The 2006 High Times Cannabis Cup represented another turning point in the long-running Amsterdam competition. The 19th annual Cup, held in November 2006, moved its main expo away from central Amsterdam to the Docklands/NDSM complex in Amsterdam-Noord, requiring judges and visitors to cross the IJ by ferry. Surviving event archives refer to the edition as the “Shiva Cannabis Cup.” The exhibition was similar in scale to the previous year but added a VIP area, while the decentralized party format introduced in 2005 continued with seed companies, coffeeshops and cannabis businesses organizing events around the city.
The competition itself produced several important milestones. Green House won the overall Cannabis Cup with Arjan’s Ultra Haze #1, one year after a related Arjan’s Ultra Haze entry had finished second. Barney’s G13 Haze placed second, while Grey Area’s Martian Mean Green finished third. The seed-company divisions generated equally influential champions: Big Buddha Cheese won Indica, helping turn the British Cheese family into an international phenomenon, while Kiwi Seeds’ Mako Haze won Sativa. Barney’s dominated hash and the expo, Super Vapezilla repeated vaporization technology’s growing influence, and the cultural program honored Rainbow Family veterans Barry “Plunker” Adams and Garrick Beck in the Counterculture Hall of Fame.
The Cannabis Cup Moves to Amsterdam-Noord
The relocation to the NDSM harbor district gave the 2006 Cup a noticeably different physical character. Amsterdam-Noord was still far removed from the heavily touristed coffeeshop streets around the city center, and visitors reached the expo by crossing the IJ. Historical accounts describe the ferry ride as short but significant enough that local Amsterdam residents sometimes jokingly treated the north side as practically another destination. Once inside the Docklands building, attendees encountered the familiar mix of breeder booths, smoking technology, cannabis products and seed-company displays, together with a newly developed VIP area.
The event continued the increasingly decentralized nightlife model of the previous year. A surviving 2006 schedule lists cultivation seminars by DNA Genetics, Adam of T.H. Seeds and Soma, a Hemp Works fashion show, the Grass-A-Matazz gathering opened by John Sinclair, and a celebration marking 20 years of Barney’s. This structure represented an evolution from the giant centralized expos of the late 1990s. High Times still provided the central competition, expo and awards show, but individual companies were now responsible for much of the entertainment and educational activity surrounding Cup week.
The “Shiva” Cannabis Cup and Counterculture Atmosphere
The detailed historical archive labels the 19th event the 2006 Shiva Cannabis Cup. High Times had repeatedly used cultural themes to give individual Cups their own identity—Rainbow Family, reggae, the Beats, Peace, Space Odyssey and Conspiracy had all shaped earlier editions. In 2006, psychedelic artist Alex Grey was associated with the event’s artwork, while the Counterculture Hall of Fame turned toward figures connected with the Rainbow Family and the alternative-community gatherings that had influenced High Times editor Steven Hager and the broader cannabis counterculture.
Music remained a major component as well. Historical Cup records list Jefferson Starship, Kottonmouth Kings and Muck Sticky among the featured performers, while the broader schedule included additional live music and late-night parties. The mixture of veteran psychedelic-rock figures, cannabis-oriented hip-hop and underground performers illustrates the Cup’s unusual generational range. It was simultaneously celebrating the 1960s counterculture and creating a platform for artists associated with early-2000s marijuana culture.
2006 High Times Cannabis Cup Winners in All Documented Categories
The principal 2006 event archive preserves eight competitive categories: overall Cannabis Cup, Indica, Sativa, Import Hash, Dutch Hash, Product, Glass and Best Booth.
| 2006 Category | 1st Place | 2nd Place | 3rd Place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cannabis Cup / Overall | Arjan’s Ultra Haze #1 — Green House | G13 Haze — Barney’s | Martian Mean Green — Grey Area |
| Indica Cup | Big Buddha Cheese — Big Buddha Seeds | Fruity Thai — Ceres Seeds | Night Shade — Barney’s |
| Sativa Cup | Mako Haze — Kiwi Seeds | Opium — Paradise Seeds | Blue Cheese — Big Buddha Seeds |
| Import Hash Cup | Caramella Cream — Barney’s | Caramello Royal — Green House | Rifman’s Noor — De Dampkring |
| Dutch Hash / Nederhash Cup | Barney Rubble — Barney’s | Waterworks — De Dampkring | Master Kush Isolator — Green House |
| Product Cup | Super Vapezilla — Wicked Roots | Portable Vortex Gravity Bong — Gravity Vortex | Aleda Papers — Aleda |
| Glass Cup | Lux Glass / DNA | Green Devil | ROOR |
| Best Booth / Expo | Barney’s Farm | Green House | Wicked Roots |
| Freedom Fighter of the Year* | Richard Lee | — | — |
| Counterculture Hall of Fame* | Barry “Plunker” Adams and Garrick Beck | — | — |
*These were activist and cultural honors rather than cannabis-product competitions.
