The championships, hosted by World Coffee Events at CafeShow are held over four days. Today marks the end of the second day of heats, which will be followed by the semi-finals and finals tomorrow and Sunday.

Hugh was announced as a semi-finalist, qualifying as the top-ranking competitor from more than 55 competitors over the two days of heats. 

This will be Hugh’s second time in the World Barista Championships semi-finals, after progressing to this round at the 2017 championships in Dublin. 

The 2017 semi-finalists include, in this order:

Hugh Kelly, Australia

André Eiermann, Switzerland

Ben Put, Canada

Jun-Bae Bang, South Korea

Kapu Chiu, Hong Kong

Dale Harris, United Kingdom

Miki Suzuki, Japan

Francesco Masciullo, Italy

Kyle Ramage, USA

Konstantinos Iatridis, Greece

Jason Loo, Malaysia

Lavinia Toma, Romania

 Yoshua Tanu, Indonesia

Melody Lu, Taiwan

Jeremy Zhang, China

Wildcard: Martin Shabaya, Kenya

Hugh will be competing in the semi-finals on Saturday, November 11. Hugh is scheduled to compete at 2.20pm AEST and 12.20pm local Seoul time.

Congratulations to the other semi-finalists – the ONA Coffee team looks forward to seeing all of the your performances on stage.