Event record · curated by Cascara
Philippine Coffee Expo 2026.
It starts with the cherryThe 2026 expo ran June 5-7 at SPACE at One Ayala in Makati, and closed on a green-coffee auction. A washed lot from Malaybalay, Bukidnon drew ₱4,900 a kilo — the highest price of the day, against a ₱2,000 floor. This is the record: what placed, what it sold for, and which of those coffees you can still get a bag of.
Top lot
₱4,900 / kg
2.45× the ₱2,000 floor
Paid to the farm
₱573,300
117 kg, one morning
The auction, in full
Gloria Lagawan scored 86.41, the highest of the 2026 competition, and her lot topped the auction. Who she is, how the bidding went, and why ₱4,900 is the number that matters →
What the expo is for.
The Philippine Coffee Expo is the country's flagship trade event for specialty coffee — roasters, importers, equipment vendors and baristas in one building for three days. The part that outlasts the weekend is the Philippine Coffee Quality Competition, which runs inside it: producers submit lots, certified judges cup and score them, and the highest-scoring lots are auctioned to roasters on the final day. Twelve arabica lots placed in 2026.
That auction is the reason a drinker should care about a trade show. It is the one mechanism in Philippine coffee that pays quality back to the farm at a multiple of the commodity rate, and it is legible: a score, a price, a name. Everything below is what happened to those lots after the room emptied.
Dates for the next edition have not been announced. The organizers publish them at philippinecoffeeexpo.com.
The winning lots, roasted.
4 of the 2026 placings came out of the auction, through a roaster, and onto a shelf — so you can taste what the judges scored rather than read about it. Placements are the roaster's own; tasting notes are ours. These are competition microlots: when a bag is gone there is no restock.
Makilala, Cotabato · Natural
dark chocolate, nutmeg, java plum, brown sugar
Roasted by H Proper Coffee Roasters
Bansalan, Davao del Sur · Natural
caramel, cacao, mandarin orange, honey
Roasted by H Proper Coffee Roasters
Bansalan, Davao del Sur · Natural
apricot, milk chocolate, pineapple, vanilla
Roasted by H Proper Coffee Roasters
Malaybalay · Washed
rambutan, java plum, apple, cane sugar
Roasted by H Proper Coffee Roasters
More competition lots in the cellar.
The cellar tracks 13 more PCQC lots, across earlier editions and the robusta side of the competition. Competition coffees rarely stay listed long, so this doubles as a record of which producers keep placing.
For the next one
Pick your corner before you walk in.
By the fourth or fifth pour your palate is shot. The way to get value out of an expo floor is to taste with intent — know which corner of the Process Spectrum you are hunting in, and route to the booths most likely to deliver. This holds for any of the three Philippine shows, not just this one.
Bright, floral, tea-like.
Balanced, chocolatey, familiar.
Juicy, fruit-forward, sweet.
Funky, fermented, unconventional.
Don't know your corner yet? The palate quiz takes less than a minute, and it is the same map whichever show you go to next.
Roasters to seek out.
Philippine roasters in the cellar with active, well-developed lineups, ranked by how many coffees we track from each. Never an exhibitor list — that is the organizers' to publish — but it is the part of an expo that outlives the weekend: these roasters ship year-round, and most of what was poured on that floor is still buyable from one of them.
Makati
Third-wave specialty roastery sourcing from Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia and the Philippines, with cafes in Makati, Ortigas,…
Paranaque
Cebu City
Cebu City roaster offering traceable Philippine coffee with farm-to-cup transparency, shipping single origins and rare lots…
Quezon City
Muntinlupa
Curve Coffee Collaborators is a Philippine specialty roaster focused on award-winning, traceable single-origin and microlot…
Makati
Makati cafe and roastery serving specialty single-origin coffee roasted in-house, with branches on Jimenez and San Isidro.
Makati
Makati specialty coffee roaster and equipment distributor (La Marzocco, Rocket), with branches across Metro Manila.
San Juan
San Juan-based specialty roaster focused on light-roast beans for retail and wholesale to quality-driven cafes.
Cagayan De Oro
Mandaluyong
Mandaluyong specialty coffee roaster supplying roasted beans, barista training and equipment, with a flagship inside Shangri-La…
Davao City
Davao specialty roaster founded by Beauford Ma, sourcing from independent farms worldwide and award-winning Philippine…
Quezon City
Quezon City specialty roaster passionately roasting local and imported single-origin and blended beans since 2016, with fresh…
Las Piñas City
Las Piñas roastery sourcing Philippine coffee through Fair Trade and sustainable practices, supplying beans nationwide via the…
Batac
Bacolod
Antipolo
How to taste twenty roasters in one day.
