Afterglow of the Cosmos.” It’s the latest in a multi-year run of dominance for Chinese competitors across the WCC slate, and it lands two months after China was confirmed as a host country for upcoming events.
One competition was conspicuously absent from Brussels: the World Barista Championship itself doesn’t happen until October, when it heads to Panama alongside the World Cup of Excellence. The reigning WBC champion is Australia’s Jack Simpson of Axil Coffee, who’ll defend the title from October 23–25.
The takeaway: If you compete or coach, three new world champions just gave you three new routines to study. If you operate a roastery, the Roasting Championship now has a Belgian face for the EU market — expect to see Brassart’s name on consulting decks and equipment endorsements through 2027. And if you’re booking origin trips, watch Malaysia: a first world title tends to accelerate origin tourism by 18–24 months.
2. Heineken Steals the CEO of KDP’s Brand-New $16B Global Coffee Co.
The biggest M&A-adjacent story of the week didn’t involve a deal at all. On Tuesday June 23, Heineken N.V. nominated Rafael “Rafa” Oliveira as its next Chief Executive Officer, set to take the helm on October 1, 2026, subject to shareholder approval at an EGM on August 5.
Oliveira is currently the CEO of JDE Peet’s — and, more consequentially, the chosen leader of Keurig Dr Pepper’s newly carved-out Global Coffee Co., the publicly-traded entity that combines JDE Peet’s brands (Peet’s, Stumptown, Jacobs, Douwe Egberts, L’OR) with Keurig single-serve. The unit has roughly US$16 billion in annual revenue and was, until this week, supposed to be the strategic answer to whether KDP’s $18B acquisition of JDE Peet’s would create real value or just a bigger holding company.
The timing here is brutal. The carve-out hasn’t even closed yet. The integration teams Stumptown leadership was quietly walking out of last week are reporting to a CEO who’s now publicly headed for the door. Heineken’s nomination locks Oliveira out of the next ~90 days of strategy work at the very moment Global Coffee Co. is supposed to be defining its identity.
His track record managing complex, multi-market portfolios across developed and emerging markets directly aligns with EverGreen 2030’s execution demands.
That’s Heineken’s framing — a fresh lens for a brewer in search of momentum. Oliveira spent ten years at Kraft Heinz as President of International Markets running a $7B-plus portfolio before joining JDE Peet’s. KDP, for its part, hasn’t named a successor for the Global Coffee Co. CEO seat in the SEC filings.
The takeaway: If you work for any brand inside the JDE Peet’s or Keurig portfolio, the next 90 days are when integration plans get rewritten. Acquisition playbooks change when the architect leaves before the building is done. The market read this as bearish for KDP and bullish for Heineken — coffee professionals should read it as “wait three months before signing a long-dated wholesale contract with anyone in the orbit.”
3. Jak Michael Ryan Takes the U.S. Barista Championship — Proud Mary’s Year
The 2026 U.S. Barista Championship final ran Sunday June 21 in Denver — technically the tail end of our previous digest window, but the post-result coverage and the Sprudge wrap dropped this week. Jak Michael Ryan of Proud Mary Coffee (Austin, TX) took the title. He’ll represent the U.S. at the World Barista Championship in Panama this October.
The final six, in order:
- Jak Michael Ryan — Proud Mary — Austin, TX
- Jason Yeo — Saint Frank Coffee — San Francisco, CA
- Ziah Bloom — Lamppost Coffee — Austin, TX
- Morgan Eckroth — Onyx Coffee Lab — Portland, OR
- Meg Skop — The Coffee Movement — San Francisco, CA
- Seidy Selivanow — Kafiex Coffee — Vancouver, WA
Two takeaways from the field. First, Austin is having a moment: two of the top three competitors and a city that didn’t place a finalist in the previous two cycles. Second, Eckroth — the 2022 USBC Champion and the most-followed competitive barista on social media via her Morgan Drinks Coffee platform — landed at fourth in a year she returned to the stage. The level of the field this year was, by most accounts in the room, the highest in a half-decade. Bluewater (water sponsor) ended up with two of the top three competitors on its bench by accident.
The takeaway: Ryan’s win is also a signal about Proud Mary — the Melbourne-born, US-expanded roaster has now produced multiple USBC finalists in three years. If you’re a Q-grader or trainer looking for a wholesale partner with a competitive-coffee DNA, Proud Mary just moved up the shortlist.
