World Beer Awards 2025 winners announced

United Kingdom | On Wednesday 13 August, the winners for the World Beer Awards 2025 were officially announced. The announcement took place at The Great Hospital, a historic event space in Norwich UK. The World Beer Awards has proven to be one of the World Drinks Awards’ biggest competitions and as we’ve seen this year, the volume of entries only seems to be increasing every year.

Recognising excellence in the global beer industry remains the awards’ number one priority, and with more and more brewers joining us each year, our judges hope to taste and applaud as many new products as possible.

The first round of the World Beer Awards saw style winners from each country awarded the title of Country Winner. The second round saw those winners in their chosen style go on to compete against other countries in the same style of beer. The Style winners of the second round then went on to compete for the World’s Best title in each category.

World’s Best

Winners such as Buckskin Kolsch for World’s Best Pale Beer, Opa Bier Hop Lager for World’s Best Lager, and Daisen B Beer Barley Wine for World’s Best Dark Beer impressed our judges throughout this competition and earned them the title of World’s Best for their style category. To see the full list of World’s Best winners for 2025, please see below:

• Veldensteiner: Hefe Weißbier Alkoholfrei (No & Low Alcohol);
• Retour De Feu: Bière Blonde (Flavoured Beer);
• Brouwerij Noordt: Simcoe Porter (Stout & Porter);
• Sosab: Flemish Red Ale Xii (Sour & Wild Beer);
• Buckskin: Kolsch (Pale Beer);
• Hiddenseer: Weizen (Wheat Beer);
• Wildshut: Bio-perlage (Speciality Beer);
• Opa Bier: Hop Lager (Lager);
• Daisen B Beer: Barley Wine (Dark Beer);
• zum WØL BrauArt: Wolf Gang (IPA).

You can view the full list of Country winners here, and the full list of Style winners here.

Icons of Beer Awards

Those who entered the awards were also encouraged to submit entries for the Icons of Beer Awards – an award that aims to celebrate the achievements of hard-working individuals throughout the industry. Brewers, brand ambassadors, visitor centre managers, and more are all welcome to put themselves forward for this award. This award is designed to celebrate the achievements of all those who deliver exceptional work in the beer industry.

Pete Brown, global chair of judges for the awards, commented: "We had over 3000 entries for this year’s awards. And while I obviously didn’t get to taste them all myself, going by how happy our judges have been, the standard must have been very high! The scope of entries was truly worldwide, as was our panel of judges. Even when you think you know a lot about beer, the joy of this competition is that you always discover something new."

Anita Ujszaszi, director of the World Beer Awards, added: “As we expected, this year’s competition has been met with a very welcomed, huge number of entries! Knowing that beer makers from all over the world continuously want to bring us their very best products for our judges to taste is a real honour. The collective wisdom of our judges is a very unique thing to experience in this industry – it’s an honour to help showcase it!”