A quiet milestone for Baltic coffee: Huracán Coffee has been named the world’s best roaster at the Global Coffee Awards World Championship 2026. Competing against industry leaders from across the globe, the Vilnius-based team showcased the result of nearly three decades
of consistent work.
In a competition that spans continents and defines the current state of specialty coffee, a small-batch roastery from Vilnius has taken the highest honour. Huracán Coffee was named the world’s best roaster at the Global Coffee Awards World Championship 2026, held in El Salvador from March 20 to 23.
The result places Lithuania at the centre of an industry that is both highly competitive and increasingly global. More than 2,000 coffee samples from over 125 countries were submitted throughout the year, with regional competitions across Europe, the US & Canada, and coffee-producing nations. Only 30 roasters from 16 countries advanced to the final stage — a gathering that unfolded alongside the Producer & Roaster Forum, one of the most influential events in the coffee calendar.
In this context, the win is not a singular achievement, but the culmination of a system — one that extends far beyond roasting itself. As the Global Coffee Awards emphasise, excellence in coffee is never individual. It is built through relationships with producers, decisions in sourcing, precision in roasting, and the ability to translate all of that into a cup that resonates.
Huracán’s recognition came from coffees submitted in the Filter and Flat White Alternative categories, where both clarity and adaptability are tested. The competition’s format — blind evaluation, strict brewing protocols, and multi-criteria scoring — rewards not only flavour, but consistency, technical understanding, and versatility across different brewing methods.
For a company founded in 1999, long before “specialty coffee” became a familiar term in the Baltics, the award reads as both validation and continuation. Huracán has spent nearly three decades building its approach around incremental improvement — refining processes, investing in advanced technologies such as Loring Smart roasters and optical sorting systems, and maintaining a steady focus on quality as a non-negotiable baseline.
At the centre of this trajectory is founder Vytautas Kratulis. A long-time juror at the Cup of Excellence competition, Kratulis has built his philosophy around a simple but demanding idea: flavour must carry meaning. Not just clarity or acidity, but character — something that reflects origin, intention, and authenticity.
That perspective shapes how Huracán approaches sourcing. Relationships with producers are not transactional, but ongoing — built over years, sometimes decades. In a market where competition for high-quality coffee is intense, especially for a roaster from a relatively small country, these connections become essential. They are also fragile, influenced by shifting prices, changing climates, and the constant negotiation between quality and accessibility.
“We won, not immediately, but definitely,” the team wrote following the announcement — a line that captures both the tone and the timeline of the achievement. There is little sense of sudden breakthrough here. Instead, the win reflects a long accumulation of decisions, disagreements, refinements — the daily work of a team that, by its own admission, “pushes, argues, and lands it.”
Huracán’s win signals a maturation of the Baltic coffee scene — one that has, over the past decade, moved from emerging curiosity to confident presence. The fact that a Vilnius-based roastery could stand alongside competitors from traditional coffee powerhouses, and ultimately surpass them, speaks to a broader shift in how quality is produced and recognised.
In that sense, the title of “world’s best” feels less like a conclusion and more like a moment within an ongoing process. One built, cup by cup, far from the global stage — and now, unmistakably, part of it.
