The 36th Qingdao International Beer Festival is currently being held at Golden Beach Beer City, bringing together global beer resources, serving international visitors and deepening cross-border industry exchanges. With its world-class standards, the festival is offering visitors from China and abroad an immersive “global beer journey.”
This year’s festival has gathered premium beer resources from around the world, featuring more than 2,300 domestic and international beer brands, including classic European heritage brands and emerging craft breweries from various countries. Meanwhile, the 2026 “Golden Flower Award” Craft Beer Competition has achieved new success, attracting 430 domestic and international brands and 2,342 craft beer entries. An international judging panel consisting of 41 experts from China, Germany, Thailand and other countries evaluated the entries, making the competition an important platform for global craft beer showcasing and industry collaboration.
The festival has also precisely targeted international visitor markets, with a particular focus on South Korea’s inbound cultural tourism market. It launched the special campaign “10,000 Korean Visitors Experience the Beer Festival.” Leveraging Qingdao’s convenient air connectivity with Seoul, including 32 daily flights and a travel time of around 1.5 hours, the festival has attracted large numbers of Korean visitors. At the same time, international services have been upgraded across the venue, with Chinese, English, Korean and Japanese signage,multilingual volunteers, a Korean food zone and Korean-language menus. The festival also supports seven international e-wallets and implements departure tax refund services, ensuring a seamless travel and consumption experience for overseas visitors.
The festival is also strengthening international exchange through two-way engagement and global connectivity. In July, the Qingdao International Beer Festival made its debut in Berlin, Germany, hosting a dedicated cultural tourism promotion event that attracted participation from institutions from multiple countries in Germany, with online and offline engagement reaching tens of thousands of people.
On July 18, the 2026 Qingdao Conference of the International Beer Festival Alliance was held, bringing together industry representatives and experts from multiple countries. The conference promoted the alliance’s transformation from cultural exchange toward industrial collaboration and economic development, helping the beer festival evolve from a city tourism brand into a regional economic growth engine. Industry professionals from around the world have praised the event, recognizing its contribution to boosting urban cultural tourism and advancing trade and industrial development.
Editor: Wang Kai/ Gao Xiaoyan/ Wang Yulin
