New gadgets, groundbreaking collaborations, and exciting competition wins: all the reasons why WOC Brussels was an event to remember.
BY ISABELLE MANI
BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Featured photo: Nas Jafaar of Malaysia is crowned the 2026 World Brewers Cup Champion. Photos courtesy of Isabelle Mani unless otherwise noted.
The 2026 edition of World of Coffee Europe, held June 25-27 at Brussels Expo in Belgium, was marked by a convergence of firsts. It was the first time a World of Coffee event took place in Belgium, bringing the global specialty-coffee community to Brussels for three days of competitions, product launches, lectures, cuppings, awards, and show floor discoveries.
It was also a historic edition for the World Coffee Championships. Nas Jaafar became the 2026 World Brewers Cup Champion, giving Malaysia its first title in the competition. Benjamin Brassart won the 2026 World Coffee Roasting Championship on home ground for Belgium, while Andy Philein of China was crowned the 2026 World Coffee in Good Spirits Champion.
Another record came from the weather. On Friday, June 26, Belgium recorded its hottest day of 2026 so far at 35.3°C (95.7°F). Inside Brussels Expo, the heat became part of nearly every conversation.
For many attendees, it also raised a familiar question: Why does Europe’s largest coffee event continue to take place during increasingly intense early-summer heatwaves, especially in cities and venues not always equipped with sufficient cooling infrastructure? After Geneva’s 2025 edition, where the venue had no air conditioning and some hotels reportedly did not even offer fans, Brussels at least included a cool-down lounge. Hopefully, in 2027’s Lisbon-based WOC edition, people will at least be able to cool down on the Atlantic coast.
But despite the heat, the weekend proved to be an eventful time—one filled with plenty of memorable moments. These were the WOC Brussels 2026 highlights that stayed with me most.
Non-Coffee Drinks Take Center Stage
This was the clearest market signal I saw at WOC Brussels: Coffee is still espresso, filter, roasting, and brewing. But the growth energy around the category is increasingly moving through cold drinks, wellness-coded beverages, customization, tea-based drinks, and menu systems designed for speed and repetition.
CBI, the Centre for the Promotion of Imports from developing countries, describes this shift clearly in its 2026 European coffee trends report: Younger consumers are drinking coffee differently from older generations, with convenience, customization, product innovation, healthy coffee consumption, and specialty coffee all shaping demand.
Europe remains one of the world’s largest and most mature coffee markets, but the data suggests a clear division between baseline growth and new expansion categories. According to Mordor Intelligence, the European coffee market at large is projected to grow from $55.98 billion USD in 2026 to $73.67 billion by 2031, at a 5.65% CAGR.
Within that, whole bean coffee—a proxy for freshly brewed coffee culture—is expected to grow slightly faster, at 7.28%, while specialty coffee moves faster still, with an estimated 8.74% CAGR. Flavored coffee in Europe is projected to grow at 7.64%, while Europe’s functional beverage market is forecast to grow at 6.18% through 2031. Cold brew and oat milk show even sharper growth, with projected CAGRs of 18.3% and 17.9%, respectively.
Together, these numbers point to the same menu logic I kept seeing at WOC Brussels: cold, customizable, wellness-coded, visually appealing drinks designed for repeat consumption.
La Fabrique à Latte, a specialty alternative latte brand created by Paris roastery La Main Noire, showcased its powdered latte mixes handmade in Paris using herbs and botanicals sourced from different regions. Their products fit directly into the demand for low-labor, visually appealing, customizable drinks. Its products were positioned as easy, quick, 100% natural, flavorful, and colorful—exactly the kind of clean-label format that works in a café menu increasingly shaped by speed, convenience, and visual appeal.
Kage Matcha pointed in the same direction from another angle. Tea was not presented simply as a side category, but as a structural ingredient for complex café beverages. Matcha, hojicha, and tea-based latte formats sat closer to the logic of a modern beverage program than to traditional tea service.
The same shift was visible in products such as On Lemon’s yerba mate, matcha, iced tea, and lemonade-based bottles, as well as Gili’s functional sparkling drinks, including flavors positioned around energy, immunity, recharge, and hydration. These were not coffee products in the strictest sense. But they belonged to the same menu conversation: cold, functional, portable drinks competing for the same consumer occasions as coffee.
Innovations in Brewing: Exciting Gadgets from the Show Floor
At WOC Brussels, brewing innovation was not only about extraction quality. Many of the most interesting tools and machines pointed to a wider concern with workflow, repeatability, training, service control, and home brewing. In a market increasingly shaped by cold drinks, plant-based milks, functional beverages, and to-go formats, those details are becoming part of the drink itself. Coffee is no longer expanding only by becoming better coffee; it is expanding into a broader beverage platform.
The LAF Neo
At the Latte Art Factory (LAF) stand, the LAF Neo made that shift especially clear. Presented with a cold drinks menu that included iced cappuccinos and iced caramel lattes, the machine showed how cold coffee fits into the operating logic behind the new café menu: faster service, repeatable recipes, flavor customization, and drinks built to move.
MHW-3BOMBER’s Electronic Temperature Control Pitcher
The MHW-3BOMBER Temperature Pitcher TP1, expected to launch in late July 2026, spoke directly to the growing demand for milk consistency. Designed as an electronic temperature-control pitcher, it reflects a café reality where texture, temperature, speed, and control all shape the final drink.
Pump My Moka Upgrades the Moka Pot
The same search for control appeared in home brewing. Pump My Moka reimagines the Moka pot—one of Europe’s most iconic home coffee tools—by separating pressure and temperature from the traditional stovetop process. Developed around the classic Bialetti Moka Express, it allows the Moka to function independently of the stove while giving users more control over extraction.
The Eversys x Modbar Automated Espresso System
The new Modbar presented at the Eversys booth brought that conversation into professional automation. Following the business combination between Eversys and La Marzocco under the De’Longhi Group, the product seemed to connect two powerful ideas in coffee equipment: the consistency and efficiency of automated systems, and the open, hospitality-driven design language associated with Modbar.
The Black Mirror Dot: Timemore’s Smart Coffee Scale
The Timemore Black Mirror Dot scale was also a small object with a strong point of view. Visually, it was a charm, with vibrant color options and a compact 77-gram footprint. But its real strength was its screen-free design. By moving the interface to the Timemore app through Bluetooth, the scale keeps the counter clean while offering tools such as flow-rate tracking, extraction curves, and recipe logging for both pour-over and espresso.
Hardtank Rethinks Cold Brew
Hardtank brought the cold brew conversation into production. Its commercial cold brew and nitro cold brew machines use recirculation technology instead of passive immersion, moving water through the coffee grounds to accelerate extraction and improve consistency. The result is cold brew made in under an hour, with options for kegging, nitro service, and larger-scale café or roastery production.
Together, these products showed brewing innovation moving toward greater control: helping cafés and home brewers manage more variables, serve more varied drinks, and keep quality consistent across increasingly complex coffee menus.
We will release part two of this article tomorrow.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Isabelle Mani (she/her) is a writer, journalist, and communicator specializing in the international coffee industry. Since 2017, she has focused on writing articles and features for various international coffee news outlets. Isabelle has traveled to coffee-producing countries such as Colombia, Kenya, Rwanda, China, and Brazil to study and research coffee. She holds training certifications from the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) and the Coffee Quality Institute (Arabica Q Grading).
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