Florida’s annual python roundup delivered again. Wildlife officials announced that 907 participants from 30 states, plus Canada and Vietnam, removed 280 invasive Burmese pythons from South Florida during the 10-day 2026 Florida Python Challenge, held July 10-19 across eight official competition locations.
Tom Rahill claimed the $10,000 Ultimate Grand Prize after removing 96 pythons, all taken from Everglades National Park, which returned this year as an official competition partner. The longest snake of the event, a 16-foot-5-inch python, was hauled out of the park by Rahm Levinson.
Inside the Media Day
The South Florida Water Management District, which co-hosts the challenge with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, streamed its 2026 Python Challenge media day on its official channel in May, the event featured in the video above. District and state officials used the airboat-flanked event on the edge of the Everglades to open registration, demonstrate safe capture techniques and make the pitch that ordinary Floridians, with training, can join one of the country’s most unusual conservation competitions.
The stakes go well beyond prize money. Burmese pythons, an invasive apex predator with no natural enemies in Florida, prey on the native mammals, birds and reptiles the Everglades ecosystem depends on. Challenge events have now removed more than 1,600 pythons since the competition began, while paid contractor programs run by the FWC and the water management district have eliminated more than 19,000 snakes since 2017.
Scientists acknowledge the challenge alone will not eradicate a python population estimated in the tens of thousands, but they credit the annual event with recruiting new hunters, generating field data and keeping public attention fixed on the Everglades’ most notorious invader. Registration details for next year’s event will be posted by the FWC, and, as this year’s tally of international competitors shows, python hunting has become a draw well beyond state lines.
