CANNALIB · COMPETITIONS AND AWARD CLAIMS · FROZEN 2026-09-14
The cups, the winners, and the claims we checked.
Seed banks say their strains won cups. Most catalogues repeat it. CannaLib went and found the published results for 264 competitions in 61 countries, from the first Amsterdam Cannabis Cup in 1988 to this year's, and checked every award a seed bank claims against them. Here is what that looks like.
● 21,141 results · 264 competitions · 1,092 editions
● 61 countries · 1988 to 2026
21,141
Competition results
one row per placing, with its source
264
Competitions
folded when one cup ran under several names
1,092
Editions
a year of a cup, with what was and was not published
9,355
Results matched to a strain
on 4,333 strains; the rest name an entrant, a product or a person
4,826
Award claims checked
every award a seed bank or directory states for a strain
1,599
Claims confirmed
by the published results of that cup and year
WHAT A CHECKED CLAIM MEANS
Six verdicts. Only one of them is a win.
A seed bank writes "1st place, Cannabis Cup 2014" on a strain page. We do not repeat it. We look for the 2014 results of that cup and record one of six verdicts. Only confirmed claims are shown as wins on a strain's card. Every other verdict is shown as the verdict, in words, beside the claim. A claim never turns into a win because it was repeated often enough.
Confirmed 1,599 — the strain, or a listed entrant with that strain, appears in the published results for that year and category.
Not in results 1,070 — the year's results are published and the strain is not in them.
Year mismatch 167 — the strain did place, but in a different year from the one claimed.
Parent won 41 — the placing belongs to a parent of the strain, not the strain itself.
Event ambiguous 1,759 — the claim names a cup we cannot pin to one competition or edition, so it stays open.
Edition unresearched 190 — the cup exists but that year's results were not found; neither confirmed nor denied.
What we refused to count
11,786 of the 21,141 results name an entrant, a brand, a product or a person rather than a strain. They are kept, with their sources, and they are not matched to a strain by guessing. When a cup published only personal or culture awards for a year, the edition is marked partial. When a year could not be found, it is marked not found. Neither is filled in.
THE BIG CUPS
Ten competitions carry half the results.
| Competition | Where | Results | Years |
|---|---|---|---|
| High Times Cannabis Cup (United States) | United States | 3,569 | 2010 to 2026 |
| The Emerald Cup | California | 1,212 | 2003 to 2024 |
| High 95 Cup | United States | 1,108 | 2017 to 2025 |
| Errl Cup | Arizona | 1,009 | 2016 to 2026 |
| Highlife Cup | Netherlands | 866 | 2002 to 2026 |
| Lift & Co. Canadian Cannabis Awards | Canada | 749 | 2014 to 2019 |
| Karma Cup | Canada | 610 | 2014 to 2025 |
| High Times Cannabis Cup (Amsterdam) | Netherlands | 604 | 1988 to 2014 |
| THC Classic | Colorado | 572 | 2018 to 2026 |
| California State Fair Cannabis Awards | California | 571 | 2022 to 2026 |
Browse every cup
Every competition in the freeze, year by year. Filter to winners, to checked strain matches, or to strains with a dossier, then click a strain for its live catalogue card.
Loading the awards index…
WORKED EXAMPLES
Open the card. The verdicts are beside the claims.
Blue Dream: 27 published results, 31 claims, side by side.
The card shows every cup placing with its source and every claim with its verdict. Nothing is merged into a trophy count.
The first Emerald Cup, 2003, was won by Purple Kush.
From the cannabiscupwinners.com archive of 2003 to 2009; the write-up is quoted with its source.
Hindu Kush took the 2004 Emerald Cup.
The judges' note that it came down to a Diesel cross against a Kush is kept as a quotation, not paraphrased into a fact.
A year mismatch is not a lie, and not a win.
Where a seed bank states the wrong year for a real placing, the card says exactly that: the placing is real, the year on the seed bank's page is wrong.
When a cup published no flower categories.
Jack Herer Cup Thailand 2019 published only personal and culture awards. The edition is marked partial and no strain is credited.
PICTURES
6,093 competition photographs, credited
Winners, entries, trophies, posters and result sheets, recorded with their source and credit. 3,720 have a local copy; the rest are linked to where they live. The credited grid lands with the competition pages.
HOW THIS WAS BUILT
Cup by cup, exact matches only.
The results were researched cup by cup from published result pages, archive copies and event write-ups, then imported with the competition name folded where one cup has run under several names. Matching a result to a strain is exact on the stored name, never fuzzy; near-miss spellings were reviewed by hand and the list is in the repository. Winners that did not yet exist in the catalogue were added as strains only when a result named them, and they carry the result as their evidence.
Two sources refused automated collection and are recorded as accepted gaps: theemeraldcup.com returns 403 to downloads, and the NECANN 2022 and 2023 result graphics were not retrievable. Clear Choice publishes no results. GrowDiaries' Strain of the Year votes are included as a competition because they are published, dated and ranked.