4. Arabica Hits a 7-Week High on Brazil Rain — Then Gives It Back on Friday
The futures tape did what it’s done all spring: rally on Brazil weather, then fade into the weekend. On Monday June 22, arabica climbed to roughly $2.78 per pound, the highest level since mid-May, as persistent rains in Brazil’s main growing belt continued to delay harvesting and raise bean-quality concerns. The contract held near $2.70 through Tuesday on a stronger US dollar before fading on Friday June 26, when September arabica (KCU26) closed down 3.20 cents (−1.16%) as harvest weather looked set to improve into next week.
Two data points from Safras & Mercado worth tracking:
- Brazil’s 2026/27 harvest is 39% complete as of mid-June, vs. 43% a year earlier and a 40% five-year average. Not catastrophic, but consistent with the “delayed” narrative supporting the bid.
- The USDA continues to project Brazil’s 2026/27 crop at a record 71.9 million bags, up 14% year-on-year. That’s the bearish counterweight to every weather rally this cycle.
The variable that keeps the bears nervous is the September–October flowering window for Brazil’s 2027/28 crop. NOAA still has the El Niño probability uncomfortably high for the back half of the year, and Volcafe has flagged the risk of delayed seasonal rains around that window. If September is dry, every surplus forecast in the market gets revised.
The takeaway: The same advice we’ve been giving since spring still holds: don’t lock in long-dated green at panic prices, and don’t sell forward into the surplus narrative until you see September flowering. Watch the back month spreads for the cleanest signal.
5. The UK Joins the EUDR Club — With an “Illegal-Only” Twist
On June 23, during London Climate Action Week, the UK government confirmed it will introduce its own deforestation regulation, covering coffee, cocoa, soy, palm oil, beef and timber. The framework is broadly EUDR-aligned — same commodities, similar information requirements, similar due-diligence architecture — with one critical difference: the UK version will only cover deforestation that is illegal under producer-country laws, not all deforestation.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. Under EUDR, a producer who clears legally permitted forest land is still excluded from the EU market. Under the proposed UK rules, they wouldn’t be. That is a quieter, lower-bar regime — it eases compliance for some origins but also gives the UK consultation a softer political landing than Brussels has had.
Timeline: a formal consultation with business, civil society and international partners is expected later in 2026, with secondary legislation slated for 2027. No enforcement date is set. The government will use existing Environment Act powers, alongside an updated UK Timber Regulation, to deliver the new regime.
The takeaway: Roasters who already built EUDR-compliant due diligence stacks are essentially compliant with the UK regime by default. The real impact is on origin: producers in countries with weak forest-protection enforcement now face two regulatory floors instead of one. If you import green from Brazil, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Honduras or Uganda, the gap between “legal under local law” and “defensible under EUDR” just became a marketable distinction. Lead with it.
6. Coca-Cola Calls in Restructuring Advisers at Costa Coffee
Coca-Cola has appointed AlixPartners and Alvarez & Marsal to Costa Coffee — AlixPartners on an operational review, A&M on the financial side. The move came roughly five months after Coca-Cola abandoned its £2 billion auction in January, having failed to attract a final bid at price. KKR, TDR Capital and Bain Capital had all reportedly looked and walked.
Some context on the gap. Coca-Cola paid £3.9 billion for Costa in 2018. A £2B exit would have been a roughly 50% paper write-down. The chain operates around 2,700 UK shops and 1,300 internationally, and has been the chronic underperformer in Coca-Cola’s portfolio since the pandemic decimated UK high-street footfall and never fully recovered.
A restructuring review at this scale rarely ends with “keep doing what you’re doing.” The plausible outcomes are: a cost-cutting program (closures, headcount), a partial divestiture (international business or UK estate spun out), or a renewed sale attempt at a meaningfully lower asking price. For a workforce of more than 18,000 baristas across the UK alone, that math is uncomfortable.
The takeaway: If you work in UK coffee — especially in a Costa role — this is the moment to update your CV and quietly look at adjacent operators. Greggs has been quietly expanding its drinks programme, and a Costa restructuring could be the largest single supply of trained UK baristas hitting the labour market in a decade. Cafe owners outside Costa: this is a hiring opportunity in 6–12 months.
