The Rules and Regulations for the 2020 World Coffee Championship season are now at wcc.coffee/rules. This release focuses on standardizing rulesets across all the individual competitions, including clearer formatting, competitor requirements, and appeals processes.

Over the past year, volunteer committees for each of the competitions met to create strategic plans for each of their competitions. The new strategic directions will be implemented starting in the 2021 rules cycle; the 2020 rules are focused on standardization.

This year has also seen substantial work done to improve support and quality control structures for Competition Body-level competitions (formerly “National Body”), and for WCE Representatives. You can read more about that work in the Competition Body (CB) announcement here.

There are three changes in this year’s rules, across all competitions:

1. A new, clearer complaint structure for issues arising during CB championships has been introduced. This is part of the broader work being done to clarify roles, and more clearly support competition bodies and WCE Representatives.
2. Some edits were made to clarify when a competitor is allowed to act as a calibration barista or judge, and when they cannot. Most restrictions are found within the definition of competitions year.*
3. Competitors may only participate in competitions for one sanctioned Competition Body per WCE Competition year. A competitor must hold a passport in that competition body, or hold residency in the Competition Body for the last twelve months. This applies across all barista, brewers, latte art, and any other competition the competitor may take part in during that competition year.

In addition to those changes across all competitions, there have been a few changes made to improve logistics:

• The table sizes for the World Cup Tasters Championship were not previously specified, and will now be built to the following dimensions: Length 1.8m, Width 0.8m, Height 1.0m.
• Competitors in the Cezve/Ibrik Championship will be required to use the provided sand-heaters during their competition round. Additionally, the final round of the Cezve/Ibrik Championship will now consist of six competitors if the first round has more than 15 competitors enter, or four competitors if there are less entrants.

Rules for all of the World Coffee Championships are available here:

• World Barista Championship Rules & Regulations
• World Brewers Cup Rules & Regulations
• World Coffee In Good Spirits Championship Rules & Regulations
• World Coffee Roasting Championship Rules & Regulations
• World Cup Tasters Championship Rules & Regulations
• World Latte Art Championship Rules & Regulations
• Cezve/Ibrik Championship Rules & Regulations

*A competition year is defined as the year leading up to the World Championships for which an event is qualifying a competitor to compete. (e.g. if a competitor is competing in a late 2019 CB event that would qualify them for one 2020 World Championship, they must compete for that CB exclusively in any other events that are a qualifier for any other 2020 World Coffee Championship.)