The 2025 season ushers in Cigar Dojo’s 14th annual year-end awards, continuing a tradition that began back in 2012 with a modest Top 10 list aimed at the everyday cigar enthusiast. What started as a straightforward rundown has steadily expanded over the years, evolving into a more comprehensive celebration of the industry. Today, the program includes our Top 20 Cigars of the Year, along with eight Exceptional Awards recognizing standout achievements beyond the core rankings. Below, you’ll find the full reveal schedule for this year’s selections, as well as a breakdown of the criteria used to determine each honor.
COTY 2025 Awards Schedule
| Date | Reveal | |
|---|---|---|
| #20 | ||
| #19 | ||
| #18 | ||
| #17 | ||
| #16 | ||
| #15 | ||
| #14 | ||
| #13 | #12 | |
| #11 | ||
| #10 | ||
| #9 | ||
| #8 | ||
| #7 | ||
| #6 | ||
| #5 | ||
| #4 | ||
| #3 | #2 | |
| #1 | ||
Following the final reveal on Jan. 16th, 2026, we will go over the full list (as well as the Exceptional Awards announcements) with added commentary on a special edition of Smoke Night LIVE.
Top 20 COTY List
- Sold in the USA
- Released in 2025
To curate the 2025 Cigars of the Year list, the Cigar Dojo team creates individual rankings of their top 20 cigars of the year, following the criteria listed above. Points are assigned based on ranking, with the No. 1 cigar earning 30 points, the No. 2 cigar 25 points, the No. 3 cigar 22 points, the fourth earning 20, and a single-point decline from the fifth through 20th spots. To maintain fairness, cigars must receive votes from at least two panel members to qualify, preventing any single vote from disproportionately influencing the results. Once the points are compiled, the list is finalized by Cigar Dojo’s founders, Eric and Jordan Guttormson, ensuring the selections align with the brand’s culture and values established in 2012.
COTY 2025 Exceptional Awards Schedule
| Date | Reveal | |
|---|---|---|
| Line Extension | ||
| Under the Radar | ||
| Value | ||
| Packaging | ||
| Unorthodox | ||
| Factory (Up-and-Coming) | ||
| Brand (Up-and-Coming) | ||
| Person (Up-and-Coming) | ||
All eight Exceptional Awards will be announced during our Smoke Night LIVE reveal show, taking place on Jan. 16th, 2026 at 9pm Eastern.
Exceptional Awards List
- Sold in the USA
- Released or occurred during the 2025 calendar year
The Exceptional Awards list is designed to cast a wider net than our traditional Cigar of the Year rankings, spotlighting standout achievements across a broad range of styles, price points, and contributions to the cigar world. These honors recognize everything from value-driven releases and overlooked gems to creative risks and rising industry talent.
Because each category serves a different purpose, every Exceptional Award has its own set of nuances, though all collectively adhere to the two baseline guidelines listed above. Additional criteria by category are outlined below:
- Line Extension: awarded to a new size, format, or minor variation added to an existing cigar line in 2025. This category highlights extensions that meaningfully enhance or elevate an established line.
- Under the Radar: the top cigar that we feel flew somewhat unnoticed by the average enthusiast—whether due to limited distribution, quiet marketing, or simply being overshadowed by louder releases—despite delivering standout performance.
- Value: the best cigar priced under $10, emphasizing affordability without sacrificing flavor, construction, or overall enjoyment.
- Packaging: awarded to the cigar with the most effective and creative presentation. This doesn’t necessarily mean the most elaborate or expensive packaging, but rather design that fits the project, shows originality or innovation, and is instantly eye-catching.
- Unorthodox: recognizes non-traditional and/or experimental cigar projects. This can include flavored, infused, sweetened, fire-cured, or pipe-inspired blends, as well as barber poles, unusual sizes, unconventional materials, or other boundary-pushing concepts.
- Factory (Up-and-Coming): awarded to a recently-established cigar factory that showed notable momentum in 2025, whether through improved quality, increased visibility, new partnerships, or a growing portfolio that caught our attention.
- Brand (Up-and-Coming): this award highlights a recently-established brand that made meaningful strides in 2025—through growth, evolution, influence, or buzz—positioning itself as one to watch moving forward.
- Person (Up-and-Coming): selected subjectively from the industry’s rising talent, this award recognizes an individual who made a notable breakthrough or upward leap in 2025. Whether through innovation, leadership, creative direction, or increased visibility, the recipient represents someone whose influence is still building—and whose trajectory suggests a much larger presence in the years ahead.
COTY Plaques
All 25 Cigar of the Year winners are given a plaque, showing off the cigar along with a few stats to give a quick impression of each blend. The guidelines behind these stats are as follows:
- Country: the country where the cigar is rolled.
- Body: our subjective take on the cigar’s body on a scale of 1–5.
- Price: the median price (MSRP) across a cigar’s entire line is evaluated and averaged to the nearest dollar. Median prices that fall between $0 and $11 are considered affordable (one price symbol); prices ranging from $12 to $19 are considered average (two price symbols); prices $20 and above are considered expensive (three price symbols). There is a similar price scale on Dojoverse.com, which was updated in 2024 to stay in line with rising inflation.
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