Every coffee-producing country grows oceans of ordinary beans and a tiny number of extraordinary ones. The hard part has always been finding those exceptional lots, proving they really are exceptional, and getting the farmer paid what the coffee is actually worth. The Cup of Excellence was built to do exactly that. It is a national competition and global online auction, held once each harvest in participating origins, that hunts down the very best coffees a country produced that year and puts them in front of buyers around the world.
For more than two decades it has been the most respected quality contest in specialty coffee — often called the industry's Olympics. A win can transform a small farm's fortunes, turn an unknown grower into a name roasters chase, and reset the price ceiling for a whole origin. This guide explains where the program came from, how the blind judging actually works, why the 87-point threshold matters, how the auction sends most of the money back to the farmer, and how a single lot can end up worth hundreds of times the value of commodity coffee.
Where the Cup of Excellence came from
The story starts in 1999. A United Nations-backed project in Brazil set out to reward quality rather than sheer volume, and organized a competition originally called "Best of Brazil." Coffee professionals cupped their way through hundreds of samples to crown the country's finest lots, and the winners were then sold at auction for premiums no Brazilian farmer had seen before. The event was partly meant to convince skeptical importers and roasters that Brazil could produce true specialty coffee at all. The idea worked so well that it needed a permanent home.
In 2002 the program moved to a new non-profit, the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE), founded by George Howell, Susie Spindler and Silvio Leite. ACE still owns and runs the Cup of Excellence today, licensing it to a national coffee body in each participating country. The mission has barely changed: use rigorous, transparent judging to identify a country's best coffees, then use a public auction to make sure the reward lands with the people who grew them. If this world is new to you, our overview of what specialty coffee is makes a useful companion — the Cup of Excellence is where that quality-first idea gets its most public and demanding test.
How the Cup of Excellence competition works
What makes the Cup of Excellence credible is its relentless, repetitive judging. Every entered coffee is evaluated blind — no farm name, no region, no variety, no processing method visible to the panel — and it must survive round after round to stay alive. Across a typical competition each surviving lot is cup-scored at least five times, over roughly six rounds, by two separate juries.
First comes the national jury: experienced cuppers from the producing country who work through the early pre-selection and national rounds. Coffees generally need to score 86 points or higher on the 100-point scale to keep advancing, and the field is culled from many hundreds of entries down to a tight shortlist. Then an international jury — importers, roasters and buyers who travel in from consuming countries, usually volunteering their time and covering their own costs — re-cups the finalists across the final rounds. Only lots that hold a score of 87 points or above in that final judging earn the Cup of Excellence award. That winning bar has been nudged upward over the years, as ACE has periodically tightened its rules and scoring thresholds while overall quality kept climbing — part of why a modern win is so hard-won.
There is one more tier at the very top. Any winning coffee that scores 90 points or higher receives a Presidential Award, the program's highest distinction. In some years only a handful of lots — occasionally none at all — clear that line, which is part of why a Presidential Award coffee draws so much attention. For how those cupping scores are assigned in the first place, see our guide to coffee grading; the Cup of Excellence leans on that same sensory scoring discipline, just under fierce competitive pressure.
| Stage | Who scores | Score needed | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-selection & national rounds | National jury | 86+ to advance | Hundreds of entries narrowed to a shortlist |
| Final international rounds | International jury (with national jurors) | 87+ to win | Lots earn the Cup of Excellence award |
| Presidential Award | Combined juries | 90+ | The program's highest honor; the rarest lots |
The auction: where the money reaches the farmer
Winning is only half the story. A few weeks after the jury finishes, every awarded lot goes into a single global online auction. Registered buyers — roasters and importers from dozens of countries — bid against one another in real time for named, fully traceable lots, and the results are published openly. That transparency is the point: because everyone can see what each lot fetched, the auction sets a visible, honest benchmark for what quality is really worth in that origin.
Crucially, the large majority of the money flows back to the grower. ACE structures the auction so that revenues stay in the producing country, with the farmer receiving the lion's share of the proceeds — commonly cited at around four-fifths of the final price — and a smaller portion covering the cost of running the competition. For a smallholder, a strong Cup of Excellence result can mean a premium of thousands of percent over what the identical coffee would earn as an anonymous commodity. Because each winning lot is small and sold on its own name, this model overlaps closely with the world of the coffee microlot, where tiny, separated batches are valued on their individual merits rather than blended into the crowd.
