The 2026 Montana High Times Cannabis Cup marked a new chapter for both Montana cannabis and one of the industry’s oldest competitions. Held on September 5, 2026, at The Pub Station in Billings, it was the first High Times Cannabis Cup staged in Montana. More than 80 Montana producers entered products spanning flower, pre-rolls, concentrates, vape cartridges and edibles, while the awards show combined the competition with live music, glassblowing, vendors and other festival events. High Times ultimately awarded 33 medals across 11 categories to 23 brands.
The results offered a revealing snapshot of Montana’s developing adult-use market. Wild Sky Farms won both Hybrid and Indica Flower, while Funk Farm became the most broadly decorated competitor, placing in all three flower divisions and earning an additional medal in solventless vape cartridges. Glacier Solventless, Montana Kush, Sacred Sun Farms, Stokes, Grizzly Pine, Holistic Releaf by Design and several other Montana operators captured category wins of their own. Perhaps the clearest trend, however, was the growing importance of solventless extraction: High Times noted that three of the six medals awarded across the two edible categories went to products explicitly marketed around solventless inputs.
The Cannabis Cup Finally Comes to Montana
The arrival of the Cannabis Cup in Montana connected a relatively young recreational market with a competition whose history stretches back to Amsterdam in 1988. For decades, the High Times Cannabis Cup evolved from a small breeder competition into an international cannabis institution. In 2020, when the pandemic disrupted large public events, High Times developed the People’s Choice format, allowing consumers to buy judging kits and evaluate entries at home. That model became central to the modern Cup: rather than relying exclusively on a small expert panel, hundreds or thousands of ordinary cannabis consumers can collectively determine the winners.
Montana’s event was also part of a broader High Times revival. RAW Rolling Papers founder Josh Kesselman, together with longtime High Times figure Matt Stang, acquired the High Times brand, Cannabis Cup and related assets in 2025 and began rebuilding the magazine and competition circuit. Kesselman appeared personally at the Montana awards show, making the Billings event one of the clearest demonstrations that the relaunched Cannabis Cup would not be limited to the country’s largest coastal cannabis markets.
Montana’s Long Road From Medical Marijuana to a Statewide Cup
Montana had a cannabis history long before recreational sales began. Voters approved Initiative 148 in 2004, establishing a medical marijuana program. State legislative records show that the program was significantly restricted through Senate Bill 423 in 2011, loosened again following Initiative 182 in 2016, and eventually joined by adult-use legalization when voters approved Initiative 190 in 2020. The 2021 Legislature then enacted House Bill 701 to implement the recreational program and transfer regulation to the Montana Department of Revenue.
Adult-use sales officially began on January 1, 2022. That timing makes the 2026 Cannabis Cup significant: Montana had only been operating a recreational retail market for roughly four and a half years when High Times arrived in Billings. The Cup was therefore not evaluating a decades-old legal industry like California’s medical market or Amsterdam’s coffeeshop culture. It was documenting a comparatively young regulated market that had already developed enough cultivation, extraction and manufacturing diversity to support 11 distinct competition categories.
Tara Holloway and the Push to Bring High Times to Big Sky Country
Local reporting credits longtime Montana cannabis advocate Tara Holloway with helping bring the competition to the state. Holloway told the Whitefish Pilot that she had long imagined how significant it would be for Montana to host a High Times Cannabis Cup and eventually contacted the organization directly to make the case. High Times agreed, and Billings was selected for Montana’s inaugural event. The same report counted more than 80 Montana marijuana producers, including operators from the Flathead Valley, competing across the Cup’s 11 categories.
That origin matters because the Montana Cup was not simply another stop dropped into the national schedule. It emerged partly through advocacy from within Montana’s own cannabis community. The resulting event placed local cultivators and manufacturers beside the High Times name without requiring them to travel to California, New York, Michigan or one of the other states more commonly associated with large cannabis competitions.
How the 2026 Montana Cannabis Cup Was Judged
The 2026 competition used the High Times People’s Choice format. Registered consumers purchased official judging kits, evaluated the products themselves and submitted scores. High Times describes the modern system as community judging rather than a closed panel of industry professionals, while Montana coverage says judges considered qualities including aesthetics, aroma, taste and effects before voting online.
That structure makes the Montana results especially useful as a measure of consumer preference. A first-place finish did not represent the opinion of only a handful of breeders or celebrity judges; it emerged from a much broader judging pool sampling the actual products available in Montana’s regulated market. It also explains why the 2026 categories ranged well beyond flower. Pre-rolls, solvent and solventless concentrates, vape cartridges and multiple edible formats now represent substantial parts of how legal-market consumers experience cannabis.
Notable Guests and Performers at the 2026 Montana Cannabis Cup
The September 5 awards show was designed as much like a cannabis festival as a conventional awards ceremony. Bumpin Uglies headlined the music program, with Montana artist Austin Martin also performing. The Cannabis Cup Band appeared with special guest Josh David Barrett of The Wailers, providing an appropriate musical link to the reggae tradition that has been intertwined with High Times culture for decades. High Times publisher and RAW founder Josh Kesselman was also billed for a special appearance.
