Japanese Green Tea Co. had a booth at the World Tea Expo 2025, Las Vegas

The World Tea Expo is the largest tea industry trade show in the United States, held annually at the Las Vegas Convention Center. It's been running since 2003 and has become the main place where tea farmers, importers, retailers, and cafe owners from around the world meet under one roof.

Why it matters: most of the tea world is fragmented across countries that don't naturally talk to each other. A Japanese farm and a Sri Lankan farm and a Kenyan farm rarely cross paths. The expo is one of the few moments where they all show up in the same building, taste each other's teas, and trade ideas. The Global Tea Championship awards ceremony also happens during the show, which is part of why it draws serious attention.

Honestly, if you're seriously into tea — even as a consumer — getting a trade pass and walking the floor for a day is one of the more eye-opening experiences you can have. Worth it once.

This was our first time having a booth at the World Tea Expo since the COVID pandemic interrupted the events. We were at booth #5322 in the South Hall on March 25–26, 2025. As it turned out, our matcha (抹茶) also won all five categories at the Global Tea Championship the same week, which was an unexpectedly good first event back.

We brought our full event booth setup — the Port Orford Cedar backdrop with the koshi (格子) lattice pattern that Miki designed — along with samples of our matcha, sencha (煎茶), and a few products that hadn't been publicly released yet. The booth ended up being a real talking point on the show floor, partly because of the wood and partly because the championship trophies were sitting on it by the second day.

We met a lot of people whose work we'd been admiring from a distance for years. That alone made the trip worth it.

Our ceremonial matcha (抹茶) was the centerpiece, partly because it ended up winning the Global Tea Championship that week. We did live whisking demos for visitors and let people taste it cold-whisked alongside hot to show how the same tea reads differently at different temperatures.

Beyond matcha, we showed our sencha (煎茶) lineup, a few wakocha (和紅茶) Japanese black teas, hojicha in both leaf and powder form, and gyokuro (玉露) for the more advanced palates who came through. We also previewed a couple of products that hadn't launched publicly yet — we usually use the expo as a soft-launch venue to gauge reactions.

If you're curious what's typically on the booth, those four core categories — matcha, sencha, wakocha, hojicha — are pretty consistent year to year. The teaware varies by season.

Officially, the World Tea Expo is a trade-only show — meaning attendees are supposed to be tea industry professionals, retailers, restaurateurs, journalists, or related. There's a registration process and you have to indicate your professional connection to tea.

In practice, the registration screening isn't strict. Plenty of serious tea enthusiasts attend each year by registering as small retailers, bloggers, or independent tea businesses, and there's no real penalty for being a passionate amateur in the room. The cost of a two-day pass is around $200 at retail, though we offer a discounted code to anyone who reaches out (it was $75 in 2025).

If you want to go and you're not in the industry but you take tea seriously, my advice is to register honestly as someone interested in the trade and just go. The community is welcoming. Nobody's going to quiz you on the way in.

The two best places. First, our newsletter — we always announce upcoming events there a few weeks ahead, including World Tea Expo, regional markets like Maum Market and Bread and Salt, and any pop-ups or partnerships we're doing. The newsletter signup is on the bottom of every page on our site.

Second, our Instagram (@japanesegreenteaco). We post events there too, plus stories during the events themselves, so if you can't make it to one in person, you still get to see what's happening on the booth.

Honestly, if you're already a customer, it's worth being on at least one of the two channels. We do enough events around the West Coast that there's usually one within driving distance for our regulars.