South African Latte Art Competition Announcement

Dear Members

The South African National Latte Art Championship is taking a pause.

We have made the decision as a Board of Directors to re-evaluate how we can support latte art and the other areas of specialty coffee in our community. The chief reasons for this decision are:

• The same two National champions have represented us for the past decade, without significant improvement at a world level. In consultation with both Christopher Abrahams and Jeff Stopforth, it is agreed that no major progress has been made and we hope that with their help we can foster the next generation of latte artists
• The costs incurred for WCE Judge and to send a Champion to Worlds are significant and after consultation with Cheryl Lee after the 2026 competition, she confirmed our thoughts that the overall level is nowhere near a level that can compete on the World Stage.
• Judges are a scarce resource at this point and we also need to focus attention on building up that skill set.

We would like to reinvest these resources in encouraging more local latte art throwdowns with the support of SCASA. We are working on building that platform and some amazing sponsors who can support these initiatives. We are so grateful for the support of all the Latte Art sponsors through the years.

One of our partners is also soon to announce a latte art competition with an international prize and we will support this and encourage all latte artists that were already in training to keep their eyes out for that!

We are committed to send Christopher Abrahams our current SA Latte Art Champion to Portugal (as he deferred his spot from last year as a US visa was unattainable). In the upcoming cycle we will run two disciplines: Barista and Cup Tasters.

We would encourage all the competitors from the Latte Art discipline to take a shot at Barista Champs, your overall skill level improves greatly by having the attention of these judges and you can learn so much. We want to get back to a place where entering these competitions is a learning experience, please look out for competition bootcamps that will happen before the regional competitions so you can ask questions and understand exactly what happens on the day.

We are also kicking off a new platform to encourage the coffee growing community and we will investigate the opportunities of other competition formats during this time.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please do get in touch HERE!