Travis Gienger won the 2026 World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off on Monday, taking the grand prize for the fifth time with Rocky, a 2,389-pound pumpkin that was the heaviest in the competition. The win in Half Moon Bay, California, made him a five-time champion and added another title to a run that has turned him into one of the most familiar names in pumpkin growing.
Rocky measured 138 inches side-to-side, 131.5 inches end-to-end and 231 inches around, numbers that help explain how a pumpkin can tip the scale at nearly 2,400 pounds without setting the all-time mark. Gienger earned $900 for each pound of Rocky, which came to $2,151 once the final weight was set.
The weigh-off was the 53rd World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off and was held Monday, Oct. 12, in a contest that began in 1974 as a friendly challenge between Half Moon Bay and Circleville, Ohio. Gienger of Anoka, Minnesota, has now won the grand prize five times, keeping his place at the center of a long-running event that still draws attention far beyond the coast.
Rocky did not break the world record, though the mark remains unsettled around him. The current record is 2,856 pounds, set on Oct. 3 by a British pumpkin grower, but a pumpkin grower in Rhode Island may have gone heavier on Saturday with a pumpkin that weighed 3,156 pounds. That result does not appear to have been certified yet, leaving the record question open even as Gienger’s win is already in the books.
The bigger prize for Gienger may come later this week. In 2022, his championship pumpkin Maverick was carved into the world’s largest jack-o-lantern and displayed outside Anoka City Hall, and the pumpkin now on display there is expected to break two Guinness World Records on Friday when it is carved by weight and by size. For a grower who keeps winning when the numbers get bigger, the next headline may come not from the scale but from the knife.
