Exposure Report: The Beer Market in Poland 2025

The year 2025 in the beer market was marked by a further contraction of the industry. Sales declined once again, while producers also had to face changing consumer habits. The role of classic alcoholic lagers weakened significantly, while the position of 0.0% beers, craft beers, and more specialized products strengthened slightly. Transformations within the category could also be observed at the level of in-store exposure. Data from the eLeader report, prepared using Shelf Recognition AI technology, shows how the shelf share of the largest producers, the presence of regional breweries, and the exposure of the NoLo segment changed across different store formats.

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The shelf is becoming less concentrated

One of the most important conclusions from the report is the consistent loss of exposure space by the leading players. The exposure share of the TOP 5 beer producers decreased from the previous 74% to around 71%. The largest producers still dominate, but their advantage is gradually shrinking. Importantly, the space given up by the leaders is not being taken over by a single competitor. Instead, it is being distributed among smaller producers, importers, regional and craft breweries, and partly private labels.

As Maciej Ptaszyński, President of the Polish Chamber of Commerce, notes:

“The beer shelf in Polish retail chains is changing faster than sales data alone would suggest. Based on the available data, it can be argued that retailers are actively rebuilding the structure of the shelf. The exposure share of the five largest players has shrunk significantly. However, the freed-up space is not going to a single successor, but is being distributed among importers, craft breweries, and private labels.”

Craft beer stabilizes its position

The craft and regional brewery segment is no longer growing as dynamically as in previous years. Its exposure share in 2025 remained at around 6.5–7.8%. This means that craft beer has maintained its own shelf space, but its further expansion is limited by rotation pressure and competition for space.

“Craft beer now has its own recognizable shelf space and its own consumer. The exposure level of craft beers significantly exceeds our estimated market share of craft beers in the overall beer market, which leads to the conclusion that craft beers are treated by retail chains as an attractive offer segment that draws customers to stores” – emphasizes Marek Kamiński, President of the Management Board of the Polish Association of Craft Breweries.

0.0% beers are more visible than their sales share would suggest

Non-alcoholic beers remain the most promising segment. Their value share in the beer market in Poland 2025 was around 8.1%, but shelf exposure in many retail chains reached 12–14%, and locally even around 19%. This shows that retail and producers treat 0.0% beer as a category whose importance is greater than its current sales share.

Bartłomiej Morzycki, Director General of ZPPP Browary Polskie, points out:

“The exposure of non-alcoholic beers significantly exceeds the category’s market share. This difference, reaching even 10 percentage points, shows that both breweries and retail chains, as well as smaller stores, see potential in this product group and promote it more strongly. The share of non-alcoholic beers in in-store exposure does not depend directly on the beer season, which shows that they are not a seasonal alternative, but a fully-fledged category.”

Shelf data shows more than sales

Changes taking place in the beer category are becoming increasingly difficult to analyze solely through the lens of sales data. How retailers build category exposure is also becoming more important: which segments receive more space, how the share of individual producers changes, and how the offer is differentiated depending on the store format.

“When facing the challenge of publishing data on beer exposure, we knew that we were working
with a category undergoing a strong transformation – declining volume sales, the prospect of the
deposit return system, changes in alcohol consumption culture in Poland, and the offensive of craft
and non-alcoholic beers. Today, we can clearly see that the store shelf in some respects follows,
and in others anticipates, sales trends. Exposure analysis is just as fascinating
as the technology that ensures the flow of reliable and logically structured data.
Thanks to AI image recognition, we see retail as it really is, in the place where
the consumer meets the product.” – says Paweł Majsiej, Chief of eLeader Shelf Recognition AI.

About the report

The report “Beer Market in Poland 2025. Beer Exposure in Retail Chains Captured by AI” was prepared based on data collected using eLeader Shelf Recognition AI. The analysis covers the 10 largest retail chains in Poland and the period from Q2 2024 to Q4 2025.

The study was based on approximately 300 shelf audits per month. The analysis covered 364 brands and 173 beer producers, examining, among other factors, shelf shares, the number of facings, and the visibility of segments such as non-alcoholic and craft beers.