Life is all about embracing change and evolution. On behalf of the Emerald Cup team, I’m very excited to announce some major changes to our competition and give you an update on the event itself.

With everything up in the air from the challenges of the coronavirus, we’re not going to be producing The Emerald Cup this December but we are moving forward with the contest. We are intending to have the award ceremony take place in March of 2021 and we will let you know as soon as we can about the event itself.

I look forward to seeing the winners of the various competitions be acknowledged and honored for their hard work and artistry. The contest has always been a tight squeeze to complete in time for the show. We’ve made it work over the years, taxing our flower judges and forcing all the farmers to get your entries cured and in before the deadlines. With cannabis being legalized and with all the new state requirements for entries (delivery of your products to your distributors, testing, packaging, and transport to us), it’s even more challenging for the contestants and for our judges. With that in mind, we’ve decided to push the entire contest back. The exact entry deadline will be announced soon but it will be at the end of January. This will give everyone more time to cure their flowers and to enter the late flowering cultivars. This also means the judges will finally have at least a month to review the entries.

In addition to backing up the entry deadline we’re also going to change the flower competition’s judging process. We will judge along terpene profiles. We’ll still have an overall top-twenty. Every flower entry will go toe to toe against each other in their respective categories but we’ll let the myrcene dominant terpene flowers be judged against each other, the pinene dominate against each other and so on through the top six terpene categories. The fuels and fruity terpene dominant flowers will get a chance to stand up against their respective peers. This will also allow for more winners as we will give awards for the flowers that are the best in each terpene profile. One more change will take place as well. The competition has always been about sun-grown cannabis, but in a nod to all our indoor farmers throughout the state, we’re going to include an indoor flower category. Also, we’ll have a “Best of Show” award for the overall top dog. This will give the indoor and sun-grown aficionados a chance to see how a direct competition fares. With unique cultivars being so critical to a brand’s success nowadays, we’re also adding two more breeders cups (one for mixed light flowers and one for indoor flowers). We’ll now have over forty categories overall.

Rolling Stone Magazine called the Emerald Cup the “Academy Awards” of the cannabis industry and we’re proud to bring everyone in our cannabis community together, bridging the northern and southern ends of this glorious state.

Thanks for all your support and love over the past 17 years. As I’ve always said, it’s the farmers and the community who are the heart of the Emerald Cup.

Stay tuned as we’ll be having regular updates.

One Love and One Community!