2025 Americas Competitions - North America, Latin America and the Caribbean

We would like to invite you to enter our 2025 Americas Craft Chocolate Competitions. The Americas Craft Chocolate Competitions celebrate chocolate makers creating origin bars from traceable fine cacao and chocolatiers using chocolate with an identifiable and traceable cacao source. By helping to promote traceable chocolate, we aim to support the work of cacao farmers producing fine cacao and create a more sustainable market for high-end specialty cacao.

To recognise the growing craft market in the Americas and the quality of chocolate coming from traditional chocolate consuming regions and from cacao growing countries, we are dividing Americas into two judging competitions, North America for the USA and Canada, and Latin America and the Caribbean. These two competitions will be judged simultaneously with prizes awarded separately in each competition.

Online judging

The Americas competitions will once again be judged online with judges working at home in their own locations. This allows us to include the widest range of experienced judges from countries in the region.

Winners of the competitions will pass through to the World Final, which will be held October– November 2025.

If your samples cannot arrive by 25 April, please get in touch.

Origin Traceability

The International Chocolate Awards is committed to supporting economically, socially and environmentally sustainable cacao farming where farmers are paid a reasonable price that reflects the work that goes into growing fine cacao. We also believe that the chocolate with the best flavor profiles comes from directly sourced fine cacao.

As a result, all entrants must provide details of the cacao origin used in their dark and milk chocolate entries, including chocolatiers. These details are given confidentially if preferred. White chocolate and cocoa butter are currently excluded from these requirements, except for unflavoured white chocolate products.

By ‘origin,’ we mean a known region, area, district, or farm recognized as a source of fine cacao. If the origin is not a single farm or cooperative, entrants must specify the cacao sources within the origin. Blends are acceptable if they use no more than three different named origins, including cooperatives, post-harvest centres, commercial farmers, research stations, or individual farms. We do not accept entries where the only specified origin is the cacao-growing country, except for smaller cacao-producing countries (under 4,000 tonnes per year).

These rules apply to all chocolate used in competition entries, including filled chocolates, spreads, and drinking chocolate. Products made with commercial couverture chocolate without a stated cacao origin are not eligible to enter. Details of the origin must be obtained from the chocolate maker or supplier if the entrant is not the chocolate maker.

For full details, please refer to our competition rules.

Customs advice

IMPORTANT, PLEASE READ! If you are outside of the USA, please follow the correct procedures for customs to ensure that your samples arrive safely without problems. Please do NOT send your samples without correctly completed customs documents - do NOT just send your package and hope it arrives!

Please WAIT until you have paid for your registration and we have approved your entries. We will then send you a template for your samples with the correct descriptions, values and tariff codes, which you can paste into your customs proforma invoice. If you follow this correctly, then your samples will have a much better chance to arrive without a customs hold up.

When you send your package, make it clear that these are samples for evaluation only and have no commercial value and are not for resale. (But do not put the value as $0.00!) Do NOT send your samples as a commercial wholesale or retail sale. After your entries are approved, you can download our product labels and add them to your samples, these have the correct customs information. If you are sending samples in retail packaging, we suggest that you add our product label to each item, eg each bar.

Please note that we can NOT act as an importer for your samples or provide an import number or tax details.

Judging scores and flavor profiles

All entries will receive comprehensive feedback from our new judging system, including the overall product score and standardised feedback statements for all products, and visual flavor profiles for origin bars and cacao ingredients. We use our advanced interactive evaluation system for judging, which is based on the IICCT flavor profiling system. Scores are weighted to align with specialty coffee scores. Scores will be published on our website for all Grand Jury Finalists

Entering our competitions in 2025

To enter our competitions in 2025, you will need to register by logging back into our website. If you have forgotten your password, please use the 'Lost password?' link on the home page.

Please make sure that you comply with all the customs regulations as explained for each competition respectively.

Eligibility

Open to all entrants with their main office or headquarters in either the USA or Canada, or Central and South America and the Caribbean, (except Peru) for all categories including cocoa butter and cocoa powder, but NOT including drinking chocolate. A separate World Drinking Chocolate competition was held earlier this year.

Canadian companies may only enter bean-to-bar plain/origin and flavored bar entries in the Americas competition. The Canadian Craft Chocolatier Competition for chocolatier products – flavored bars made with couverture, filled chocolates and spreads – is taking place in April 2025. (Only one registration fee will be charged for companies entering both competitions).

Peruvian entrants must enter the Concurso de Chocolate Peruano, which will be held in July 2025, with prizes announced at Salón del Cacao y Chocolate in Lima.

Entry details

Address for samples (between 8 - 25 April only):

International Chocolate Awards
c/o Maricel Presilla
15 Fulton Street
Weehawken
NJ
07086
USA

Phone number (for courier use only): (551) 697-3500

About the Awards

The International Chocolate Awards is an independent competition run by the International Institute of Chocolate and Cacao Tasting, recognizing excellence in fine chocolate making and in the products made with fine chocolate. As the world’s only fully independent international fine chocolate competition, we aim to support companies producing fine chocolate and chocolatiers, small companies and artisans working with fine chocolate. By helping these markets to grow and develop, we also aim to support the farmers that grow fine cacao.

The Awards are judged by chocolate experts, pastry chefs, sommeliers, journalists, bloggers and food experts from around the world, including Italy, France, Germany, the UK, the USA, Japan, South America and more. The competition is overseen by members of our permanent Grand Jury, who are joined at each competition by local food and chocolate experts and journalists.

This competition is open to all companies whose main business or head office is based in North, Central, South America and the Caribbean.

Full details of the competition, categories and rules for all competitions can be downloaded from our website.

We look forward to receiving your entries, please contact us with any questions or if you need help at info@chocolateawards.com.

Best wishes and thank you for helping to make 2025 another great year for the Awards,

International Chocolate Awards