If you couldn't get a ticket, you weren't alone. The Glasgow Coffee Festival 2026 sold out weeks before its 18 and 19 April weekend at The Briggait, and the waiting list is still being worked through.

For its twelfth year, Scotland's biggest specialty coffee party expanded beyond its beloved Merchant City home, spilling into the neighbouring Clydeside Halls to welcome around 2,800 visitors across the weekend.

That meant more than 50 stalls of roasters, cafés and brewing innovators — plus free tastings, talks, hands-on workshops and the kind of caffeine high that needs its own warning label.

A homegrown success

The festival is the brainchild of Lisa Lawson, founder of East End roastery Dear Green Coffee Roasters. She launched it in 2014 when, as she has told the Herald, "there were only a few specialty cafés in Glasgow, and we were pushing against a lot of resistance."

A decade on, the resistance is decidedly defeated. Dear Green shared headline-partner billing with espresso-machine titans La Marzocco and Ayrshire dairy heroes Mossgiel Farm, and the festival floor read like a who's who of Scottish coffee.

Glasgow's own Thomson's Coffee Roasters lined up alongside Aberfeldy's Glen Lyon Coffee Roasters and Aberdeen's Figment Coffee — all finalists in the inaugural Best Roaster UK competition, a blind-cupping showdown decided by their peers.

Competitions and craft

Coffee nerds were spoiled. The SCA UK Brewers Cup brought top baristas to the stage to chase the perfect filter pour, while the Best Roaster UK final crowned a national champion in front of a partisan Glasgow crowd.

Workshops covered everything from latte art to home brewing, with roasting demonstrations pulling crowds throughout both days.

And in true Glasgow fashion, the festival kept its ethical edge. Since 2018 — when it became the first coffee festival in the world to ban single-use cups — visitors have brought their own or borrowed from on-site washing stations. That first year alone kept an estimated 18,000 cups out of landfill, and the policy has held every year since.

Want in next year?

Tickets started from around £17, and there is currently a waitlist for any returns at glasgowcoffeefestival.com — well worth a punt if you missed out. The simpler bet: join the festival's mailing list now to get first dibs on 2027.

The festival is family-friendly, with under-12s admitted free. Assistance dogs only at The Briggait, alas. Festival partners The Social Hub also offered 20% off rooms over the weekend with the code COFFEEFEST26 — handy if a second day of cuppings was always on the cards.

Twelve years on from a hopeful huddle of believers in 2014, Glasgow Coffee Festival has become a sold-out, peer-judged, internationally watched showcase. Scotland's coffee scene didn't just arrive — it took over the building.