TEXAS PINBALL FESTIVAL 2026

Welcome to the Pinball News coverage of this year’s Texas Pinball Festival.

We are back in Frisco at the Frisco Convention Center and the adjoining Embassy Suites hotel.

We got to Texas on Monday, flying in to Houston so we could visit David van Es and the team at Barrels of Fun, before driving north via Multimorphic’s factory in Round Rock to meet Gerry Stellenberg and the crew.

After a cold start to the week, things are warming up nicely, with temperatures for the show weekend expected to peak at around 37°C (98.6°F).

Wednesday

We arrived in Frisco on Wednesday evening, although the show doesn’t open to the public until Friday afternoon. Even so, set-up in the main hall had begun.

Texas Pinball Festival organiser, Paul McKinney, had made numerous changes to all aspects of the show, from the floor layout to the events schedule.

You can hear him talk about those and his plans for this year’s Texas Pinball Festival in our February Pinball Industry News PINcast, available right now in our PINcasts section.

The theme of this year’s show was ‘dragons’. The event logo was based on a dragon, dragon-themed pinballs have their own section of the show, dragons are on the show merchandise, while dragon sculpts were visible around the venue, as we will see a little later.

A new event, TechDay, ran throughout Wednesday. This allowed machine owners to bring their pinball to the show where an allocated technician would diagnose and, where possible, repair the faults there and then. The machine’s owner was involved in the repairs, so that they could learn the fault-finding and remedial techniques for themselves.

A ticket for TechDay cost $80, while replacement components were charged for at a discounted rate.

Thursday

By Thursday morning the main show hall has begun to fill out, with more machines and stand furniture arriving and the show banners hung from the ceiling.

The loading doors were in constant use and vehicles disgorged their contents before quickly vacating the space to allow the next exhibitor to enter.

The show floor plan was displayed by the entrance, guiding machine owners and vendors to their specific areas.

The show isn’t confined to the main hall though. There are multiple machines and vendors in the corridor outside.

There is another, lesser-seen area for the Texas Pinball Festival, which is located upstairs in the Convention Center. This is where the many pinball tournaments are held. These are run by the Tournament Directors, Elizabeth Dronet, Kevin Stone, Louis Marx and Ken Kemp,

When we visited the room on Thursday around midday, most of the tournament machines were yet to arrive.

In the evening there were a couple of tournaments. The Scrutinizers Tournament was held in the Tournaments Room upstairs, while the Media Mavens Tournament was on the main show floor at the Hanger Pinball stand.

The Scrutinizers Tournament is a warm-up event designed to test the machines used for the upcoming main tournaments to iron out any issues.

The winner of this was Garrett Shahan. Randy Nelson was in second place, Jack Revnew was third and Austin Trent fourth.

Downstairs, the Media Maven tournament brought together seventeen media creators who played a single game in groups of four (one group of three), with lowest top two scorers getting a strike. When a player had amassed two strikes they were out.

The eventual top three were Clark McCoy in first place, Neil McRae in second, and Jamie Burchell in third.

That brought Thursday’s events to a close.

Friday

The show opens to the public at 4pm, but TPF events start much earlier, with tournaments and seminars beginning at midday.

In the corridor and in the main hall, work continued to set up stands and machines.

At the new show entrance, this year’s new-in-box grand prize in the raffle was on display.

Meanwhile, the wrapped model we showed you earlier was unveiled and rapidly became a focal point for selfies and videos, such as this one:

Spooky Pinball’s stand is visible from across the show floor thanks to one larger-than-life character.

Having only announced their latest title on Wednesday, Turner Pinball brough both models of Yukon Yeti to the show.

Moving back outside the hall, the new Seminars Room is a little smaller but probably a better size for the majority of seminar audiences.

All the seminars are streamed live on the Texas Pinball Seminars channel on Twitch.

12:00pm – More Than Just Leaderboards on your Leaderboard – Brian Haskell

The first seminar began at midday on Friday, as Brian Haskell demonstrated how to make your own leaderboard and other pinball-related displays using simple, cheap Onn Google TV box and the AbleSign app.

12:30pm – How to Troubleshoot your Pinball Machine-the Advanced Class – Eugene Mosh & Matthew Talley

Following Brian, Eugene Mosh and Matthew Talley took to the floor to continue their educational series teaching game owners and restorers how to repair the most common issues they are likely to encounter.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the Tournament Room, after an hour-long free practice session, the Texas Wizards tournament began with the early qualifying group.

Shortly before the hall opened to the public at 4pm, there was a performance by the Jui Long Lion/Dragon Dance Troupe.

Here’s a section of their preformance.

As the show opened, the merchandise desk also opened, for TPF-branded T-shirts, caps and other items.

Outside the Conference Center, several food trucks and food stands set up during the day to offer a wide variety of hot and cold snacks, drinks and full meals.

Later in the evening there were three more seminars, starting with Jersey Jack Pinball at 7pm.

