From 25-27 June, coffee lovers the world over gathered in Belgium for the latest edition of the World of Coffee event in Brussels. Hosted by the Specialty Coffee Association, this was the event’s first-time visiting Belgium, and an excellent opportunity to meet with many different people all expressing their shared passion for coffee.

Taking place across three large halls at the ING Arena, company stands were plentiful and all so different from one another. As this was my first time attending a coffee exhibition/trade show, I found myself astonished at just how many different kinds of coffee had shown up in one place! Tea & Coffee Trade Journal also had a stand at the event, where we displayed our June issue and were able to chat with attendees about mostly coffee, but also a little bit of tea as well.

The TCTJ WOC Stand. Image credit: Matthew Camp

Though I spent a lot of time at the booth, I was also fortunate enough to get to explore the halls and speak to people working for an array of different companies from across the industry. Standouts for me were NKG (who worked with us at our recent Women in Tea & Coffee Conference event) as well as the Rainforest Alliance, our stand neighbour! Both had intricately designed, exciting stands that I found were great places to meet new people.

Casting a broader lens over WOC Brussels, the key aims were to facilitate connection between coffee professionals from around the world, along with providing exhibitors the opportunity to share their latest innovations, products and discoveries in a collaborative space. In service of these goals, lecture sessions also took place hourly on all three days of the event, and I was fortunate enough to attend quite a few of them.

From working on this magazine, as well as my own personal interest, I like to think that I have a solid idea of the current climate in coffee, but the lectures I attended proved to me that there is still much for me to learn. One which particularly stood out was “Coffee Chaos 2026: Brazil’s mega-crop, price rollercoaster & what it means for your bottom line.”

Hosted by Tomas Araujo of StoneX, this lecture delved into the current state of the coffee market and the impact of its recent history on the supply chain. Describing the current market, Araujo explained that, despite high expectations for coffee harvests this year, “we are starting from one of the lowest stock points in the last 20-25 years.” This, he elaborated, is because of poor harvests from either Brazil or Vietnam – two key players in the industry – for the majority of the 2020’s, with 2026 being the “first [anticipated] surplus in five/six years”.

The main point of his lecture came when he used these ideas as a framework to explain the short-term coffee price hikes that he believes will flatten out as time moves on – provided harvests go to plan. “Volatility will continue to dominate in the short-term, but longer term, the surplus (~10 million bags of coffee) is the baseline,” Araujo asserted. What interested me the most about this lecture was that it highlighted our incredible ability to predict the coffee landscape and how things are expected to go in the future based on the results of the past. I walked away feeling like I had learned a lot!

Overall, I left the event feeling like I had answered many questions I had not realised needed an answer. World of Coffee is an event I would recommend attending to anyone with an interest in coffee, and hopefully I will have the opportunity to attend again in future. That said, I was very happy to be headed home to watch the World Cup in English again – and a little bit earlier in the day!

• Matthew Camp, editorial assistant, Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, can be reached at: [email protected].