Portugal's Third-Wave Coffee Scene Arrives: Two Cafés Crack the World's 100 Best
Portugal spent decades known for a single coffee ritual: the bica. A tiny, heavily sweetened espresso shot pulled fast and bitter, served in cafés where coffee meant fuel, not flavour. The country’s coffee culture felt unchangeable—until it wasn’t.
Two Portuguese cafés now rank among the World’s 100 Best Coffee Shops for 2026. 7g Roaster in Porto claimed position #30, becoming Portugal’s highest-ranked café in the competition’s history. The Folks in Lisbon landed at #88, earning its second consecutive year on the list. Both achievements signal that Portugal’s specialty coffee movement has matured from curiosity to contender.
A Psychologist Discovers Specialty Coffee
Fátima Santos didn’t set out to become Portugal’s preeminent roaster. She trained as a psychologist. But a trip to London around 2011 changed everything when she walked into Prufrock Coffee and tasted specialty coffee for the first time.
“That one cup of specialty coffee opened my mind to the possibility of other options, and made me want to discover something new,” Santos has said. She returned to Portugal with a different perspective—and an eventual career shift that would take her from Starbucks to Fábrica Coffee Roasters in Lisbon, where she learned the roasting craft.
Santos founded 7g Roaster in 2017 in Vila Nova de Gaia, across the river from Porto’s historic centre. The name comes from the seven rental apartments sharing the building, a detail that speaks to the modest origins of what would become a benchmark for Portuguese specialty coffee.
Education Through Experience
Santos’s approach at 7g centers on sensory education. Portuguese customers arrive expecting traditional bica service. Instead, she offers a “Coffee Experience”—a flight of four preparations showcasing the same beans across different methods: filter, cappuccino, espresso, and coffee lemonade, their riff on the Portuguese drink mazagran.
“What appeals to me most about coffee is the sensorial process,” Santos explains. “How we use our senses to understand differences in processes, beans, and regions.”
The strategy works through repetition and exposure. Customers who initially reject lighter roasts return after sampling flights and comparing preparations. Change happens gradually, coffee by coffee, until what seemed strange becomes preferred.
7g sources coffees with full traceability, showcasing innovative post-harvest processes and unusual varieties. Their mission emphasises seasonality and environmental impact—connecting Portuguese consumers to the farmers and communities producing what ends up in their cups.
The Folks: From Startup to Six Locations in Four Years
If 7g represents patient evolution, The Folks embodies rapid growth executed carefully. Founded in Lisbon in 2022, the specialty coffee and brunch brand expanded to six locations within two years while opening their own roastery.
The Folks emphasises quality-first philosophy across their operations. They source micro-lots directly from farms—their Rwanda offering comes from Gasharu Coffee in the Macuba Sector of Nyamasheke—and roast everything in-house at their Lisbon facility.
The growth hasn’t diluted standards. Their 2026 ranking at #88 marks a second consecutive year on the World’s 100 Best list, demonstrating that expansion and quality can coexist when operations are built intentionally.
A Market Transformed
Portugal’s specialty scene has accelerated beyond Lisbon and Porto. Lighter roasts, alternative brewing methods, and direct-trade sourcing have spread through cities like Coimbra and Braga. The traditional bica remains ubiquitous, but younger Portuguese consumers increasingly seek the traceability and complexity that third-wave roasters provide.
International visitors notice the shift. Coffee tourists who once bypassed Portugal for established scenes in London, Melbourne, or Copenhagen now find cafés worth crossing borders for—roasteries sourcing from specific farms, baristas trained in extraction science, and menus that explain origin, variety, and processing method.
Why This Matters
Portugal’s coffee culture seemed immutable for generations. Sweet, dark, fast—the bica defined what coffee meant for most Portuguese people. The country produced zero specialty roasters of international significance.
Now two Portuguese cafés rank among the world’s best. 7g Roaster’s #30 position places it above established names from cities with decades-old specialty traditions. The Folks’ repeat appearance demonstrates consistency under pressure of expansion.
What changed wasn’t Portuguese taste preferences but the arrival of roasters willing to challenge them. Santos took psychology’s patience—working through resistance session by session—and applied it to coffee education. The Folks built infrastructure that scales without sacrificing sourcing relationships.
Both approaches share a core belief: Portuguese consumers, offered better options and the knowledge to appreciate them, will choose quality. The rankings suggest that belief was correct.
7g Roaster is located in Vila Nova de Gaia, Porto. The Folks operates six cafés across Lisbon with a dedicated roastery in the city.