london coffee festival 2026: four days at truman brewery

Truman Brewery is a strange place to host the most concentrated specialty coffee scene in the UK. The brick yard between Brick Lane and Hanbury Street is built for fashion week and graduate shows: narrow corridors, exposed pipework, the kind of low ceilings where any amplified sound becomes everyone's problem. By Sunday afternoon the four-day London Coffee Festival had absorbed every inch of it and the air smelled of roasted Yirgacheffe, oat milk steam, and a small undertone of canal water bleeding in through the side doors.

This was my second LCF. The first thing that struck me, same as last year, is how international the show feels for a festival named after one city.

the stands that stopped me

The booth I spent longest at was Hermanos, the Colombian coffee roasters who run multiple London cafés but ship beans from family farms in Acevedo. Their stand was on the corner of the main hall, three baristas pulling shots without stopping, a 12kg roaster on display behind them. The brand is Colombian-British in the cleanest way I've seen it executed. The green tin is unmistakable on a shelf, and the coffee inside earns it.

The second stand I came back to twice was Brut Tea. They specialise in matcha and they know exactly what they are doing. The iced matcha I ordered had the kind of structured umami sweetness you only get when someone has cared about the grind, the temperature, the water, and the bowl. London has a lot of matcha bars now. Brut Tea is the one to beat. Read the full visit.

The discovery of the festival for me was Sipcollective, led by the 2026 UK Roasting Champion. Their iced filter was exceptional. The clarity, the sweetness, the structure. All of it sat right in the glass. When a roasting champion pulls your filter, you can taste why the title is theirs. The full visit notes are here.

the lab stage

The Lab stage at the far end of the hall ran the UK Barista and UK Brewers Cup finals across all four days. I watched a Brewers Cup round on the Saturday. Hario V60 brewers and Origami drippers in equal measure, a clean theatrical hush from the front three rows, and three sensory judges scoring on a paper deck the size of a small newspaper. The UK Brewers Cup winner qualifies for the World Brewers Cup final, which this year goes to Copenhagen in late June.

three takeaways from the floor

1. The festival is no longer London-only. I counted exhibitors from Italy (Cafezal, Ditta Artigianale), the Nordics, Australia (ONA, Single O), Colombia (Hermanos, Pergamino), Korea, and Taiwan. The travel cost of bringing a brand to Truman Brewery is now low enough that it's a default move for any roaster with international wholesale ambition.

1. Filter is on the rise, espresso is still the floor. Every roaster's table had a V60 or pulse station next to the lever machine, but the queue was always for the espresso side. Filter remains a connoisseur thing in the UK. Sipcollective's iced filter programme is the kind of work that will move that needle.

1. Equipment makers showed up in force. La Marzocco, Sanremo, Eagle One, Decent. Full retail-grade stands. Decent's display was busier than any roaster's. Home espresso has gone from a hobby to an industry.

the verdict

If you care about specialty coffee, this is your weekend in the calendar. You won't find this density of roasters, equipment, and competition routine in one room anywhere else in the UK. The festival ended on Sunday at 6pm sharp. We were among the last to leave. If you missed it this year, the next edition is at the same venue in April 2027. Tickets usually open in November.