There are two archival complications worth acknowledging. Some later winner lists insert an entry called “Sexpot Holland” from Holland Home Brew ahead of the imported-hash podium, effectively turning Caramella Cream into second place. The event-specific 2006 archive, contemporary result compilations and several independent databases instead agree that Caramella Cream was the Import Hash winner, followed by Caramello Royal and Rifman’s Noor, so that order is used here. The Glass Cup record is also poorly formatted in the event archive; multiple later compilations preserve the podium as Lux Glass/DNA first, Green Devil second and ROOR third.
Arjan’s Ultra Haze #1 Wins the Overall Cannabis Cup
The biggest trophy went to Arjan’s Ultra Haze #1, bringing Green House back to first place after Barney’s Willie Nelson championship in 2005. Green House’s current breeding archive identifies the cultivar as Neville’s Haze × Cambodian × Laos and confirms its first-place 2006 High Times Cannabis Cup finish. It was a strongly sativa-oriented plant with a much longer flowering period than many commercial hybrids, showing that Amsterdam judges were still willing to reward demanding tropical and Haze genetics when the finished flower justified the effort.
The victory also completed a progression that had begun a year earlier. An Arjan’s Ultra Haze entry finished second overall in 2005, behind Barney’s Willie Nelson, before Green House returned with the winning Ultra Haze in 2006. Green House had already accumulated landmark championships with White Widow, Super Silver Haze and Hawaiian Snow, but Arjan’s Ultra Haze showed that the company could continue producing Cup-winning long-flowering sativas even as Kush, Cheese and other genetic families were becoming more prominent.
G13 Haze Gives Barney’s Another Podium Finish
Barney’s G13 Haze finished second overall, keeping the coffeeshop near the top of the competition despite losing its 2005 championship. Barney’s had won the overall Cannabis Cup four times in the previous five years—with Sweet Tooth, Morning Glory, Amnesia Haze and Willie Nelson—and G13 Haze demonstrated that its run was far from finished. One year later, G13 Haze would return and win the 2007 overall Cannabis Cup, making its 2006 runner-up performance the first stage of another successful multi-year campaign.
Grey Area completed the podium with Martian Mean Green, continuing that cultivar’s rapid ascent. DNA Genetics had won the 2005 Sativa Cup with Martian Mean Green; in 2006, flower presented through Grey Area moved into third place in the main overall competition. The progression from seed-company Sativa champion to overall coffeeshop podium demonstrated how a Cup victory could immediately elevate genetics throughout the Amsterdam market.
Big Buddha Cheese Changes the Future of Cheese Genetics
The Indica Cup victory for Big Buddha Cheese became one of the most culturally important results of 2006. The story began with the original UK Cheese clone, generally traced to an exceptional Skunk #1 phenotype selected in Britain around 1988–1989. The clone circulated through the British underground grow community for years before breeder Milo, known as Big Buddha, obtained it and crossed it with an Afghani male to create a reproducible seed line while retaining the extraordinarily pungent aroma that made the original famous.
Big Buddha later recalled realizing during the Cup that the judges had already recognized the distinctive flower from their anonymous samples. According to an account of his recollections, Jack Herer and Ed Rosenthal recognized the unusually pungent entry, and other breeders told him they believed he was going to win. When Big Buddha Cheese was announced as the Indica champion, the victory transformed both the breeder and the Cheese name internationally. What had largely been a British clone-only underground phenomenon now had a High Times trophy and a commercial seed line capable of reaching growers worldwide.
The rest of the Indica podium was unusually diverse. Fruity Thai from Ceres Seeds finished second, while Barney’s Night Shade placed third. The category labels of this era should not always be interpreted through modern assumptions about botanical ancestry; “Indica” and “Sativa” were competition classifications shaped by breeder presentation and judging conventions rather than rigorous genomic taxonomy.
