Methodology

Every competition result earns points. Bigger events earn more, higher placings earn more, and points fade as they age. Your ranking is the sum of what your results are worth today.

Event. A World Barista Championship win is 100 points. Other world titles are worth 60–80, national titles 20–25, regionals 12, open events 6.

Placing. A win earns the full amount. Second earns 55%, third 40%, down to 3% for tenth at a world final. Below world level, only the podium scores.

Time. Results count for five years: full value now, 90% after one year, 75% after two, half after three, a fifth after four, then gone.

Only finals count. The board updates four times a year. Every result carries its source — if yours is wrong, tell us.

The long version

The idea in full

Barista Rankings is a rolling world ranking of competition baristas, built the way tennis and golf rank their players: every result earns points, bigger events earn more, and points fade as they age. Your ranking is simply the sum of what your results are worth today.

Three things decide what a result is worth. Which event it was (a World Barista Championship final is not a city latte art throwdown). Where you placed (a win is worth a lot more than a third). How long ago it was (a title from last year counts for more than one from four years ago). Multiply those three together, add up all your results, and that's your score.

Nothing here is a judgement about who is the "best" barista. It is a record of who has been winning, where, and how recently.

What counts

Fourteen competitions score, from the seven World Coffee Championships run by the SCA to the independent circuits where people genuinely compete and get ranked. To be included, a competition has to be international, have run for at least three seasons, and produce a published podium.

Only final-round placings score. Making a semi-final earns nothing; neither does turning up. The World Coffee Roasting Championship is in the database but not the ranking — this is a barista ranking. SCA national championships (the ones that qualify people for the WBC and friends) are not yet included: there are 60-odd countries' worth of them and no single source, so they'll be added country by country as the data is verified.

Step 1 — How much is the event worth?

Every event has a weight: the number of points a win is worth. Events are tiered by one question — what does winning this get you? Winning a world title is the top of the sport. Winning a national puts you on the plane to that world title. Winning a regional gets you into the national. Events that qualify you for nothing sit at the bottom, however fun they are.

Within Tier 1 the weights follow prestige and depth of field, not a formula. The WBC is the biggest stage in coffee, so it anchors the scale at 100. Brewers Cup and Cup Tasters follow; the three craft disciplines sit together below them; the WAC final, which is a single-day knockout, is a step further back. Those four numbers are a judgement call and we say so. Arguing about them is encouraged — the ranking is designed so that moving any of them 25% in either direction barely changes who is in the top 20.

Step 2 — Where did you place?

A win earns the full event weight. Every place below it earns a slice. The slices shrink fast on purpose: winning a Tier 1 title is worth more than any two results that aren't wins, so a champion is never leapfrogged by someone who collected seconds and thirds.

At world finals, points go down to 10th. Everywhere else — nationals, regionals, show events — only the podium scores (100 / 55 / 40%), because that's usually all the organiser publishes and it keeps the lower tiers from piling up points through sheer volume of events.

So a WBC win is 100 points, a WBC second is 55, a WAC national win is 20, and third at a WAC regional is 4.8.

Step 3 — How long ago was it?

Results count for five years and lose value the whole way. A result is worth its full points on the day it happens, 90% a year later, 75% after two years, half after three, a fifth after four, and nothing after five. Between those anchors the value slides down a little every quarter, so nobody drops off a cliff on New Year's Day.

Age is measured in quarters from the quarter the final was held to the quarter of the current ranking. We use the actual date of the final, not the season it belongs to — which matters when a "2018" championship was actually decided in January 2019, as the roasting final was. Where only the year of an old event is known, we assume mid-year.

Five years is long enough that a world champion stays near the top through a quiet season or two, and short enough that someone who stopped competing in 2021 isn't still ranked above this year's finalists.

Adding it up

Each result's points are the event weight, times the placing share, times the age share. Your ranking score is the sum of all your results. There is no cap on how many results count and no bonus for competing often — but because only podiums score below world level, there is no grinding your way past a world champion. Winning every Barista League and Coffee Fest event on the calendar in one year would get you roughly level with a reigning WBC champion, not past them.

score = Σ event weight × placing share × age share

A worked example, as of the Q4 2026 ranking. Jack Simpson (Australia) has three WBC finals in the window:

That total puts him first, ahead of the reigning 2026 champion on 100 — one fresh title against a title plus two podiums. A year from now his 2025 win is worth 75 and the older two have faded to about 25 between them; he'd be on roughly 100 to the 2026 champion's 90. Still ahead, just.

Ties. When two people have the same total, the one with the better single result ranks higher; then the one with more scoring results; then the one whose best result is more recent. If all of that is equal they share the rank.

When it updates, and what it leaves out

The ranking is published four times a year, in mid-January, mid-May, mid-July and mid-November — each one a few weeks after a block of world finals, so a new champion appears on the next board rather than a year later. Between releases nothing moves.

• Results, not scores. We record who placed where. Judges' scores are kept where published but play no part in the ranking.
• One person, one record. Competitors are matched across events and years by name and country. Where two records might be the same person and we can't be sure, they stay separate until confirmed.
• Teams. Where an event is entered in pairs, each member gets the result.
• Gaps. The 2020 season has no AeroPress events (COVID). Some older independent events published only a winner. SCA national championships are not yet in.
• Corrections. Every placing in the database carries its source. If yours is wrong or missing, send the published result and it will be fixed in the next release.