Updated Rules & Regulations have been announced for the 2021 World Latte Art, World Coffee in Good Spirits, and World Coffee Roasting Championships, scheduled to take place at the Taipei International Coffee Show in November. You can find the rules and scoresheets for each of the competitions linked below, with changes broadly focused on COVID-19 related precautions and updates that were introduced for the other 2021 World Coffee Championships.

Across the three competitions, a number of changes have been introduced to facilitate safer judge evaluation of drinks; allow for social distancing, by moving orientation and debrief meetings online; and any other requirements by the local authorities or venue at the time of the event. Further updates or clarifications, particularly related to rules regarding the safety of participants, will be communicated to competitors as they become more clear.

A number of competition procedures in the World Latte Art Championship have been rephrased to give more clarity, while the judge evaluation procedures in the World Coffee in Good Spirits Championship have also been rephrased.

In the World Coffee Roasting Championship, green evaluation will no longer be a scored-component due to competitors’ consistently-high scores in this area. World-level competitors will still be required to demonstrate their green evaluation skills at national championships; while they are still able to evaluate green coffee for their own reference on the world stage, it will not impact their score. In addition, the language explaining the overtime penalty has been clarified so that competitors will only receive a score of zero (0) for the section in which they go “over time”, so that they retain points in other sections. Other non-COVID-19-related rule changes for the WCRC include a single provider of the sample roasters used at the World level, and rephrased competition procedures.

Existing rules that apply to Competition Bodies (CB) have been centralized and clarified in a new section, covering variations to the competition format, and the appeals process at CB level. A detailed list of the impacts of rule updates on CBs can be found in the Summary of Changes documents.

While these rules updates take place amidst the global pandemic, we are aware that the situation is still constantly evolving for our communities around the world, including host partners in Taiwan. We will be closely monitoring information and guidelines issued by global health organizations and local governments around COVID-19 precautions as they are announced.