7. Uganda Launches Its First National Coffee Brand on the Brussels Stage
Serving as the official Portrait Country at World of Coffee Brussels, Uganda used Thursday June 25 to unveil its first-ever national coffee brand: “Uganda Coffee: It’s in Our Nature.” The launch is less a marketing exercise than a strategic positioning move — an explicit attempt to shift Uganda’s identity from commodity supplier to premium origin.
The numbers behind the brand are loud:
- Uganda exported 8.78 million 60kg bags in the 12 months to April 2026.
- Export value: US$2.38 billion, up 23% year-on-year.
- Europe took 52% of April 2026’s exports by continent — Italy and Germany leading.
Uganda is the birthplace of Coffea canephora (robusta) and an increasingly serious source of Fine Robusta and high-altitude Arabica. The brand framing leans on that biology: launching in Brussels, in the country that hosts the EU’s deforestation regulator, with a Portrait Country slot is — deliberately or otherwise — positioning Uganda as a politically aligned, traceability-forward origin at exactly the moment EUDR-style frameworks are multiplying.
The takeaway: If you’re a green buyer, the next 12 months are the window to lock in Ugandan relationships before the brand premium fully prices in. If you’re a Q-grader who hasn’t calibrated Fine Robusta yet, this is the year. And if you’re a roaster looking for a single-origin story that aligns with both the new regulatory environment and a genuine sensory point of view, Uganda just made itself easier to put on the menu.
8. Quick Hits Worth Your Time
Five more stories that didn’t lead but matter:
- Coffee Fellows returns to family ownership. The Tewes family bought back BWK’s 22% stake effective July 1, 2026; Kolja Mühlberger joins as Co-CEO alongside Stefan Tewes in a generational handover. The German chain is targeting €260M in system sales by 2031, up from €160M today.
- Vixxo launches AI-enabled cafe equipment repair — espresso machines, grinders, cold brew. Initial rollout: Dallas, Phoenix and Denver. The first major AI-native maintenance platform aimed at multi-unit cafe operators.
- Latte Art Factory unveils the LAF Neo at Best New Product in Brussels — a multi-liquid countertop unit with an 18% smaller footprint than the previous generation. Watch for the BNP awards results to drop on the SCA website.
- Joe & the Juice opens in Dublin on June 19 — the Copenhagen-based chain’s first Irish location (Dawson Street) and its 14th market in Europe. Targeting 3–4 more Dublin sites by year-end.
- Cup of Excellence Nicaragua 2026 declared 29 winners from 160 lots. Top of the Washed category: Samuel Zavala with a Geisha at 91.44, El Cambalache farm. Top Natural/Honey: a Natural Geisha from Inversiones Valladarez Acevedo at 92.00, Los Alpes farm. Auction lots heading out across the green buyer community right now.
Who to Follow This Week
| Name | Why Now |
|---|---|
| Nas Jaafar (Malaysia) | First-ever world champion from Malaysia; reigning World Brewers Cup winner |
| Benjamin Brassart (Belgium) | 2026 World Roasting Champion; expect heavy European trade-press coverage through Q4 |
| Andy Philein (China) | WCIGS Champion; signature work blending cocktail craft with cosmos-themed storytelling |
| Jak Michael Ryan (Proud Mary) | 2026 USBC Champion; heads to WBC Panama in October |
| Rafa Oliveira (Heineken-elect) | The most consequential CEO transition in coffee CPG in years |
| Samuel Zavala (Nicaragua, El Cambalache) | Top scorer at the 2026 Nicaragua Cup of Excellence; Geisha lots in green-buyer hands now |
The Week Ahead
Four things to watch between now and next Monday:
- KDP’s succession at Global Coffee Co. — the most-watched seat in coffee CPG. Any leak from now until the August 5 Heineken EGM is material.
- Best New Product awards roll-up from Brussels — full BNP winners list to land via SCA channels and trade press this week.
- Cup of Excellence El Salvador auction on July 2 — the second of the summer auction cycle after Nicaragua.
- Brazil harvest progress — if next Monday’s Safras & Mercado read climbs above the 5-year average, expect the rally to fade further; if it slips, $2.80/lb is back in play.
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