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Who brews Czech beer: global groups, a state brewery, families and newcomers

Czech breweries and their owners: Asahi's Pilsner Urquell, state-owned Budvar, Svijany, Bernard and U Fleků, revived abbey and village breweries, and the first Czech IPAs.

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Dimpled mugs of pale and dark lager on a long wooden table in a vaulted Czech beer hall

Josef Groll brewed the first pale lager in Plzeň in 1842, and Czechs still drink more pale lager than anything else: the BJCP calls the light výčepní the most consumed beer in the country. The breweries behind it belong to a Japanese group, the Czech state, investment funds, families and a new generation of small brewers.

The global groups

The best-known Czech beer belongs to a brewer abroad. Asahi of Japan bought Plzeňský Prazdroj from SABMiller in 2017. The group brews Pilsner Urquell and Gambrinus in Plzeň and also runs the Radegast and Velké Popovice breweries. Prague’s Staropramen belongs to Molson Coors. Heineken bought Krušovice in 2007, and on 26 October 2026 it said it would stop brewing at Velké Březno and make Březňák at its other breweries.

The Lobkowicz brewing group belongs to Lapasan, which CITIC Europe Holdings owns outright; Czech reports name the Chinese CITIC group as the owner. The group’s brewery at Vysoký Chlumec has been closed since 2021.

The state brewery

Budweiser Budvar in České Budějovice opened in 1895, and the Budvar trademark dates from 1930. It is still a národní podnik, a national enterprise owned by the Czech state. A long trademark dispute with Anheuser-Busch means North Americans buy it as Czechvar. In 2025 it brewed a record 1.946 million hectolitres.

Czech owners

LIF, an investment fund from Liberec, owns Svijany and Primátor. Svijany nearly closed in the late 1990s, when it belonged to Pražské pivovary, then controlled by Bass. It became a separate company in 1998 and passed 700,000 hectolitres in 2024, all of it sold unpasteurised. Primátor, built by the town of Náchod in 1872, passed to LIF in a sale approved in 2008.

In Moravia, the Zubr, Litovel and Holba breweries make up Pivovary Zubr. Since March 2024 the soft-drinks group Kofola ČeskoSlovensko has held 51% of the company that owns them. The town of Strakonice is the only shareholder of its brewery, the maker of Dudák beers. At Březnice, the Herold brewery stopped brewing in May 2025, and in May 2026 its company took the new name PH Březnice and struck brewing and malting from its registered business.

Bernard in Humpolec, bought at auction in 1991, carries rodinný pivovar, family brewery, in its name; the Belgian brewer Duvel Moortgat has owned half of it since 2001. Chodovar in Chodová Planá left the Prazdroj group in 1992, the only one of its satellite breweries to do so, and a family has run it since.

Breweries that came back

Some old breweries reopened after 1989. The Brtník family got U Fleků in Prague back in 1991; it still brews one beer, a dark 13° lager, and pours it only in its own beer hall. Únětice, just outside Prague, stopped brewing around 1950 and became a dairy store; a new company bought it and brewed again on 15 May 2011. The same year, Břevnov Abbey, founded in 993, opened a brewery in its former Baroque stables. In Nymburk, the brewery that Bohumil Hrabal’s father managed from 1920 to 1948 has sold its beer since 1991 as Postřižinské pivo, after Hrabal’s novella.

The newcomers

Kocour opened in Varnsdorf in 2008, when few Czech breweries brewed ales as well as lagers. Its IPA Samurai is an American IPA. Martin Matuška started his brewery in a garage on Easter Monday 2009, and his Raptor was one of the first IPAs brewed in Bohemia. Zichovec, a family brewery first brewing in 2012, now works on a former army tank range in Louny, with a Czech pale lager next to NEIPAs and sours.

The BJCP notes that these small breweries have made the amber lager, the polotmavé, easier to find, and that many of them brew a dark tmavé too.

Sources

Checked .

  1. Plzeňský Prazdroj — Wikipedie
  2. Staropramen Brewery — Wikipedia
  3. Heineken acquires Krusovice Brewery in Czech Republic — Heineken N.V.
  4. Heineken přestane vařit pivo Březňák na Ústecku, výrobu přesune — ČTK, České noviny
  5. LAPASAN s.r.o. — Rejstr.cz (Czech public register data)
  6. Pivovar ve Vysokém Chlumci se zítra otevře pro veřejnost — Zprávy Příbram
  7. Pivovar — Městys Vysoký Chlumec
  8. Jsou Strakonice pořád městem piva? — Jižní Čechy Teď
  9. Pivovar Herold v Březnici přerušil výrobu — Zprávy Příbram
  10. PH Březnice a.s. — Finmag (Czech commercial register data)
  11. Budějovický Budvar (podnik) — Wikipedie
  12. Budweiser Budvar Brewery — Wikipedia
  13. Pivovar Svijany — Wikipedie
  14. Svijany — Czech Profile
  15. Pivovar Náchod — Wikipedie
  16. Kofola completes purchase of majority stake in Zubr, Holba and Litovel breweries — Kofola ČeskoSlovensko
  17. Rodinný pivovar Bernard — Wikipedie
  18. Pivovar Chodovar — Wikipedie
  19. Historie U Fleků — Pivovar a restaurace U Fleků
  20. Únětický pivovar — Wikipedie
  21. Břevnovský klášterní pivovar — Wikipedie
  22. Pivovar Nymburk — Wikipedie
  23. Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf — Wikipedia
  24. Náš příběh — Pivovar Matuška
  25. Pivovar Zichovec — Wikipedie
  26. 3A. Czech Pale Lager, 2021 Beer Style Guidelines — Beer Judge Certification Program
  27. 3C. Czech Amber Lager, 2021 Beer Style Guidelines — Beer Judge Certification Program
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