Guests could also move through cannabis-brand activations, local vendors and food trucks, while the venue offered live glassblowing, custom hat burning, a mechanical bison and a climbing wall. VIP ticket holders received separate lounge and viewing areas. Those features reinforced a lesson High Times learned during the Amsterdam era: the Cannabis Cup works best when the competition is embedded inside a broader cultural event rather than treated as nothing more than an awards presentation.
2026 Montana High Times Cannabis Cup Winners in All Categories
| Category | 1st Place | 2nd Place | 3rd Place |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hybrid Flower | Wild Sky Farms — Purple Push Pop | Funk Farm — Apples & Bananas | Soultonix — Super Buff Cherry |
| Indica Flower | Wild Sky Farms — Baby Yodaz | Funk Farm — Permanent Marker | Bloominati — Crimson Zkittles |
| Sativa Flower | Funk Farm — Ancient Blue Dream | Legends Cannabis — Green Crack | Collective Elevation — Golden Goat |
| Pre-Rolls | Sacred Sun Farms — DJ Shorts Original Blueberry | High Mountain — Head Wreck | Holistic Releaf by Design — Donny Burger |
| Infused Pre-Rolls | Stokes — Diamond Moon Rocket Cheesecake | Bloom Montana – The Clear — Twax (Blueberry) | Fused — Strawberry Ice Cream |
| Solvent Concentrates | Montana Kush — Member Berry | Sacred Sun Farms — Blue Octane | Uncle Bucks — Rick Pickle |
| Solventless Concentrates | Glacier Solventless — Z Head #4 Private Reserve | Wild Sky Farms — Rainbow Chip | Cannabis Counter — Lemon Fatman |
| Solvent Vape Pens & Cartridges | Grizzly Pine — Dime Huckleberry Jam | Nimbus — Kiwi Dragon | Viking Vapes — Asgardian Apple |
| Solventless Vape Pens & Cartridges | Groove Solventless — Rainbow Push Pop | Montana Kush — The Fizz | Funk Farm — The Vision |
| Edibles | Holistic Releaf by Design — Dark Sea Salt Caramel Truffle | Grizzly Pine — Bevvies x Groove Solventless Huckle Cherry Drink | SensiCare — Solventless Caramels |
| Edibles – Gummies | Smokiez Edibles — Sour Watermelon | Stokes — Peach Solventless | Bloom Montana – Wana — Fast Acting-Peach Bellini |
Wild Sky Farms Takes Two of the Three Flower Championships
Wild Sky Farms produced the strongest first-place performance in flower, winning Hybrid with Purple Push Pop and Indica with Baby Yodaz. No other producer won two flower divisions. The operation also finished second in Solventless Concentrates with Rainbow Chip, giving Wild Sky three medals in three substantially different product contexts.
Winning both Hybrid and Indica is significant because flower remains the historical center of the Cannabis Cup. The original competitions were built around judging finished cannabis flowers, long before separate vape, gummy and concentrate categories existed. In Montana, Wild Sky’s results showed that classic flower quality remained capable of defining a brand even in a market increasingly fragmented among new consumption formats.
Funk Farm Becomes the Cup’s Most Consistent Competitor
If Wild Sky Farms owned the most flower gold medals, Funk Farm produced the deepest overall result sheet. Ancient Blue Dream won Sativa Flower, Apples & Bananas placed second in Hybrid, and Permanent Marker finished second in Indica. Funk Farm therefore medaled in every flower division, something no other Montana competitor achieved. Its solventless vape entry, The Vision, added a third-place finish, bringing the brand to four medals—the most of any competitor at the Cup, according to High Times.
The three flower results also spanned very different genetic identities. Apples & Bananas represents the modern dessert and fruit-driven hybrid market, Permanent Marker reflects the contemporary high-potency boutique era, while Ancient Blue Dream invokes one of the most enduring names in modern cannabis. Taken together, the placements suggest that Funk Farm’s strength was not tied to a single strain style.
Classic Genetics Still Matter
Several flower and pre-roll results carried names that reach well beyond the current trend cycle. Green Crack, entered by Legends Cannabis, took second in Sativa, while Collective Elevation’s Golden Goat finished third. Sacred Sun Farms went further back in cannabis breeding history by winning the standard Pre-Roll category with DJ Shorts Original Blueberry, a name closely associated with DJ Short’s influential Blueberry breeding work.
That mixture of old and new is one of the more interesting characteristics of the Montana results. The podiums included fashionable names such as Permanent Marker and Super Buff Cherry alongside Green Crack, Golden Goat and Blueberry—cultivars or families whose reputations were established years or even decades earlier. Montana consumers were not simply rewarding whichever names were newest.
Pre-Rolls Become a Competition of Their Own
Sacred Sun Farms won the conventional Pre-Roll category with DJ Shorts Original Blueberry, ahead of High Mountain’s Head Wreck and Holistic Releaf by Design’s Donny Burger. Sacred Sun also placed second in Solvent Concentrates with Blue Octane, giving the company medals in both prepared flower and extraction.