Written for this floor, true of every one since.
Eat first. Specialty coffee on an empty stomach reads sharper, more acidic, and more fatiguing. A real breakfast beforehand changes everything.
Spit by the second hour. Sommelier rules apply. After about four cups your taste receptors are overloaded and your judgement collapses. Treat the floor like a cupping table.
Take notes on your phone. By the time you're home you will not remember which roaster had the white-grape Yirgacheffe. Photograph the bag, type one sentence about the cup. Two-line notes beat zero-line memory.
Leave room to buy. If you find a bag that knocks you out, buy it on the day. Many roasters have limited microlots that don't make it back into wholesale channels — expo is often the only retail window.
Find your corner.
Eleven questions, less than a minute. The cellar then routes you to the Philippine lots closest to your palate — competition coffees included, while they last.
Start calibrating →For roasters
Poured at the expo? Get listed in the cellar.
Someone who walked out of One Ayala with a bag they loved goes home and searches for it. If your roastery is not in the Cascara directory, that search ends nowhere — three months after the floor closes, that is still happening every week. Listing is free: a permanent profile with your full bean lineup and member ratings, indexed and discoverable year-round.
gil@cascara.cafe →Common questions.
When was the Philippine Coffee Expo 2026?
June 5 to 7, 2026, at SPACE at One Ayala — Level 5 of the One Ayala complex at Ayala Avenue and EDSA, Makati, above the One Ayala bus terminal. The green-coffee auction closed the event on June 7. Dates for the next edition have not been announced; the organizers publish them at philippinecoffeeexpo.com.
What sold for the most at the 2026 auction?
A washed lot from Gloria Lagawan in Malaybalay, Bukidnon — the top-scoring coffee of the 2026 Philippine Coffee Quality Competition at 86.41. It drew ₱4,900 a kilo against a ₱2,000 floor, and at 117 kilograms that is ₱573,300 back to the farm. H Proper Coffee Roasters bought it. That is the top price of this year's auction, not a national record — 2025's top lot reached ₱9,900.
Can I still buy the winning coffees?
Some of them, yes. H Proper roasted and released four of the 2026 arabica placings — Gloria Lagawan's champion lot plus the second, fifth and sixth-place coffees — and all four are tracked in the Cascara cellar with tasting notes and the roaster's own listing. They are competition microlots, so stock is finite and there is no restock when it goes.
How does the competition fit into the expo?
It runs inside it. The Philippine Coffee Quality Competition takes submitted lots, has certified judges cup and score them, and auctions the highest-scoring ones to roasters on the expo's final day. Twelve arabica lots placed in 2026. It is the clearest annual read on where Philippine specialty coffee actually is, and the mechanism that pays quality back to the farm rather than to a trader.
Which Philippine roasters were there?
The exhibitor list is the organizers' to publish, not ours — Cascara is a directory, not an organizer. What we can tell you is which Philippine roasters are active and worth knowing: the list below is every curator-verified Philippine roaster in the cellar with a developed lineup, ranked by how many coffees we track from them.
What's the difference between Philippine Coffee Expo and Manila Coffee Festival?
Two separate events run by different organizers. Philippine Coffee Expo (June, Makati) leans toward trade and industry programming — the PCQC judging and auction run inside it. Manila Coffee Festival (July) is more consumer-facing, with a heavier emphasis on local beans and cultural showcases. We have a guide for that one too, linked at the bottom.
Read next.
Gloria Lagawan tops the PCE 2026 auction
₱4,900 a kilo for a washed Bukidnon lot — the top price at the 2026 Philippine Coffee Expo green-coffee auction, and what the PCQC result means.
Manila Coffee Festival 2026
July 17-19. The other major Manila coffee event of the year — what to expect and the Philippine roasters worth tasting.
Coffee Plz 2026
59 roasters poured at Ayala Malls Circuit over September 4-6. Nine of them hold a permanent cellar listing because of it, including one with no online catalog at all.
The World's 100 Best Coffee Shops 2026
Yardstick at No. 34 is the Philippines' only entry this year — down from four in 2025. What the list measures, and what a global ranking can't tell you about the cup that fits you.
Author · Gil Erez, Founder of Cascara · Updated 16 September 2026