THE GCF26 RECAP
What a weekend! That’s a wrap on GCF26, folks! Here are some of our highlights from the weekend!
More coffee than ever
In the UK, we’re lucky to have an incredibly strong coffee scene, and we wanted to take steps to ensure that as much of it as possible was represented! This year, we made use of the Briggait’s Clydeside Halls to welcome FIFTY TWO stallholders, our highest count to date.
On the coffee front, we had Dear Green, Spitfire and The Gatehouse coffee roasters representing Scotland’s West coast, the likes of Module, Cairngorm and Machina from Edinburgh, North Star, Kickback, Nostos and Oddy Knocky from England, and Isle of Bute Coffee from…the Isle of Bute! And that’s just to name a few!
From the wider coffee community, we also welcome importers like Caribbean Goods, GCF-favourite coffee houses Space and Ottoman, as well as Brew It Group, Dog & Hat, and headline partners La Marzocco.
To complement our vast array of coffee-based cohorts, we also welcome coffee-adjacent businesses like Nudge Innovations, MOMA, Sip, and our headline partners Mossgiel Organic Farm, alongside food to keep you fuelled across the weekend, like Shawarmarama and Ramekin & Rolling Pin.
The strength of Scotland’s coffee community
Of course, with more coffee comes more guests, and you certainly didn’t disappoint, Glasgow! We welcomed over 2,800 of you through the Briggait’s doors across the weekend, and you didn’t let us down. Our stallholders, mainstage presenters, cupping, talks, and workshop room hosts were blown away by our Glaswegian enthusiasm!
That being said, we’d be doing a disservice to say it was just people from Glasgow in attendance. Whether you’re from down the road or you’re one of the dedicated individuals who travelled hundreds of miles to visit us, we’re so grateful that you did.
By making sure that we sold out our biggest year yet, we’re able to donate even more to our charity partners: 1% for the Planet, Kwetu Coffee and Bike for Good. Woohoo!
It wouldn’t be fair to speak of the strength of our community without also shouting out our volunteers at this point, because we really couldn’t have done it without them. Passionate about coffee and dedicated to making sure our vendors and guests had the best time ever, thank you to every single one of you!
The first-ever Best Roaster UK
While we always want to showcase the breadth of the coffee scene, it’s also important for us to celebrate the depth of excellence found within it. This meant holding not one, but two competitions at GCF26, the first of which was Best Roaster UK. Founded by our friends at the Nordic Coffee Festival, Best Roaster is a chance for roasters from around the country to demonstrate their skills, showing personal flair with a coffee of their choosing, and an ability to create an exceptional roast from a mandatory coffee round.
Alongside an ultimate winner and two runners up, GCF attendees were also given a chance to get involved and choose a Public’s Choice winner, with coffees from each roaster available for sampling across the weekend.
The event culminated in a reveal during the Sunday afternoon session, in which our winners were crowned. Congratulations once again to:
Jonathan Martinez - Thomson’s Coffee
Kris Thurbin - Tilted Coffee
Tom Altoft - Lincoln & York Coffee
Public's Choice:
Jonathan Martinez - Thomson’s Coffee
GCF welcomes the SCA Brewers Cup
This year, the GCF team was delighted to host the UK Brewers Cup by the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) to the festival. This well-established national competition gets more competitive every year, showcasing the most talented baristas in the UK with the winner going on to represent the UK in the World Coffee Championships at the World of Coffee event in Brussels in June.
We welcomed 14 competitors to the Briggait for the semi-finals on Saturday, with six finalists going on to compete with their exemplary manual filter brewing skills on Sunday.
Fresh from winning the SCA UK Cup Tasters Championship, Andrew Wong was crowned UK Brewers Cup Champion, with Ross McIntyre and Shufan Yang securing second and third place. Congrats to you three, and to all who competed, including local barista Ross O’Brien who secured 4th place.
Scotland’s coffee conversation gets louder
If you attended our mainstage panel discussion ‘Scotland on the Global Coffee Map’, you’ll know that there’s an appetite to increase our country’s profile as a serious force in the coffee world. Breaking the news at GCF that 16 Scottish coffee spots had been named among the UK’s 100 Best Coffee Shops, momentum is undeniably growing.
When measuring the appetite for speciality coffee in Scotland, festivals like GCF are a strong indicator of overall demand. It feels like no coincidence that this was by far our most successful year to date. Thank you to all who made that possible - our team, our vendors, volunteers, speakers, and of course, our visitors.
Huge thanks to our GCF partners La Marzocco, Mossgiel Organic Farm, Dear Green, Story Shop, Jaguar as exclusive distributors of Eureka Coffee Grinders, 2GoCup, Brewed by Hand, BWT UK, and The Social Hub.
