World Steak Challenge crowns an Australian wagyu fillet

The World Steak Challenge has named a Senku Pure Wagyu fillet from Australian producer Paradigm Foods the World's Best Steak of 2026, at an awards ceremony in Amsterdam on 10 September. The same cut also won World's Best Grain-Fed Fillet and Oceania's Best Steak.

More than 450 steaks were judged blind by a panel of over 60 meat specialists, according to the organisers, with every entry scored first raw and then cooked. Judging took place at Vlees & Co steakhouse before the results were read out at Hotel Arena. The panel included Richie Wilson of FIRE Steakhouse & Bar and Ioannis Grammenos of Heliot Steak House in London.

A purebred wagyu fillet from Queensland

Australia took the title and Ireland the medal table: one great fillet is not the same as a great herd.

Senku is one of five wagyu brands marketed by Paradigm Foods, which says it sells in more than 30 countries. According to the brand, its cattle carry more than 99% wagyu genetics, are grain-fed for 450 days and are raised in Queensland, and only beef with a marble score of 6 or higher carries the Senku name. Of the three cuts judged, sirloin, ribeye and fillet, the fillet is usually the leanest. In wagyu, that is a relative term.

Australian beef collected more than the top prize. Jack's Creek & Albers, the overall winner in 2023 and 2024, took World's Best Wagyu, and Pardoo Wagyu Corporation won the Large Producer Award. Hancock Agriculture, part of Gina Rinehart's Hancock group, said on 11 September that its 2GR Wagyu brand had won three gold medals and S. Kidman & Co its first.

Ireland tops the World Steak Challenge medal table

The title went to Australia; the medal table did not. Of the 328 medals awarded, 128 of them gold, Ireland won 82, including 29 golds, against 42 medals and 27 golds for Australia, with England third on 26. Irish entries also took World's Best Grass-Fed Sirloin, through Tesco Ireland, and Grass-Fed Ribeye, through Dawn Meats.

“The challenge is a celebration of beef farming on a global scale,” said Stefan Chomka, editor of Restaurant, the trade magazine published by William Reed, which organises the competition. The World Steak Challenge has run since 2015, drawing producers from more than 30 countries.

The result reverses 2025, when the top prize went to a 32-day aged Irish Angus striploin produced by Dawn Meats and sold in Lidl supermarkets. That year the steaks were judged in Amsterdam in September, but the winners were only named in London in November. This time judging and ceremony both stayed in Amsterdam, a city better known for herring, bitterballen and rijsttafel than for steak.

Cheese is next on the judging calendar: the World Cheese Awards close their entry list on 15 September.