Pilsner Urquell is owned by Asahi Group (Japan, TSE: 2502), which acquired the brand on 31 March 2017 from AB InBev, as part of a €7.3 billion deal that also included Tyskie.[1] Before Asahi Group, Pilsner Urquell was owned by SABMiller from 1999 to 2017.[1]
This ownership is reported in official statements but has not yet been matched to a regulatory filing.
Evidence: Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. Integrated Report 2025, 31 March 2026. Last checked .
Pilsner Urquell was first brewed in Plzeň in 1842 and was the first pale lager, the beer that gave the pilsner style its name and that most of the world's lager now imitates. Asahi acquired it from AB InBev in 2017 in the second tranche of SABMiller divestitures.
Controlling ownership as of . Brands grouped under the entity that owns them; large groups are collapsed.
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Asahi Group controls 9 brands on Brandtree, 9 of them in beverages.
The 200 brands in lager on Brandtree belong to 55 owners. The largest is AB InBev, with 17; Asahi Group has 7.
Asahi Group is a publicly listed company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, founded in 1889. Brandtree records 9 brands under its control, and it is listed as TSE: 2502.
Asahi Group Holdings was founded in Osaka in 1889 and is one of the two dominant Japanese brewers. It became a genuinely international company between 2016 and 2020 by buying the European and Australian beer brands that AB InBev was forced to divest to clear its takeover of SABMiller.
Brandtree records a controlling owner for 42 brands that began in the Czech Republic. 11 of them (26%) are now controlled by a company headquartered in another country, Pilsner Urquell among them.
Asahi bought SABMiller's central and eastern European businesses from AB InBev, including Pilsner Urquell in the Czech Republic and Tyskie in Poland, in the second and larger tranche of divestitures required to clear the SABMiller merger.
The parent company of Pilsner Urquell is Asahi Group, a publicly listed company headquartered in Japan.
Pilsner Urquell originated in the Czech Republic in 1842, but it is owned today by Asahi Group, which is headquartered in Japan. So Pilsner Urquell is a Czech-origin brand under Japanese ownership.
Asahi Group completed its acquisition of Pilsner Urquell on 31 March 2017, after announcing the deal on 13 December 2016. The deal, which also included Tyskie, was valued at €7.3 billion (enterprise value).
Before Asahi Group, Pilsner Urquell was owned by SABMiller from 1999 until 2017.
Yes. As of 25 September 2026, Pilsner Urquell is still owned by Asahi Group. The ownership record was last checked against primary sources on that date.
Last verified . Every ownership fact above is backed by one of these primary documents. Numbers in brackets in the text refer to this list.
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