BarthHaas Report 2025/2026: Global decline in beer sales

Nuremberg | The brewing industry remains under pressure worldwide. In total, the world’s 40 largest brewing groups sold approximately 1586 million hectoliters of beer in 2025. This represents a year-on-year decline of 3.1 percent. These figures are taken from this year’s BarthHaas Report 2025/2026, in which the world’s largest hop specialist provides an annual overview of global trends in the beer and hop markets.

There were several changes in the top 10 in 2025, with only the first seven places in the rankings remaining unchanged. AB InBev retains the top spot with an output of 484.19 million hectoliters (-2.5%), followed by Heineken with 235.65 million hectoliters (-2.1%) and China Res. Snow Breweries with 110.30 million hectoliters (+1.4%). Together, these three companies accounted for more than half of the global beer output of the top 40 brewers.

JSC AB Inbev Efes has been included in the Top 40 for the first time. The former Russian subsidiary of AB Inbev Efes is now listed separately in 11th place as an independent company, thereby ousting the French group Financière ACP – which had previously been in last place in the global rankings – from the list. Within the top 10, China's Yanjing Brewery moved up from 9th to 8th place, swapping positions with France's BGI/Groupe Castel.

Downward trend

Only a few companies saw noteworthy growth in sales last year. This marks a continuation of a downward trend that had already been evident in the previous two years. The challenging market is increasingly forcing the brewers to seek out alternative lines of business. As a result, non-alcoholic and low-alcohol beers, as well as diversification into related beverage categories, remain on the strategic agenda of all the major brewing groups.

The ranking of the top 40 brewers worldwide can be downloaded from the BarthHaas website at www.barthhaas.com.

The full BarthHaas Report 2025/2026 will be published on 21 July.