World Pizza Games 2026 Official Results

Winners in 2026 World Pizza Games Revealed

The World Pizza Games, hosted by the World Pizza Champions during the International Pizza Expo, showcase the skills pizzeria employees at all levels do best: stretch and toss dough as well as fold pizza boxes. During a typical shift, pizza makers do these tasks for an hourly wage. At Pizza Expo, the winners compete for cash prizes.

In the Acrobatic Dough Tossing divisions, competitors are given 10 eight-inch dough balls to perform with during a routine set to music. Contestants are judged on a 10-point scale based on:

• Dexterity
• Difficulty
• Synchronization
• Variety
• Creativity
• Drops (competitors lose 0.5 points for each unintentional drop up to 10 drops, or five points).

Previous winners of Acrobatic Dough Tossing: 1st Division are eligible to compete in the Masters Division.

2026 Individual Acrobatic: Masters Division

As one of the five founding members of the World Pizza Champions and the 1998 champion himself, Ken Bryant oversees the Games. Beyond the scoring requirements, he tells Pizza Today the dough tossing category requires an element of showmanship.

“You really have to think about what you’re doing as a competitor, because if you try some extremely hard tricks and continually drop it, that’s that’s going to hurt your score,” Bryant says.

2026 Individual Acrobatic: 1st Division

Bryant says pizzaioli use many different styles to complete the Fastest Dough Stretch, which requires competitors to cover five 12-inch pizza screens with 12-ounce dough balls as quickly as possible.

“Competitors will stack dough on top of each other prior to stretching, and what that really does is allows further compression of the dough,” Bryant says. “You can stretch out all of them, kind of at the same time, and from there stretch them all individually.”

Bryant points out that dough tends to snap back, which makes the event challenging.

2026 Fastest Dough: Finals

Dough stretch is something every pizzeria employee learns on Day One, according to Bryant, so it is one of the categories that fills up quickly each year. In this category, contestants have five minutes to stretch an 18-ounce dough ball as big as possible.

Dough cannot be placed on the floor until the final 20 seconds of the competition, and holes in the dough must be closed or they will result in a disqualification.

2026 Largest Dough: Finals

After months and years of working in pizzerias, employees get incredibly fast at routine processes, and Fastest Box Folding is where they get a chance to shine. As the name suggests, contestants try to fold five 12-inch pizza boxes as quickly as possible.

“This is something these guys do every day in their pizzerias,” Bryant says, adding that he enjoys watching “the speed they’ve accumulated over the years in their stores.”

2026 Fastest Box Folding: Finals

Finally, the Pizza Triathlon combines three other events:

• Fastest Dough
• Largest Dough
• Box Folding

This year, employees at Pittsburgh pizzeria chain Caliente Pizza & Draft House swept the Pizza Triathlon, with Matt Hickey, Jay Falk and Max Mathious claiming first, second and third place, respectively.

2026 Pizza Triathlon: Finals

For more details about the 2026 World Pizza Games, visit our story containing daily updates made live from Pizza Expo.