Mako Haze Wins the Sativa Cup
The Sativa Cup went to Mako Haze from Kiwi Seeds, followed by Paradise Seeds’ Opium and Big Buddha Seeds’ Blue Cheese. Independent High Times winner databases consistently preserve the same order. Mako Haze’s victory kept Haze genetics at the center of Amsterdam competition only weeks after Arjan’s Ultra Haze won the overall championship. In an era when shorter flowering cultivars were increasingly commercially attractive, both major results demonstrated that experienced judges still valued the distinctive effects and aromatic character associated with long-flowering sativa lines.
Big Buddha Seeds’ third-place finish with Blue Cheese made the company’s 2006 performance especially impressive. It had already won Indica outright with Big Buddha Cheese, then added a Sativa podium placement. Blue Cheese would grow into another major commercial name during the following years, combining the unmistakable Cheese identity with fruitier influences and demonstrating how quickly breeders were building entire genetic families around successful cultivars.
Barney’s Dominates the Hash Categories
Although Barney’s did not win the overall flower competition, it dominated concentrates. Caramella Cream won the Import Hash Cup ahead of Green House’s Caramello Royal and De Dampkring’s Rifman’s Noor. Remarkably, Caramella Cream had already won the same category in 2004 and 2005, giving the product a sustained run at the top of Amsterdam hash competition.
Barney’s then captured the Dutch Hash Cup with Barney Rubble, ahead of De Dampkring’s Waterworks and Green House’s Master Kush Isolator. The two divisions represented different branches of hash culture. Imported hash retained Amsterdam’s long-standing links to traditional resin-producing regions, while Nederhash increasingly relied on locally grown cannabis and modern trichome-separation methods. Barney’s ability to win in both categories showed how broadly the coffeeshop had developed its concentrate program.
Super Vapezilla Wins as Vaporization Keeps Expanding
The Product Cup went to Wicked Roots’ Super Vapezilla, followed by the Portable Vortex Gravity Bong and Aleda rolling papers. Vaporization had moved from an experimental corner of Cup culture into a recurring source of award-winning products. VapeZilla had already won the 2005 Product Cup, and the upgraded Super Vapezilla repeated the feat in 2006.
The podium captures a transitional period in consumption technology. Traditional rolling papers still had a place, but high-end vaporizers and engineered smoking devices were becoming increasingly sophisticated. The Product Cup therefore documented an industry expanding well beyond seeds and flower. Cannabis consumers were beginning to expect purpose-designed equipment for temperature control, filtration and efficient consumption—trends that would accelerate dramatically during the following decade.
Lux Glass and the Growth of Functional Glass Art
The surviving historical compilations identify Lux Glass working with DNA as the 2006 Glass Cup winner, followed by Green Devil and ROOR. Contemporary postings immediately after the Cup also identify Lux Glass/DNA at the top, although the original event table is badly formatted and does not preserve the individual product names clearly. That archival problem makes it preferable to list the companies rather than invent specific piece names.
Glass had by this point developed into one of the Cup’s most technically creative categories. Artists and manufacturers were competing not simply on decoration but on increasingly elaborate filtration, joint design, airflow and durability. The presence of companies such as Green Devil and ROOR alongside Lux reflected the international growth of functional glass culture and its transition from underground craft to recognizable cannabis industry.
Barney’s Wins Best Booth
The Best Booth award went to Barney’s Farm, with Green House second and Wicked Roots third. The result gave Barney’s victories in Import Hash, Dutch Hash and Expo presentation despite missing the overall flower trophy. It also demonstrated how much the Cannabis Cup had evolved into a branding competition. By the middle of the 2000s, companies were judged not simply for genetics but for the experiences they created at their expo spaces.
That commercial dimension had become impossible to separate from Cup culture. Seed companies were competing for international customers, coffeeshops were attracting cannabis tourists, and accessory manufacturers were launching products before a global audience. A visually memorable booth could generate nearly as much attention as a secondary strain trophy, making expo design another part of the increasingly professional cannabis marketplace.
