No/low alcohol: what the data actually says about who is buying it, why, and which part of the category is growing

No/low alcohol has been the most discussed trend in the drinks industry for several years. It has also been the most consistently misread. The conversation around the category has been dominated by two assumptions that the data does not support: that the primary consumer is a young abstainer motivated by health, and that low-alcohol and no-alcohol are the same category moving in the same direction. Neither is accurate, and both assumptions have led to product, positioning, and investment decisions that do not match where the consumer and the commercial opportunity actually are.

This piece maps what the data says. The no-alcohol and low-alcohol categories are diverging. The consumer buying them skews older than the marketing suggests. The reasons they are buying are shifting from health toward taste and brand. The infrastructure investment being made by major drinks companies – Heineken, AB InBev, Mahou, Asahi, Carlsberg, and others – is accelerating, not pausing. And the Carling ABV reduction announced last week is the clearest recent illustration of how the economics of lower-alcohol production have changed the incentive structure for mainstream producers in ways that go well beyond the no/low category conversation.

The commercial question for brand and strategy teams in drinks is no longer whether no/low is a real category. It is: which part of it, for which consumer, through which channel, and with what positioning – because the answers to those questions determine whether a no/low investment builds a durable commercial position or follows the pattern of brands that entered on trend data and exited when the consumer profile turned out to be different from what was assumed.

The numbers – and why no and low need to be read separately

IWSR’s 2025 No- and Low-Alcohol Strategic Study, released in January 2026, contains a data point that most coverage of the category misses: low-alcohol volumes declined 2% in 2025 versus 2024 across the top 10 global markets (Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Africa, Spain, UK, US), while no-alcohol volumes grew an estimated 9% in the same period. The two categories are moving in opposite directions, and conflating them into a single “no/low” narrative obscures the commercially significant distinction.

No-alcohol is the growth engine. No-alcohol volumes in the top 10 markets grew 13% in 2024, capping a period in which 61 million people were recruited into the category between 2022 and 2024, compared to 38 million recruited into low-alcohol over the same period. IWSR forecasts no-alcohol volumes will expand 36% between 2024 and 2029, reaching over 18 billion servings annually by the end of the period. No-alcohol share of total beverage alcohol is expected to exceed 3% by 2028. Low-alcohol is a smaller, more mature, and currently contracting category – useful context for any brand evaluating where to position a new product.