Travis Gienger has won the 2026 World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off for the fifth time, taking the grand prize in Half Moon Bay, California, with a 2,389-pound pumpkin named Rocky.
The result came on Monday, Oct. 12, at the 53rd World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off, an event that began in 1974 as a friendly challenge between Half Moon Bay and Circleville, Ohio. Gienger of Anoka, Minnesota, again proved the most consistent grower on the day, even if Rocky did not approach the current world record of 2,856 pounds.
Rocky delivers another big result
Rocky’s winning weight was enough to secure the grand prize, but it also underlined how competitive giant pumpkin growing has become. On Oct. 3, a British pumpkin grower set the current world record at 2,856 pounds, and on Saturday a pumpkin grower in Rhode Island may have surpassed that mark with a 3,156-pound pumpkin, though it had not been certified yet.
That backdrop made Gienger’s victory notable. He has now won the grand prize five times in the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off, a rare run of success in a contest that has become one of North America’s best-known giant pumpkin events.
Anoka’s big pumpkin tradition keeps growing
The win adds another major title to Anoka’s Halloween reputation. The city is described as the Halloween Capital of the World, and this week a champion pumpkin grown there is expected to break two Guinness World Records. On Friday, the pumpkin on display at Anoka City Hall will be carved into the world’s largest jack-o-lantern by weight and by size.
Gienger’s 2022 championship pumpkin, Maverick, was also carved into the world’s largest jack-o-lantern, giving his latest victory a familiar link to the city’s pumpkin legacy. It is the kind of result that keeps the attention on Anoka well beyond the weigh-off itself, much like other seasonal stories around the country, from a David Attenborough Pumpkin portrait set with more than 10,000 pumpkins to a Rachel Dratch joins Dunkin Free Pumpkin Spice Latte giveaway Tuesday promotion and a McDonald’s Pumpkin Pie Spotted in Brooklyn and Dallas for 2 Cities sighting.
For Gienger, the simple verdict is that he remains the man to beat. Five grand prizes in the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off is an extraordinary record of consistency, and Rocky has now added another major chapter to that story.
