Craft Volume Falls 4%in 1st Half; Taprooms Best-Performing Brewery Type

Brewers Association estimates craft volume declined 4% in the first six months of 2026, compared against the same period in 2025.

The number of operating breweries also continued to decline, Matt Gacioch, BA's staff economist said. There were 9,344 breweries operating in June 2026, down 1.8% from 9,515 a year earlier in June 2025. This represents a slight uptick in the rate of decline, from -1% in the first half of 2025.

The number of regional breweries and microbreweries each declined 3%, followed by taprooms at 2% and brewpubs at 1%. Because taprooms and brewpubs are far more numerous, those smaller percentage changes still represent meaningful absolute numbers of closures.

Taprooms Top Performers

For the first half of 2026, taprooms were the best-performing brewery type by volume change, outpacing other models by 1–2 pp. Additionally, when assessing by channel, distributed draught gained 0.5 pp of channel share, while distributed packaged product declined 0.4 pp and onsite sales declined 0.1 pp. This suggests craft brewers are finding opportunities to meet consumer need in draught amid wholesaler consolidation and portfolio rationalization.

Retail scan data showed steeper declines than the BA estimate. Off-premise data from NielsenIQ (NIQ) shows BA-defined craft down 5.2% in the first half of 2026 across all channels (xAOC + Convenience + Liquor). By comparison, NIQ-defined craft was down 5.6% for the same period, and beer plus non-alcohol beer was down 4.0%. The shift from packaged to draught helps explain why the BA estimate for craft overall outperformed scan trends. When channels not measured by scan (i.e. draught and onsite) outperform packaged sales, the overall category estimate outperforms scan trends.

Beer continues to experience declines alongside other beverage alcohol categories. Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA) SipSource data showed spirits volume down 5.3% and wine down 9.2% for the 12 months ending May 2026. That period does not align perfectly with the first-half craft beer figures, but it offers the most recent comparison available.

Every craft brewery type had a greater share reporting growth than decline, with taprooms (57% growing) and regional breweries (56% growing) leading the charge. 

Monthly craft consumption among craft drinkers reached 85%, up 10 percentage points year-over-year and up to its highest level since 2019–2020. Craft drinkers also visited breweries 5.5 times on average over the past year, up from 5.1 in 2025.