On the first Sunday of October, the lawn outside Anoka City Hall fills with the strangest kind of autumn arithmetic: gourds that tip the scales at more than a small car, scarecrows stuffed into every conceivable costume, and a row of pumpkins being gutted and carved in front of a crowd. The Great Pumpkin Expo, running from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on October 4, 2026, is three contests in one, and it is free to walk into.
The event is the opening act of Anoka's Halloween season, a month-long run of parades, medallion hunts, house-decorating contests, and a Grande Day Parade that has made this small city on the Rum River famous far beyond Minnesota. But the Expo is not merely a warm-up. It is a genuine competition, and the pumpkin weigh-off at its center is a sanctioned stop on a worldwide circuit.
The weigh-off is certified by the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth, the governing body that standardizes how giant pumpkins are grown, weighed, and judged across dozens of sites around the globe. That sanctioning matters. It means the numbers recorded on the Anoka scale are comparable to those recorded everywhere else, and it means the growers who haul their entries in on trailers are chasing records that count. The prize money reflects the seriousness: $1,500 for first place, $750 for second, $500 for third, and smaller awards down through tenth, plus a $50 field pumpkin award and $100 for the Howard Dill Award, given to the prettiest pumpkin in the bunch.
That last award carries a piece of giant-pumpkin history. Howard Dill was a Nova Scotia farmer who spent decades crossbreeding pumpkins in pursuit of size, and in 1979 he patented the seeds he had developed as Dill's Atlantic Giant. Almost every record-breaking pumpkin grown since descends from his work. The category name "Atlantic Giant" on the Anoka awards list is a direct nod to him, and the prettiest-pumpkin prize is named in his honor.
Anoka has a particular claim on the giant-pumpkin world, because one of its own is among the most accomplished growers alive. Travis Gienger, a horticulture teacher at Anoka Technical College, set a Guinness World Record in 2023 when his entry weighed 2,749 pounds at the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off in Half Moon Bay, California. The pumpkin was so large that news reports estimated it could yield at least 687 pies. Gienger has won that California contest multiple times, and in 2024 he returned with a 2,471-pound gourd he had named "Rudy," after the underdog football player, following a season in which storms and a cracked vine nearly ended his chances. The city of Anoka proclaimed October 28, 2023, as Travis Gienger Day. His world record has since been surpassed, but the fact that a teacher from a Minnesota river town sits at the top of this peculiar sport is part of why the Anoka weigh-off draws the entries it does.
Alongside the heavyweights, the Expo runs two contests that anyone can enter. The scarecrow contest is open to all ages, and the pumpkin carving and decorating competition is split into adult and junior divisions, with a People's Choice Award decided by a medal. Entries must be dropped off between 9 and 10:30 a.m., and growers are directed to park along the southbound side of Second Avenue starting at Jackson Street, where event staff guide them through the process. Cleanup and pickup of all entries runs from 3 to 5 p.m. Beyond the contests, the day brings food trucks, merchandise vendors, and a classic car expo.
What gives the Expo its texture is the town it happens in. Anoka is believed to be the first city in the United States to stage a Halloween celebration specifically to divert its young people from pranks. As the local lore goes, residents woke one morning to find cows roaming Main Street, windows soaped, and outhouses tipped over, and decided something had to be done. In 1920, civic leaders including George Green proposed a giant celebration, and the idea was adopted by the Anoka Commercial Club and the Kiwanis Club. A Halloween committee formed that September, and more than a thousand schoolchildren spent weeks making costumes. The first celebration featured a parade with local and neighboring bands, drum corps, police and fire departments, and the National Guard, followed by hundreds of bags of popcorn, candy, and peanuts for the children who marched, and a bonfire at Bridge Square. Anoka has held a Halloween celebration every year since, pausing only in 1942 and 1943 during World War II. The city trademarked its status as the Halloween Capital of the World, and the Anoka History Center Museum still displays a collection of Halloween buttons and medallions dating to 1940, once used as tickets to the Pumpkin Bowl, the high school football game dedicated to the holiday.
Set against that century-long backdrop, the Great Pumpkin Expo reads less like a novelty and more like the latest chapter in a civic habit. The city that invented a Halloween celebration to keep its kids out of trouble now hosts a sanctioned stop on an international growing circuit, where a local teacher once held the world record and where, for one free afternoon, the pumpkins are the main attraction. The Expo kicks off the 2026 festival season, with the Grande Day Parade to follow on October 24. But on October 4, the action is all at City Hall: scales, saws, straw, and a crowd waiting to see how much a pumpkin can possibly weigh.