The Infused Pre-Roll division told a more modern story. Stokes won with Diamond Moon Rocket Cheesecake, followed by Bloom Montana – The Clear’s Blueberry Twax and Fused’s Strawberry Ice Cream. Creating a separate category for infused products illustrates how far pre-rolls have evolved from simple convenience joints. The category now encompasses engineered products combining flower with concentrates and other preparations, requiring a different judging framework from traditional pre-rolls.
Montana’s Concentrate Market Splits Between Solvent and Solventless
Montana Kush won Solvent Concentrates with Member Berry, followed by Sacred Sun Farms’ Blue Octane and Uncle Bucks’ Rick Pickle. In the separate solventless competition, Glacier Solventless won with Z Head #4 Private Reserve, Wild Sky Farms took second with Rainbow Chip and Cannabis Counter placed third with Lemon Fatman.
The decision to maintain distinct solvent and solventless categories reflects one of the major developments in contemporary cannabis competition. Solventless hash and rosin are no longer treated as niche variations of concentrate production; they have become a major consumer category with their own specialists, techniques and quality expectations. Glacier Solventless winning a dedicated division under its own extraction-focused brand name is an especially clear example of that change.
Solventless Moves Beyond the Hash Category
Perhaps the strongest theme identified by High Times itself was that solventless production had spread well beyond concentrates. Groove Solventless won the solventless vape division with Rainbow Push Pop. Funk Farm’s The Vision and Montana Kush’s The Fizz completed the podium. In traditional solvent-based vape products, meanwhile, Grizzly Pine won with Dime Huckleberry Jam, followed by Nimbus’ Kiwi Dragon and Viking Vapes’ Asgardian Apple.
But solventless also appeared prominently in edible winners. The second-place Huckle Cherry Drink from Grizzly Pine was produced in collaboration with Groove Solventless, SensiCare placed with Solventless Caramels, and Stokes took second in Gummies with Peach Solventless. High Times specifically highlighted that three of the six edible and gummy medals promoted the extraction method as part of the product identity. What once functioned mainly as hash terminology has become a consumer-facing quality signal across beverages, candy and vapes.
Holistic Releaf and Smokiez Lead the Edible Categories
Holistic Releaf by Design won the general Edibles category with a Dark Sea Salt Caramel Truffle. Grizzly Pine’s Huckle Cherry Drink collaboration placed second, while SensiCare’s Solventless Caramels finished third. Holistic Releaf also placed third in traditional Pre-Rolls with Donny Burger, making it one of several companies able to medal across substantially different product formats.
In Gummies, Smokiez Edibles won with Sour Watermelon, followed by Stokes’ Peach Solventless and Bloom Montana – Wana’s Fast Acting-Peach Bellini. The existence of a separate gummy category is itself evidence of how important gummies have become in legal cannabis retail. Rather than forcing chocolates, beverages, caramels and gummies into one enormous edible division, High Times separated gummies so products with very different formulation and sensory expectations could be compared more meaningfully.
Twenty-Three Winning Brands Show a Market Without One Dominant Company
The distribution of the awards may be the most encouraging aspect of the results for Montana’s industry. Twenty-three brands shared 33 medals, meaning the competition did not collapse into trophies for one or two vertically integrated operators. Funk Farm led with four medals, Wild Sky Farms earned three, while several companies—including Montana Kush, Sacred Sun Farms, Stokes, Grizzly Pine, Holistic Releaf by Design and Bloom Montana—appeared on more than one podium.
That breadth suggests a competitive market with strength spread across cultivation, extraction and manufacturing. Some brands excelled in flower, others in concentrates or vapes, and others in edibles. The Cup therefore functioned less as a declaration that one Montana company was “best” than as a map of where different operators were excelling in 2026.
Why the 2026 Montana Cannabis Cup Matters
The first Montana High Times Cannabis Cup arrived at a particularly interesting moment. Montana voters had supported medical cannabis more than two decades earlier and recreational legalization six years before the Cup, yet adult-use retail itself was only a few years old. Bringing High Times to Billings gave that developing market a nationally recognizable competition and allowed Montana consumers—not visiting celebrity judges—to determine the winners through the People’s Choice system.
The event also represented the changing identity of the Cannabis Cup itself. The Amsterdam Cups once revolved almost entirely around elite flower and hash; Montana awarded separate trophies for infused pre-rolls, two kinds of concentrates, two kinds of vapes and two edible divisions. Wild Sky Farms’ double flower victory preserved the Cup’s cultivation roots, Funk Farm’s four-medal showing demonstrated the depth of Montana flower, and the spread of solventless products showed where contemporary consumer demand is moving. From Bumpin Uglies and Josh David Barrett onstage to Josh Kesselman representing the newly revived High Times, the Billings event combined the competition’s old festival character with a modern state-regulated market. Montana’s first Cup was therefore more than an awards show—it was a snapshot of a cannabis industry entering a more mature phase while still developing its own Big Sky identity.
