2026 2nd Yunnan Guibao Coffee Green-Bean Competition (CoE Pilot) Concludes: Three Beans Break 90 Points, a Historic High

Our correspondent (Reporter: Liu Xiaoyun) reports: On June 25, the 2026 2nd Yunnan Guibao Coffee Green-Bean Competition (Yunnan Cup of Excellence pilot) came to a successful close by the shores of Dianchi Lake in Kunming. This globally authoritative specialty coffee event, relying on a professional judging system and an international trading platform, delivered a brilliant answer sheet for the specialty development of Yunnan coffee, injecting new momentum into improving the quality and efficiency of our province’s plateau-characteristic agriculture and broadening its outward-oriented development path.

The event was hosted by the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) and the Yunnan Specialty Coffee Association, with local coffee-related governments, research institutions, and cultural-tourism operators jointly co-organizing. A total of 169 green-bean samples were collected, of which 162 entered the domestic judging stage and 40 advanced to international judging. After multiple rounds of professional cupping and scoring, three green beans submitted by Lincang Gengxia Estate, Menghai Yunle Coffee, and Linxiang Songfeng Coffee Cooperative broke the 90-point threshold; among them, Lincang Gengxia Estate’s washed Geisha scored 91.78 to take the top prize.

According to industry standards, CoE coffees above 90 points belong to the world’s top “Exceptional” tier and may be awarded Presidential Medal honors. The previous edition’s highest score was only 89.96; this year achieved a leapfrog breakthrough in quality tier. The champion green bean fetched RMB 14,000 per kg at the on-site auction, setting a new record for our province’s green-bean auction price, with both market value and quality reputation rising together. International judges present unanimously praised Yunnan beans for their distinct terroir aromatics, saying their overall quality has joined the world’s first tier of specialty coffee.

In recent years, our province has continued to deepen coffee full-industry-chain development, focusing on variety improvement, refined processing, and standardized estate cultivation, with the specialty output rate and deep-processing share steadily rising. The results of this competition fully confirm that pursuing a specialty, branded, and internationalized path is a viable route for the transformation and upgrading of Yunnan’s coffee industry, and will also motivate coffee farmers and estates to continuously optimize cultivation and processing techniques, shifting the industry’s focus from pursuing volume toward improving quality and building distinctive brands.

An ACE official introduced that China has now joined the world’s top ten Arabica-producing countries, and Yunnan, as the country’s core coffee region, has built a normalized bridge for external exchange through the CoE’s top international event. Relying on the competition platform, Yunnan’s coffee industry is shifting from a participant in the global market to a competitor among quality-producing regions; its development posture is moving from following to running alongside, continuously raising the international recognition of Yunnan coffee and its industrial cultural confidence, and helping plateau-characteristic agricultural products set sail and reach global consumer markets.

A CPPCC member in the industry said coffee is a highly representative plateau-specialty industry in Yunnan, bearing on the income growth of countless coffee-farming households. Continuously running international specialty coffee events can both polish the regional public brand of Yunnan coffee and drive the integrated development of cultivation, processing, cultural tourism, and foreign trade — a powerful lever for consolidating poverty-alleviation gains and comprehensively advancing rural revitalization. Next, it is hoped that, building on the resources and experience accumulated through the competition, the industry will keep improving supporting facilities and broadening export channels, using specialty-industry development to support the high-quality growth of the province’s modern agriculture.