The BJCP competition calendar reports that there were 553 competitions held worldwide in 2025 versus 551 in 2024; essentially flat. There were 262 competitions held in the US in 2025 down from 287 competitions in 2024.There were additional competitions that chose to not be listed on the BJCP competition calendar.
Last year was a busy year for the Competition Directorate. There were more competitions registered than held since some registrations for 2026 were made in 2025 and some competitions were cancelled for some reason. Chasing delinquent competitions to ensure that judges receive credit for their efforts continues to be a high priority.
Additionally, the Competition Directorate spent months working with IT to test the new database system, Bravo, as thoroughly as possible. The good news is that with only a few minor blips, this system has worked very well for both organizers and the Competition Directorate. The workload on our part is now much less than it was. Many emails come from the system, not directly from us. Organizers can download the Active Judges list whenever they need it to get the latest version. Altogether this has been a win with faster turnaround for registration approvals and less work on our part. There are other changes on the ToDo list to come. For example, at this time organizers who are BJCP members can update their own competition information. There is a change request in the queue to allow non-BJCP organizers to do the same.
As part of reviewing organizer report submissions, we have noticed that a number of competitions that would be allowed to have 5 Best of Show (BOS) judges have only used 3 BOS judges. Perhaps there were no other eligible, high-ranking judges available. However, if there were any eligible judges we recommend that they be utilized. So long as they are eligible, the experience for lower ranking judges would be very valuable for them.
We’ve also seen that many organizer reports do not include non-BJCP participants who were judges, stewards and staff. This is a reminder that organizers should include everyone who was a judge, steward and staff.
A word about competition organization. There’s some confusion about terms.
- Days – The date of the competition submitted in the registration is the date of record for the competition. Competitions are welcome to have judging for days up to that final date of judging on which the Best of Show is determined. The total number of days that judging took place is what the organizer report is looking for.
- Session – There is some confusion about what constitutes a judging session. A session is a window of time in which judges judge a flight of entries. Sometimes this might be multiple small flights. For example, Friday evening 7pm-10pm could be a flight. So would Saturday 9am-12pm as well as 1pm to 4pm. Judges receive ½ point per session in which they judge, not by the number of flights judged.
- Flight – A flight is a group of entries that are judged by 2 or 3 judges. In addition to evaluating the entries and filling out judge sheets, the judges normally choose the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place entries from that flight. These may be category winners or if there is more than one flight for the category then these will go to the category mini-BOS.
- Mini-BOS – a best of category judging from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place entries from the multiple flights of a category. A reminder that judges don’t receive additional points for judging the mini-BOS.
- BOS – Judges do receive an additional ½ point for judging the Best of Show. Organizers need to understand the rules for BOS. This is located in the Rules and Regulations.
Finally, we have seen that some competitions have had nearly as many judges as entries. We are working on some guidelines that we can implement. For now, keep in mind that our expectation is that each flight judged should have 2 or 3 judges. A flight should have at least 6 beers (mead or cider). Judging an entry should take 12 to 15 minutes. Multiple flights to judge a large category is common. A very small competition, say with 12 to 15 entries, may be conducted with 4 to 6 judges in two flights in one session. Organizers need to plan accordingly.
The mini-Best of Show to pick the winners from the top 3 entries of the flights is then conducted with 3 judges. Flight judges may decide that they only had one or two decent beers to pass to the mini-BOS. However, so long as there are 3 beers judged in the 30s, they should pass along 3 to mini-BOS since the top 3 beers could be in any of the category flights.
A large number of organizers for BJCP sanctioned competitions are non-BJCP. They may not fully understand the BJCP protocols and rules for filing organizer reports. We do ask that BJCP judges offer to help these non-BJCP organizers wherever you can help ensure that everyone receives the credit they earned.
David Houseman Michael Bury
Competition Director Assistant Competition Director