At the 2026 World Beer Awards — judged blind by panels across more than 100 countries — Brazilian breweries claimed three of the world’s seven top IPA titles, led by a São Paulo brewery that won it all with a single entry.
A hazy IPA dreamed up for a Carnival block party in a university town outside São Paulo has just been named the best IPA in the world. Not the best Brazilian IPA. Not the best IPA in Latin America. The best IPA, period, out of every entry submitted to the 2026 World Beer Awards — one of the industry’s most closely watched global competitions, judged blind by panels of brewers, sommeliers and beer writers across more than 100 countries.
The winner is Atrás do Bloco, brewed by Cervejaria Landel in Campinas, about an hour and a half from São Paulo. And the way it won says as much about Brazilian brewing’s quiet confidence as the trophy itself: Landel submitted exactly one beer to the entire competition.
From a Kombi to a World Title
Landel’s founders, Bruno Cardoso and Samuel Faria, started the brewery in 2013 out of Barão Geraldo, the university district near Unicamp, before opening their current taproom in 2019. Atrás do Bloco — “Behind the Block,” a nod to the informal crews who follow a Carnival street parade, or bloco, drink in hand — was never meant to be permanent. Cardoso and Faria brewed it as a seasonal release for Carnival 2023. Drinkers wouldn’t let it go, and it became a fixture on Landel’s regular lineup: a 7.5% ABV hazy IPA, triple-hopped with Mosaic, Cascade and Citra, built for the tropical, citrus-forward profile that’s come to define the New England IPA style.
For the World Beer Awards, Landel entered Atrás do Bloco just once — first through Brazil’s own national beer competition, the Concurso Brasileiro de Cerveja, where it won gold, then on to London for international judging. One submission, three titles: Best Milkshake/New England IPA, Country Winner for Brazil, and Best IPA in the World — the top honor across every IPA substyle in the competition.
“By a matter of finances and confidence, we submitted only that one,” Cardoso said afterward. “It was a single entry. So it was 100% successful.” Winning gold at home, he said, already felt like plenty. Being named the world’s best IPA afterward was “surreal, totally unexpected.”
Brazil, Not the U.S., Set the IPA Bar This Year
The detail that’s raised eyebrows in the beer press: not a single American brewery placed at the top of the IPA category this year, according to Forbes’ coverage of the results — in a style Americans have spent three decades treating as their own invention to perfect. Brazil, instead, took three of the World Beer Awards’ seven global IPA titles. Alongside Landel’s win, Therezópolis, a Rio de Janeiro state brewery, took Best English Style IPA for Jade, a 6.5% ABV copper ale built around floral and citrus hop notes. Cervejaria Unika, out of Rancho Queimado in Santa Catarina, won Best Specialty IPA for Orange Kush.
The IPA sweep was part of a much larger showing. Across the full 2026 World Beer Awards, Brazilian breweries collected 125 medals — 55 of them gold — spread across 37 different producers, from small operations in Santa Catarina to established names in Rio Grande do Sul. It’s the kind of result that doesn’t happen by accident: it reflects a craft beer scene that’s spent the past decade quietly building technical chops most outsiders still associate with Belgium, Germany or the Pacific Northwest, not a country whose best-known drink is a caipirinha.
Atrás do Bloco isn’t yet widely distributed outside Brazil, so for now, trying it means either a trip to Campinas or watching for it on import lists as Landel’s win gets noticed abroad. Either way, it’s worth remembering the name next time an IPA list looks a little too familiar.
