What the 2026 London Coffee Festival Revealed About Where Coffee Is Heading

The 2026 London Coffee Festival drew a record 275 exhibitors, up from 260 a year earlier, and organizers expect attendance to surpass last year's record of 22,000 once final counts are in. The scale helped sustain a lively floor, but a shift in mood was just as noticeable.

In my coverage a year ago, I described an industry "that seemed determined to move forward, even while being keenly aware of the many overlapping challenges that it faced." This time, the optimism of 2025 appeared to have hardened into something more pragmatic: a recognition that the environmental and economic difficulties confronting coffee are not likely to ease soon. Speakers and presenters responded with a determined, unsentimental readiness to adapt. On the drinks side, brands either took bolder creative positions to get noticed or looked for leaner, more efficient ways to operate.

Five themes recurred throughout the event. Taken together, they suggest an industry navigating a broader paradigm shift—perhaps even a new wave—in which uncertainty has become the baseline.

Matcha Grows Up and Splinters

Having called matcha "peak matcha" after the 2025 festival, I still think that holds. Matcha remained a major presence this year, but it no longer came across as a single, undifferentiated phenomenon.

Some in the trade expect matcha consumer culture to split as the market develops: "highbrow specialization vs. lowbrow mass consumption, each priced accordingly," as Tim Anderson, a U.K.-based expert on Japanese food and drink, recently put it in a Pellicle Magazine story.

What I saw in London fit that prediction. Matcha stayed a popular ingredient across products and festival drinks, but several premium producers—Romi Matcha and Haru among them—leaned harder into single-origin matchas, discussing specific growing regions, production methods, and flavor profiles. Tasting several side by side made the nuances easier to appreciate beneath what can feel like an overexposed trend.

Matcha also had company. Hojicha, the roasted Japanese green tea with nutty notes, was far more visible this year, appearing in both specialty and mainstream settings. For drinkers seeking something new—and milder in caffeine—it looked ready to break out.

"Specialty" Now Covers Tea and Chocolate Too

It is curious that ideas like origin and terroir took so long to become common currency in matcha, given how fluently specialty coffee already speaks that language. Yet matcha was not the only non-coffee category claiming the specialty label at the 2026 festival.

Several tea producers leaned into premium positioning and coffee-adjacent vocabulary. Nuditea, freshly rebranded, described its "luxury," "specialty" teas as considered alternatives to the basic teas many coffee shops still carry. Rebel Tea, which makes iced tea and tea latte bases, promised to "give tea the glow-up it deserves," with foam art and seasonal flavors. At Novus Tea, I watched staff prepare rooibos lattes on an espresso machine.

Chocolate received similar treatment. Cocoa Canopy sold "specialty hot chocolate melting beads," and the responsible chocolate producer Juan Choconat pitched its products as "the best pairing for your specialty coffee."

Specialty is not a strictly defined quality standard, and stretching it across categories sometimes felt thin. Still, better tea and hot chocolate remain an unexploited opportunity for many cafe operators. For businesses that already care about coffee quality, extending that attention to the rest of the menu is a logical step.

Premium Coffee Means Elaborate Serves and Maximalist Flavor

I attended a panel called "The Coffee Consumer of Today and Tomorrow," led by Tom Price of the market research firm Lumina Intelligence. Price observed that, with cost-of-living pressure persisting, the number of coffee consumers is shrinking—but those who remain are deeply engaged.

They also want "value for money—more consumers are happy to pay more for quality, and use it to justify that extra spend," he said. As a result, "Previously emerging trends about flavor and premiumization are now going mainstream."

In practice, that means drinks far removed from a straight coffee. These premium beverages tend to be highly customizable, with add-ons and adjustments at the drinker's discretion. They are often multi-textural, built with cold foam, dried fruit, or boba, and they are usually iced, vividly colored, and intensely flavored.

Sometimes coffee is absent altogether. I came across many such drinks: syrup maker IBC Simply sampled ube iced matchas and lime and yuzu coolers; Blendsmiths served pink chai "clouds" with vanilla cold foam; Zuma and Sweetbird—whose slogan notes that "where coffee ends, we begin"—poured a salted banana bread iced chocolate.

For cafes, these "treat-led moments," as Price termed them, are an increasingly important way to draw customers. At the moment, "treat" seems to mean maximalist, rainbow-colored, dessert-like creations.

Co-Ferments Are Everywhere

Bold fruit flavors were not confined to syrup companies and packaged brands. This year they appeared in the coffees themselves.

Co-ferments had a presence last year; at the 2026 festival they were nearly unavoidable among the roasters pouring. I tried a coconut co-ferment from Oddy Knocky, Catalyst's Mango Slap, and a cherry co-ferment from Campbell & Syme. Ground State served co-ferments made with wild berries and melon; Hermanos offered red-fruit versions; Dark Matter even poured a butter co-ferment.

Tasting flavors I had never encountered in coffee before was both fun and startling. But as one staffer at the Oddy Knocky table remarked, it was hard for a classic washed coffee to get attention when attendees seemed to gravitate only toward the most extreme flavors on offer.

Automation Is Becoming Harder to Overlook

Beneath the bold coffees and premium drinks, plenty of attendees were openly worrying about running a business in a difficult economic stretch. Many industry members stressed the need to simplify workflows and prioritize back-bar efficiency.

Automation duly entered the discussion. Some operators framed it as a way to protect handcrafted drinks and human service. Liam Clifford, owner of Moonstruck Café in South London, spoke on the festival's "Ones to Watch 2026" panel. He said the cafe uses some automated technology, including a grind-by-weight grinder and a Puqpress automatic tamper. Yet "Watching the barista do their work is still very much the same—there are just a lot of things in there that help with speed and efficiency," he said.

Many espresso machine makers emphasized labor-saving features aimed at streamlining bar service, among them LaCimbali's HQM Technology ("designed to take the complexity out of milk prep") and Eversys' Shotmaster machine (offering "automation where it counts").

Others more directly replicated barista work. Caye described its commercial-grade, fully automatic machines as "the future of espresso machines" that "emulate the artistry of elite baristas"—without workers. LEC Robotics showed coffee-making robotic arms pulling espresso shots and pouring swan latte art, advertised at far less than the cost of human labor.

Watching perfect swan after perfect swan emerge from those bionic arms was uncanny. And with the industry under relentless pressure, it felt like a glimpse of a possible darker future for coffee.