Earlier this week, California’s largest and longest-running cannabis competition and celebration – the Emerald Cup – announced a last call for entries into the 2023 Competition and also announced the date and venue for the highly anticipated 19th Annual Emerald Cup Awards.
If spending a dope night on the waterfront overlooking the Bay and the San Francisco skyline, watching winners accept their Emerald Cup Awards, and puffing tough with thousands of fellow canna-sseurs sounds like a dream to you, perhaps you can make it a dream come true.
The 19th Annual Emerald Cup Awards show has set its roots for the first time in Cali’s Bay Area, announcing the event will take place on Saturday, May 13th, 2023 at the magnificent Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, CA.
Want a ticket? Yeah, we bet you do. The tricky part is that Prop64 didn’t just wreck the cannabis market in Cali, it wrecked the cannabis events market here as well, and the Emerald Cup has showcased some impressive survival skills just to make it to 2023. Trying to throw a large-scale, consumption-friendly event in a compliant fashion has proven to be a massive challenge, and it comes with trade-offs. In this case, the Cup cannot sell tickets.
So how do you get into the Emerald Cup Awards this year?
The three clearest paths to the party are:
- Enter the Emerald Cup Competition – There is still time to ENTER HERE. The deadline to apply AND submit your product is either Wednesday, March 1st, or Friday, March 3rd, depending on your preferred dropoff location (see below). ALL Emerald Cup competitors will receive an invitation for them plus one guest for the 19th Annual Emerald Cup Awards. There are over four dozen unique categories to compete in, including Personal Use Flower, Rosin, and Topicals for homegrowers and hobbyists.
Intake partners and deadlines:3/1 March and Ash in San Diego3/1 Bread Farms in Los Angeles3/1 Canopy Club in Santa Barbara3/1 Satori/High Grade Distro in McKinleyville3/3 Seed 2 Soul in Cloverdale3/3 Heritage Mendocino in Ukiah
All dropoffs at the locations listed above REQUIRE an appointment which must be set with our team at contest@theemeraldcup.com - Already be an Emerald Cup Judge – Unless you have a time machine or were already selected as a 2023 Emerald Cup Judge, this might not be a useful method… But, if you are a Judge this year, you will also receive an invitation for yourself plus one guest for the ECAs. Want to be an Emerald Cup Judge along with Beard Bros Pharms co-Founder Jeff Levers? Be sure to apply later this year when the Emerald Cup opens that window.
- Become an official sponsor of the 19th Annual Emerald Cup Awards – Maybe you have a kickass brand that operates in the cannabis space but does not fall into one of the Competition categories. There is no better way to get your product into influential hands than by affiliating with an Emerald Cup event. We are not sure how many invites each sponsor will receive, but it will likely be very generous.
For the rest of the folks who’d love to experience the Emerald Cup Awards this year, there may be some giveaways or other opportunities that arise, so be sure to follow @theemeraldcup on IG and sign up for their newsletters.
Emerald Cup Awards in the Bay – It’s About Time!
The Emerald Cup was first held in 2004 in an undisclosed location somewhere in the mountains of the infamous Emerald Triangle. For years it remained a super-anonymous and somewhat sketchy event due mostly to the fact that none of what they were doing at the time was legal, but it sure was trailblazing.
At that same time, countless boxes of Trinity, Humboldt, and Mendo grown weed was being trucked and shipped out of the region to all parts of the country, with a significant amount of it either passing through or landing in the Bay Area.
When the Emerald Cup came down out of those mountains and eventually set roots in the far-more-accessible Santa Rosa, California, a bond began to form between the cannabis community that the Emerald Cup was harvesting, and the Bay Area culture just an hour south across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Last year, in 2022, the Emerald Cup Awards popped up in West Hollywood at the historic Montalban Theater where they just about blew the roof off the joint with well over a thousand attendees all having an amazing experience.
This year it lands in the East Bay and the Craneway Pavilion venue promises to be the dopest destination so far for the Emerald Cup Awards. Attendees can expect a detailed awards ceremony live onstage and there are rumors that it could be live-streamed as well. There is sure to be great music, food, company, and of course, weed.
With hundreds of entries covering the full spectrum of cannabis consumption, the Emerald Cup remains the largest and most diverse cannabis competition in the universe so get in where you fit in!
Enjoy some photos from some of last year’s winners.
