Barista Skills Challenge | TUCO Foundation

Heats take place on Tue 31st Mar & Wed 1st Apr from 8am
Chancellors Suite

The TUCO Barista Skills Challenge is the perfect platform for you to showcase your skills, knowledge and talent in making the perfect cup of coffee.

You will compete in a live 15-minute competition and produce; four espressos, four milk or milk alternative drinks and finally four espresso-based, non-alcoholic specialty drinks.

Whilst creating these drinks you will give live commentary to the judges and audience to explain your work and demonstrate your knowledge.

Each competitor is allocated these three preparation and competition periods:

15-minute practice (this is off stage and not filmed or judged)
15-minute setup on stage
15-minute live competition

Back for 2026 - The Latte Art Smackdown!
This knockout style competition will see competitors competing head-to-head in a 5-minute session to create their best latte art for the judges to simultaneously vote on to reveale our Latte Art supremo.
This is judged separately to the main Barista Skills Challenge above and has its own trophy.
Competitors will be automatically entered into the Barista Challenge and Latte Art Smackdown.

As this is a live competition there will be spectators and you will be filmed with your work being shown on the main screens.

A full information pack will be sent to all competitors once we have announced the finalists. Our judges will offer written feedback to all entrants.

You can watch how the competition ran last year on this video: