Cup Season: The Cannabis Cup is now the Champions League of Weed

by Oscar Pascual |

Legendary pot publication High Times celebrated the Southern California Medical Cannabis Cup over the weekend, kicking off the first of several U.S. Cups to be held this year.



The two-day festival handed out awards to the finest cannabis products, flowers, and extracts So Cal has to offer. But it’s just to the first step to true greatness.

The original Cannabis Cup took place in 1988 in Amsterdam, and continued for nearly two decades as the one and only awards ceremony for marijuana until the first domestic Cup came to San Francisco in 2010. Now that legalization has spread to further states since, the series of U.S. Cups has now expanded to six, with events scheduled in Southern California, Denver, San Francisco, Portland, Michigan, and Seattle this year.

The amount of Cup events paired by the geographic divisions almost makes the Cannabis Cup akin to some of the best sports tournaments to behold, not unlike March Madness or the UEFA Champions League.

After the best selections are chosen from each Cup, all regional winners can just as well make it to what would be considered the championship final in Amsterdam at the end of the year. Some recent Amsterdam winners have come by way of American competition, such as Los Angeles’ Greenwolf dispensary, Michigan’s Oasis Medical Seeds, and Lake Tahoe’s Tahoe Wellness Cooperative.

In fact, Los Angeles’ Greenwolf dispensary has shown recent Cup dominance not unlike the Spanish La Liga’s Real Madrid, winning last year’s Best Import Hash category in Amsterdam. They followed up quickly over the weekend by taking home seven total awards from the SoCal Cup, and are primed to once again feature at the big Dutch ticket this year.

The next Cup is scheduled in Denver for 420 weekend where they could possibly produce a Chelsea or Juventus. The San Francisco Cup follows in June, when the Bay Area will crown its would-be Manchester United.

Cup Madness. It’s a perfect time to catch it.