2025 wasn’t just another year in coffee. It was the year the old rules stopped working. Big Coffee retreated. Prices hit record highs. The comfortable middle – between premium and value – started to disappear.

If you're making strategic decisions about coffee in 2026, you need to know what actually happened. Not the press releases. The pattern underneath.

Our editorial team spent 2025 tracking every major move. Here are two that sent shockwaves through the global coffee industry:

10. China’s 20,000-store explosion

Two years ago, World Coffee Portal broke the news that China had overtaken the US as the largest branded coffee shop market in the world. In 2025, Project Café East Asia 2025 confirmed China’s coffee shop market is still by far the largest, but also the fastest growing in history – adding more than 20,000 net new stores in the 12 months to November 2025 to exceed 87,500 outlets.

Much of this astonishing growth was led by China’s two largest coffee operators, Luckin Coffee and Cotti Coffee. The affordable rivals contributed over half of the market-wide growth and now operate more than 29,000 and 14,400 outlets, respectively. Crucially, their ongoing RMB 9.9 ($1.40) price war has placed value squarely at the centre of China’s coffee shop market.

This highly competitive trading environment has wrong-footed many international operators in a market now dominated by affordable coffee chains, including newcomers Lucky Cup and KCOFFEE.

Notably, Starbucks has struggled to maintain its premium market position, with stalling outlet growth and sales in China. Additionally, Tims China, has slowed expansion and pivoted to sub-franchising to reignite outlet growth, while a joint venture between Yum China and Italy’s Lavazza has struggled to deliver on its ambitious growth goals.

With World Coffee Portal forecasting that the total Chinese branded coffee shop market will achieve a further 20% outlet growth in 2026, China’s ascent shows no signs of slowing and the global influence of this coffee shop behemoth is only set to grow.

9. Big coffee’s strategic retreat

If the late 2010s saw huge corporate investments flood into the coffee industry, the mid-2020s showed that big multinationals may lack the magic touch when it comes to delivering coffee experiences at scale.

Take JAB Holding Company, the secretive Luxembourg-headquartered investment group that amassed a $23bn coffee and hospitality portfolio, including formidable brands such as Panera Bread, Peet’s Coffee, Intelligentsia, Stumptown, Pret A Manger and Espresso House.

Following the departure of founding partner Peter Harf, the architect of JAB's coffee and foodservice acquisition strategy, the investment giant quietly pivoted away from coffee. In 2025, JAB announced it would sell its controlling stake in JDE Peet’s for $12.5bn and use the proceeds to invest in its growing insurance portfolio.

The numbers speak for themselves. In 2022, coffee and fast-casual businesses made up more than 70% of JAB’s investment portfolio. Today, they make up less than 30% of its $140bn assets.

Elsewhere, US beverage giant Coca-Cola undertook a sobering assessment of its $4.9bn investment in Costa Coffee. In July, outgoing CEO James Quincey dropped the bombshell that its investment in the 4,000-store coffee chain was “not where we wanted it to be”.

Coca-Cola is now thought to be preparing to offload Costa Coffee in a cut-price deal that could value the UK-based operator at just $2.7bn. However, with preferred bidder TDR Capital reportedly getting cold feet on the deal, the future of Costa Coffee – and Coca-Cola’s coffee strategy – remains uncertain.

Then came Nestlè, which, after dismissing its CEO in September and announcing 16,000 job cuts, was reported to be considering the sale of Blue Bottle Coffee – its landmark specialty coffee acquisition made in 2017 for around $425m.