Spring Sips: Tasting the Starbucks Spring Menu

By Molly Jones, Helena McGinley, Neve Murphy, Nico Roig, Aamena Shipchandler, Maya Stafford, Sam Swift, and Grace Wolpert, Staff Writers

Photo by Aamena Shipchandler, Staff Writer

From refreshing spring fruits to rich, dessert-like flavors, the 2026 Starbucks Spring Menu offers a mix of light and sweet seasonal picks. Blueprint tried and reviewed a range of items, ranking each on a scale of one to five flowers, one being the lowest and five the highest.

Drinks

Mango Strawberry Lemonade Energy Refresher Refreshers

Rating: 🌷🌷🌷🌷🌷

If you're a fan of Starbucks Refreshers, this needs to be your next order. The standard caffeine level and the mango-strawberry blend were perfectly balanced, sweet, but not overpowering. If you're someone who typically dislikes the taste of energy drinks, the energy add-in didn't distort the flavor at all. Stick with the standard caffeine level, which provides a good amount of energy without sacrificing the drink’s taste.

Mango Dragonfruit Lemonade Energy Refresher

Rating: 🌷🌷🌷

This refresher has a bold combination of mango, dragonfruit, and lemonade that gives a distinct and fresh flavor from the first sip. However, despite a delicious, tangy taste, after a few sips, the sweetness starts to overpower the tropical and springtime flavors. The lemonade in the drink provides a nice tasting citrus flavor, yet the combination of many flavors causes the drink to taste a little artificial, instead of sweet and refreshing. Although the drink is refreshing and energizing, it isn’t particularly memorable, since the flavors begin to blur together and taste like one very sweet hybrid. Overall, a solid choice if you want something bold and fun, but it may be a little too sugary and have too many flavors at once for some. 

Pink Energy Drink

Rating:🌷🌷🌷🌷

Similar to the traditional Starbucks Pink Drink, the new Pink Energy Drink has a similar refreshing and creamy taste that customers crave. The drink has a primarily sweet and slightly tangy fruit flavor from the Strawberry Acai Refresher base, which is balanced out by creamy coconut milk. The addition of coconut milk enhances the milky texture, which is similar to yogurt or a light strawberry milk. The drink also includes freeze-dried strawberry pieces that soften as you drink and offer a burst of concentrated flavor. The only difference between the traditional Pink Drink and the new drink is the 125 mg of caffeine, which makes it the perfect mid-day pick-me-up. Overall, the drink is very comparable to the delicious traditional Pink Drink, making this a solid staple in your drink repertoire. 

Iced Mango Cream Matcha

Rating: 🌷🌷🌷

This matcha perfectly suits the shifting weather, pairing a spring staple with a mango flavor reminiscent of the summer months. While the idea of a thick, heavy cold foam layered over a light, summery mango flavor might seem mismatched, it creates a refreshing taste and an indulgent texture. The cold foam blends seamlessly with the matcha, while the mango flavor acts as the perfect sweetener for those who prefer a slightly sweeter drink. However, as with all cold foam beverages, once the foam topping is gone, you are left with plain, bitter matcha lacking the vibrant mango flavor. This drink is a summery delight for the first few sips, then gradually fades into a dull Starbucks matcha.

Iced Ube Coconut Macchiato

Rating: 🌷🌷🌷

The Iced Ube Coconut Macchiato packs a bold toasted coconut flavor that is prominent from the first sip, and the ube cold foam adds a nice earthy touch. It is hard to say how well the ube flavour is truly represented since it is mixed with coconut and vanilla, the two flavors most commonly associated with the taste of ube. The toasted shredded coconut on top, combined with the ube cold foam, adds a unique texture to each sip. The coffee itself is still prominent despite the sweet additions, and the flavors balance quite well when the drink is properly mixed together. However, if you are looking for something completely unique in flavour, this probably isn't the drink for you because it closely resembles the Coconut Cream Latte with the addition of bright purple cold foam. 

Iced Ube Coconut Cream Shaken Espresso

Rating: 🌷🌷

This shaken espresso is a complex mix of the classic coffee flavor and a tropical coconut, with hints of ube. Although the flavors end up blending well, Starbucks has definitely bitten off a little more than it can chew in terms of diversifying the flavor palate. The ube adds an unusual purple tone to the coffee, and ube powder on top of the coconut cream cold foam turns into a Grimace shake-like mess. It doesn’t necessarily taste bad, but there is definitely a bit of a mental block when consuming an unique shade of purple based on a root vegetable. While it wasn’t the worst of experiences, this will personally not be a reorder.

Toasted Coconut Cream Latte

Rating: 🌷🌷

The fresh taste of coconut goes well with many things–piña colada, mango, lime–but coffee is definitely not one of them. The flavoring was very artificial and honestly ruined what I would normally call one of my favorite drinks. Calling coconut something “spring-related” is also a bit of a stretch. Coconut is normally categorized as something tropical and summery, but Starbucks selected it as a part of the spring menu. It was overall not undrinkable; it definitely still carried some of the classic latte flavor, although the tangy coconut flavor brought it down. 

Food

Yuzu Citrus Blossom

Review: 🌷🌷🌷

The Yuzu Citrus Blossom is like eating a cloud. The plain pastry is light and airy with the citrus-flavored substance in the middle. It tastes like a mix between a kouign-amann and a jelly croissant. As for the flavoring, it's nothing special. While it is labelled as Yuzu makes the dish sound exotic, but it tasted like a regular orange. Additionally, the concentration of flavoring leaves the outside plain and a little boring. The pastry texture and occasional pops of flavor are good, but not great. If you’re looking for an amazing pastry, I would recommend spending your money elsewhere.

Frog Cake Pops

Rating: 🌷🌷🌷

The Frog Cake Pop is a very cute spring-themed food item. It’s carefully crafted to have ears, a smile, and taste fairly good. It tastes roughly the same as the vanilla cake base. The only difference in taste is the stark artificial flavor of hardened frosting that is used for the frog’s face. This cake pop is not recommended for those who aren’t fans of very sugary foods or people who don’t like fondant or frosting very much. Overall, though, this pretty much tasted like a normal vanilla cake pop.