Which countries run the Cup of Excellence
The Cup of Excellence is a national program, so it exists only where a country's coffee sector chooses to run it in a given year. Over time it has operated across most of Latin America and, more recently, in Africa and Asia. The roster shifts — a country may pause a season for political, economic or logistical reasons — but the participating and past-participating origins include:
| Region | Origins |
|---|---|
| South America | Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador |
| Central America & Mexico | Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico |
| Africa | Ethiopia, Rwanda, Burundi |
| Asia | Indonesia |
Brazil, where it all began, remains a cornerstone, while Colombia and the Central American origins have produced some of the program's most celebrated winners. The expansion into Ethiopia, Rwanda and Burundi was a milestone: it brought the same competitive, transparent model to origins whose growers had historically captured very little of the value their coffees created.
Record prices and the Geisha effect
The headline that pulls most people toward the Cup of Excellence is the money. Early on, a standout lot might command a striking multiple of the local going rate; then, as the world's best buyers began competing head-to-head, the numbers turned genuinely startling. An experimental yellow Bourbon from Brazil set a program record in 2017. In 2018 a honey-processed Geisha from the Don Cayito farm in Costa Rica shattered it, earning what ACE calculated as a premium of roughly 27,000 percent over the commodity benchmark — a figure that made international news. When Ethiopia held its debut Cup of Excellence in 2020, that first auction set fresh all-time highs for the program, led by natural-processed lots from the Sidama region.
A pattern runs through almost every record: the Geisha variety, and increasingly exotic processing, dominate the top of the leaderboard. Geisha's delicate, floral, tea-like cup is precisely the profile that thrills a jury and ignites a bidding war, and its scarcity does the rest. It is worth being clear-eyed here, though, because the internet blurs the lines. Some of the truly eye-watering Geisha figures people share — coffees changing hands for sums that dwarf even the top Cup of Excellence lots — actually come from the Best of Panama, a separate national competition run by Panama's specialty coffee association, not from the Cup of Excellence itself. The two are cousins that share the same named-lot online auction model, but they are distinct programs. Keeping them straight is the difference between an honest picture and a game of telephone.
Why the Cup of Excellence still matters
Beyond the record-chasing, the Cup of Excellence changed the plumbing of the coffee trade. Before it, most quality coffee vanished into anonymous blends, and a grower rarely learned who drank their beans or what those beans truly earned. By insisting on named lots, published scores and open auction prices, the program helped normalize traceability and gave the industry its first reliable, public price discovery for quality. That transparency became the seedbed for direct trade, in which roasters build long-term relationships with specific farms — many of them first discovered through a competition result. You can explore more of these threads across our coffee section.
None of this makes the model perfect, and honest observers flag real tensions. The spotlight tends to reward a small number of star farms and marquee varieties, while the majority of a country's growers see little direct benefit. And a growing wave of private, invitation-only auctions now competes for the very best lots, tempting some famous producers to skip the Cup of Excellence altogether. The program's defenders answer that its open, rigorously judged, in-country model is exactly what keeps prices honest and results credible — and that, more than any single record, is its lasting legacy.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Cup of Excellence?
The Cup of Excellence is a national coffee competition and global online auction, held once per harvest in participating countries, that identifies the very best coffees a country produced that year. Coffees are judged blind over multiple rounds, and the winners are sold to buyers worldwide in a transparent auction. It is run by the non-profit Alliance for Coffee Excellence and is widely regarded as the most prestigious quality contest in specialty coffee.
What score do you need to win Cup of Excellence?
A coffee must hold a score of at least 87 points on the 100-point cupping scale in the final international judging round to earn the Cup of Excellence award. Coffees generally need 86 or higher to keep advancing through the earlier national rounds. Any winning lot that reaches 90 points or above receives the Presidential Award, the program's highest distinction. ACE has tightened its scoring thresholds over the years as overall quality has risen, which is why the winning bar now sits at a demanding 87.
How does the Cup of Excellence auction work?
A few weeks after judging, every award-winning lot is offered in a single global online auction. Registered roasters and importers from many countries bid against each other in real time for specific, named, traceable lots, and the results are published openly. The large majority of the proceeds — commonly cited at around four-fifths — goes to the farmer, with the revenue staying in the producing country and a smaller share covering competition costs.
Who runs the Cup of Excellence?
The Cup of Excellence is owned and operated by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE), a non-profit organization founded in 2002 by George Howell, Susie Spindler and Silvio Leite. The program itself began in 1999 in Brazil, originally as a competition called "Best of Brazil." ACE licenses each national competition to a coffee body in the participating country and oversees the judging protocols and the auction.
Why are Cup of Excellence coffees so expensive?
These lots are rare by design: only a handful of coffees from an entire national harvest survive the blind, multi-round judging, and the very top scorers are rarer still. When the world's best buyers bid against one another for a small, traceable, high-scoring lot — often a prized Geisha or an unusual processing style — prices can climb to many times the commodity rate. The auction is also intentionally structured so that most of that premium reaches the farmer rather than middlemen.