Richard Lee Named Freedom Fighter of the Year
The 2006 Freedom Fighter of the Year award went to Richard Lee, a California cannabis activist and entrepreneur who had already founded the Bulldog Coffeeshop and Café Blue Sky in Oakland. Lee would soon become even more influential: he later founded Oaksterdam University and became one of the primary organizers behind California’s 2010 Proposition 19 legalization campaign. High Times’ historical Freedom Fighter archive specifically records Lee as the recipient at the 19th Cannabis Cup.
His selection reflected the continuing importance of California to the international reform movement. Ten years had passed since Proposition 215 established the state’s medical-marijuana protections, and Oakland was emerging as one of America’s most important centers of regulated cannabis activity. The Amsterdam Cannabis Cup gave activists working under much harsher American federal laws an opportunity to participate openly in a culture that treated cannabis cultivation and retailing as legitimate public activities.
Barry “Plunker” Adams and Garrick Beck Enter the Hall of Fame
The Counterculture Hall of Fame inducted Barry “Plunker” Adams and Garrick Beck, both closely associated with the Rainbow Family. Beck had already played an important role in Cannabis Cup history; he directed ceremonies during earlier Cups and was connected to the ritual and theatrical elements that helped transform the event from an awards contest into a genuine counterculture gathering. The 1995 Cup, built around the Rainbow Family theme, had been an especially important precedent.
Their induction continued the Hall of Fame’s effort to recognize the cultural movements surrounding cannabis rather than limiting itself to breeders and legalization campaigners. Previous honorees had included Bob Marley, Louis Armstrong, Beat Generation writers, Ina May Gaskin, Paul Krassner, Jack Herer, Stephen Gaskin and John Trudell. Adams and Beck represented the communal festival culture that connected many of those traditions.
Jack Herer, Ed Rosenthal and the Cup’s Old Guard
Although the 2006 event increasingly showcased a younger generation of breeders and companies, figures from the Cup’s earliest history were still highly visible. Big Buddha’s recollection of Jack Herer and Ed Rosenthal recognizing his Cheese entry is especially symbolic. Rosenthal had been involved around the competition from its earliest era, while Herer had become one of the legalization movement’s most recognizable activists and had entered the Counterculture Hall of Fame in 2003.
Their presence alongside companies such as Big Buddha Seeds, DNA Genetics and Kiwi Seeds illustrated the generational transition underway. The original Cannabis Cup had been created when Dutch seed breeding was a tiny underground industry. By 2006, new breeders could arrive with a distinctive cultivar, win a category in front of an international audience and rapidly build a global seed brand.
The World’s Largest Joint Attempt
One of the more colorful stories associated with the 2006 Cup was an attempt to create a record-sized joint. The Cup schedule advertised a Guinness World Records attempt during the T.H. Seeds Hemp Fashion event, while a later High Times account remembered smoking what it described as the previous “world’s largest joint” at the 2006 Amsterdam Cannabis Cup. The stunt embodied the larger-than-life promotional atmosphere that had increasingly become part of Cup week.
Such spectacles were far removed from the private strain judging that started the Cup in 1988, but they also reflected how internationally visible the event had become. High Times was no longer producing only a competition; it was creating stories, imagery and experiences intended to travel through magazines, videos and the rapidly expanding online cannabis community.
Legacy of the 2006 High Times Cannabis Cup
The 2006 High Times Cannabis Cup is best remembered for two dramatically different genetic stories. Arjan’s Ultra Haze #1 represented the refinement of the old Amsterdam Haze tradition, combining Neville’s Haze with Cambodian and Laotian material and giving Green House another overall championship. Big Buddha Cheese, by contrast, transformed a famous British underground clone into an internationally recognized seed family when it won the Indica Cup. Mako Haze kept the Sativa trophy in Haze territory, while Martian Mean Green and G13 Haze pointed directly toward cultivars that would remain competitive in the following year.
Beyond flower, Barney’s swept the two hash categories and Best Booth, Super Vapezilla continued the rise of vaporization, and functional glass became increasingly professional. Richard Lee represented the next phase of American legalization activism, while Barry “Plunker” Adams and Garrick Beck connected the Cup to the Rainbow Family and older counterculture traditions. The 19th Cup therefore captured Amsterdam cannabis culture at a moment of generational overlap: classic Haze genetics and veteran activists remained influential, but Cheese, DNA Genetics, advanced vaporizers and increasingly international seed companies were already pointing toward the cannabis world of the late 2000s.
