Cruzcampo says it became Britain’s top-selling Spanish beer brand

Cruzcampo has become the top-selling Spanish beer brand in the United Kingdom and is now served in more than 18,500 pubs and bars there, according to company information released on Tuesday and attributed to NielsenIQ data from September 2026.

The brand, which is owned by Heineken and originated in Seville in 1904, said it now leads all Spanish beer brands in the British market in both sales volume and sales value. The company also said Cruzcampo has reached third place by value among all draft beer brands sold in the United Kingdom, including domestic and international competitors.

The figures point to a strong position for the Spanish brand in Britain’s hospitality trade, where beer sales through pubs and bars remain a key part of competition among brewers. Cruzcampo said more than one in three beers sold in the United Kingdom under a Spanish brand name is its own product. It added that the total volume sold across the market is equal to roughly 900,000 pints a day.

The company did not disclose revenue, total market share by percentage, or the exact statistical period used in the NielsenIQ ranking. The original methodology was not published with the announcement, and it was not possible to independently verify the full basis for the comparison. The ranking was presented as a measure of sales value across the British draft beer market as of September 2026.

Even with those limits, the data suggests that Cruzcampo has moved beyond a niche import position and secured broad distribution in one of Europe’s most competitive beer markets. The company said its beer is now poured in more than 18,500 pubs and bars across the country. It also said that represented about one in four of the nation’s pubs, based on an estimate of nearly 71,000 pubs in the United Kingdom.

Cruzcampo entered the British market in April 2023. The company said the launch was driven in part by demand from British tourists who had tried the beer while visiting southern Spain and later looked for it at home. Heineken has since expanded the brand’s distribution in both on-trade and retail channels.

According to the company, Cruzcampo was already present in nearly 10,000 British bars within its first year and had reached 68% of supermarkets. It said the brand has continued to grow since then in cities including London, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.

Heineken has backed the expansion with marketing spending in the United Kingdom. Cruzcampo said it ran a campaign called Choose to Cruz during 2026 across television, streaming platforms, social media and outdoor advertising, including placements at Waterloo Station and Piccadilly Circus in London. The company linked that promotion to the brand’s rapid rise, though it did not provide a breakdown showing how much of the gain came from advertising, pricing, wider distribution or broader category trends.

The company also pointed to growth in supermarkets, saying Cruzcampo was the fastest-growing brand in the broader beer category and was growing at more than four times the rate of the overall market. That comparison was also not accompanied by published underlying data.

Part of the retail push has included Cruzcampo Sevilla Orange, a flavored beer launched in the British market. The company said the product has exceeded internal expectations and now has the highest market penetration in the United Kingdom among flavored beer products. It also said 12% of its buyers were new to the beer and cider category, describing that as evidence the product was bringing new consumers into the segment rather than only shifting demand from other brands.

Cruzcampo’s rise in Britain is significant for Heineken as it looks to strengthen premium and internationally positioned brands in mature beer markets. According to the hops and brewing industry group BarthHaas, Heineken was the world’s second-largest beer producer in 2025, with 235.65 million hectoliters. Cruzcampo gives the Dutch brewer a Spanish-origin label with clear regional branding that can compete in a market where imported lagers and Mediterranean-style beers have long attracted British drinkers.

The British performance also gives Cruzcampo an international foothold beyond Spain, where the brand has long been a major seller in Andalusia and the wider national market. The beer sold for the British market is brewed in Seville, according to the company.

The new figures do not show how many places Cruzcampo gained in the rankings from a year earlier, because no previous comparable table was released with the announcement. They also do not mean that all British sales of the brand reflect beer exported from Spain in the trade data sense, since corporate ownership, production and commercial distribution can be counted differently depending on the measure used.

Still, the position outlined by the company marks a notable development for a Spanish-origin brand in the United Kingdom’s bar trade. A market once dominated by British staples and global mainstream lagers now appears to have made room for Cruzcampo near the top of the value rankings in draft beer, at least according to the company’s reading of NielsenIQ data from September 2026.