A Look at the 2026 CSWC

Since a few years back, the Cigar Smoking World Championship has had its own booth at the InterTabac trade show in Dortmund. This year was no exception, and we met up with founder Marko Bilić to pick his brain about the recent CSWC season.

“To me, it was one of the most important in the history of the CSWC, because we resumed our presence in the US in a much more serious manner,” he says. “This year we had ten locations, and we might be the biggest international platform for cigar events, but the US is a universe in itself. It’s the biggest cigar market and we want to focus more on quality than quantity. Of course we want more events as well, but not for the price of quality.”

He was also happy about the many surprises during the season.

“There were new names popping up while more well-known names didn’t perform as well as they have done. It proves this is not just a game with the same faces, and that really became evident when newcomer George Stansfield won the grand finale.”

In the future, Bilić wants to keep building that community he’s been building since the start of the CSWC, while also fighting the good fight.

“This is bigger than just our organization now, so we have a responsibility towards the community. There’s always a lot of talk about the industry, producers and legislation, but rarely about community, which is the reason the industry even exists. CSWC has become a powerful voice, fighting for our rights, so we want to keep doing that.”

To wrap things up, Bilić reveals there will be exciting changes in the future.

“Like any serious sport, the CSWC listens to feedback from the competitors and audience. I can’t say what the changes will be, but one possibility would be to change the size of the competition cigar to a smaller one. We’ll see.”