Exhibition Hall 2 of the Chiang Mai International Exhibition and Convention Centre holds 25 coffee booths until Sunday 18 October, each pouring beans from one of 17 districts across the province. Visitors carry a Chiang Mai Coffee Passport from booth to booth, collecting a tasting from every district on show.
The event is Chiangmai Premium Coffee Taste 2026, which opened on 12 October inside Lanna Expo 2026 and closes on Sunday 18 October. Chiang Mai Governor Thossaphon Phueanudom presided over the formal opening ceremony on 14 October, and Songkran Moonwijit, the Chiang Mai Provincial Industry Officer, presented the programme to government officials, farmers, café operators and media. The Chiang Mai Chamber of Commerce attended in force, led by its chairman, Dr Kobkit Itsarachiwawat.
The Provincial Industry Office runs the event as a market test for premium coffee and a venue for business matching. Each booth belongs to a producer whose coffee placed in the top 25 of this year’s provincial quality evaluation.
Event details
Chiangmai Premium Coffee Taste 2026 is open to the public until 20.00 on Sunday 18 October, with free entry as part of Lanna Expo 2026.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Event | Chiangmai Premium Coffee Taste 2026, inside Lanna Expo 2026 |
| Dates | 12 to 18 October 2026 (final day Sunday 18 October) |
| Opening hours | 10.00 to 20.00 daily |
| Admission | Free |
| Location | Exhibition Hall 2, Chiang Mai International Exhibition and Convention Centre |
| Address | 456 Moo 1, Chang Phueak, Mueang, Chiang Mai 50300 (map) |
| Venue contact | 053 010 572-3, cmecc@dad.co.th |
| Organiser | Chiang Mai Provincial Industry Office |
| Coffee highlights | 25 premium coffee booths from 17 districts, Chiang Mai Coffee Passport tasting trail, drip coffee and latte art demonstrations, evaluation clinic for producers, business matching on site and online |
| Wider expo | More than 900 booths under the theme The Lanna Synergy for Sustainability |
The supply gap behind the vision
Thailand uses an average of 78,953 tonnes of coffee beans a year but grows only 26,161 tonnes, according to figures the governor gave at the opening. The country imports the remaining 52,792 tonnes, roughly two of every three kilograms it consumes.
Thailand’s Trade Policy and Strategy Office reported 62,171 tonnes of raw coffee imports in 2023, with Vietnam the largest supplier, followed by Indonesia and Laos. Instant coffee made up 84 per cent of the 34.5 billion baht domestic market that year, and fresh coffee accounted for the remaining 5.52 billion baht.
Chiang Mai competes in that fresh and specialty segment, the smaller share of the market but the one where origin, processing and roasting add value that buyers pay for.
Chiang Mai’s position
Chiang Mai grows coffee on 35,600 rai across 20 of its 25 districts, roughly 5,700 hectares (one rai is 1,600 square metres). The province also has more than 3,000 coffee shops, which the governor described as the second highest number in Thailand. The provincial vision of Chiang Mai as a coffee city covers the full chain, from farm to processing to the cup.
Around 80 per cent of the province is mountainous and around 70 per cent is forest, according to the governor, which allows arabica to grow under forest shade in upland watershed areas. A new planting takes three years to produce its first harvest.
Arabica arrived in the northern highlands through royal development work that began in 1969, when King Bhumibol Adulyadej set up the Royal Project to give hill communities alternatives to opium poppy. The Royal Project and partner agencies went on to introduce more than 150 crops to former poppy growers, arabica coffee among them, and shade-grown coffee has been tied to forest protection in the north ever since.
What the programme gives producers
The Provincial Industry Office’s 2026 programme to raise the value of Chiang Mai coffee follows the BCG Model, Thailand’s national framework for a bio, circular and green economy, along with the 13th National Economic and Social Development Plan. Both aim to make Thailand a leader in high-value processed agricultural products.
The governor put the number of trained participants at more than 300, while the Provincial Industry Officer’s account cites 100 participants in the core training. That training covered post-harvest technology, meaning the drying, fermenting and storage steps that set much of a coffee’s final quality, along with brand building and in-depth roasting and cupping workshops. Cupping is the standard professional method for tasting and scoring coffee.
Producers then submitted coffee for formal quality evaluation, and the 25 highest scorers earned their places at the event. A clinic on the event floor takes each producer through their evaluation results.
The event also hosts business matching sessions, both on site and online, that connect producers directly with buyers. The governor said the province plans to host national and ASEAN-level coffee competitions in the near future.
Coffee as a land-use answer to the haze season
The governor tied the coffee programme to Chiang Mai’s annual smoke and PM2.5 season, which he linked to single-crop farming such as maize. He cited Mae Chaem district, where around 150,000 of its 1.7 million rai are planted with maize, and called expanded coffee cultivation an urgent priority.
Independent research supports the link. A 2024 study of PM2.5 sources in Chiang Mai, reported by Mongabay, attributed 51 per cent of the province’s fine-particle pollution during the March to April peak to agricultural burning. A Greenpeace report found that 34,295 hectares of forest across the Kok and Kham river basins in Mae Chaem were cleared for maize between 2014 and 2024.
The economics of maize are also weakening for the farmers who grow it. A Mae Chaem agricultural specialist told Mongabay that yields have fallen from about 1,000 kilograms per rai to between 750 and 850 kilograms over five years, while input costs and debt have risen.
Shade-grown coffee keeps tree cover on upland slopes and rewards care with higher prices, which is why the three-year wait for a first harvest is the real barrier to switching. Training, quality evaluation and buyer introductions exist to make that wait worth it.
Payak Coffee Community Enterprise in Mae Chaem shows the model at village scale. Retired teacher Krit Payakkan founded it to move neighbours from maize to chemical-free arabica, and it grew from 35 founding members to more than 186 member families, according to a Bangkok Post profile. Its motto is One Cup = One Tree.
What this means for Chiang Mai business
Every business in the province that serves, sells or packages coffee sits inside this supply chain, whether or not it buys local beans today. A café on Nimmanhaemin Road, a hotel breakfast service and a gift shop at the airport each choose between imported beans and Chiang Mai coffee with a district name and a story attached.
The province has now done much of the sorting work for buyers. Twenty-five producers have passed a formal quality evaluation and are available for business matching, on site and online, until the event closes on Sunday 18 October. Buyers looking for other local roasters and coffee suppliers can search the Golden Pages business directory.
The coffee on those 25 tables is a product, a land-use policy and a cleaner-air strategy at the same time. Chiang Mai businesses that buy from local growers, name the district on the menu and tell that story to their customers are building the coffee city the province has set out to create.