7:00pm – Jersey Jack Pinball

Jack Guarnieri introduced the seminar before handing over to Eric Meunier who talked about the making of the Harry Potter pinball. They were joined on stage by the games lead mechanical designer, Dan Lachcik who explained some of the technical challenges in the game’s intricate mechanisms.

Next into the Seminars Room were Barrels of Fun.

8:00pm – Barrels of Fun

David and Brian talked about how Barrels of Fun has grown from its inception and the launch of their Labyrinth game, through the making of their Dune title, and up to the announcement and unexpected popularity of their third release, Winchester Mystery House.

The final seminar on Friday talked about the P³ pinball platform from Multimorphic.

9:00pm – Multimorphic

After Gerry introduced the seminar, Kevin took over to ask each of the panelists how they first became aware of the P3, what appealed to them about it, their experiences owning or developing for the platform and what are the most under-appreciated features.

Outside the Seminars Room, the Scoma Jazz Band took to the stage to provide music while guests enjoyed snacks from the adjacent catering stands.

Saturday

As is traditional, Saturday at the Texas Pinball Festival begins early, with the action starting out in the parking lot where the Swap Meet takes place.

Organised by the DFW Pinball & Arcade Club, the Swap Meet’s official start time was pushed forward an hour this year to 7am. In reality though, vendors and buyers all want to get the early bird bargains, turning up an hour earlier. So, we got there at 6am too to find out what was on offer under the parking lot’s lights.

Although several vendors were set up at 6am, quite a few more turned up ahead of the official 7am start. However, we returned to the hotel for breakfast ahead of another busy day at the show.

We’ll take a look at the show floor a little later, but there was a packed seminars schedule on Saturday, beginning at 10:30am with a presentation by American Pinball.

10:00am – American Pinball: Something New

American Pinball’s owner, Bryan Vincent introduced the new American Pinball team and talked about their production plans for original designs and the recently-announced series of ‘reimagined’ Williams/Bally titles.

The first of these ‘reimagined’ titles was announced as Cirqus Voltaire. The game will come in two models – a modernised remake of the original, and the reimagined version which will be mainly the same gameplay as the original, but with new artwork, sculpts, rules, animations and sounds.

11:00am – Owning your first pinball machine – Imoto Harney & Craig Hassell

Imoto from Marco Specialties and Craig from Fun! Superstore described the basic steps a new pinball machine owner should take to check and maintain their new purchase, looking at both brand new models and older titles.

The technical side of pinball ownership continued into the next seminar.

12:00pm – Ask Us Anything! – Pinball Tech Q&A

In this seminar, audience members were invited to relate any technical problems they are having, or have had, with their machines, and the panel would use their best problem-solving skills to try to diagnose the issue and suggest ways to repair it.

From repairs to enhancements, as the next seminar focused on creating add-ons to existing games.

1:00pm – How to Easily Add Interactive Light Shows, Servo Motors, Coils and More to your Pinball Machine with the Pinnunciator – Brad Oldham

Brad is from Evolution Mods and in this seminar he described how the company’s system allows you to create mods which can read switch, light or solenoid signals and use those to control add-on lighting effects or power solenoid- or motor-driven features.

From creating mods to building entire games, as the homebrew community took to the stage to be interviewed by Aaron Davis.

1:30pm – Making Pinball, Making Friends – Aaron Davis

Aaron is the co-founder of FAST Pinball, who make a pinball control board system for homebrew builders to use to create their machines. In the seminar, he invited many of the homebrew game makers present at the show to join him on the stage to talk about their creations.

You can check out all the homebrew machines at the show in our photo and video tours below.

At 3pm there was a tutorial on the best way to play Pokémon.

3:00pm – Walk through game play on Pokémon – Steve Bowden, Jack Danger & Tanio Klyce

Software lead, Tanio Klyce, and co-designer, Jack Danger, joined top competitive player, Steve Bowden, to show the tips and tricks to achieveing the most progress and the highest scores on Stern Pinball’s new Pokémon game.

At 4pm, the autograph session was held in the corridor between the Conference Center and the Embassy Suites hotel.

4:00pm – Autograph Session

Let’s see who was seated behind the desk to sign flyers, translites, playfields, backglasses, plastics, or anything else pinball-related.

Next came the regular pinball trivia quiz hosted by Martin from Pinball News and Jonathan from Pinball Magazine.

5:00pm – So You Think You Know Pinball? – Martin Ayub & Jonathan Joosten

The format was a simple one, where anyone can play and try to pick the correct one from two possible answers to a pinball-related question.

Everyone joined in for the first question, but only those who picked the correct answer moved on to the next question. Those who picked the wrong answer were out for the rest of that round.

When only a few players remained, they all drew tickets for one of the many prizes displayed on the table. After that, everyone could re-join the quiz for the start of a new round of questions.

Thanks to the generous donations from sponsors of the quiz – Barrels of Fun Pinball, Multimorphic, Stern Pinball, Jersey Jack Pinball, Pinball Brothers, Spooky Pinball, American Pinball, Turner Pinball, Texas Pinball Festival, Pinball News and Pinball Magazine, there were multiple tables packed with prizes to give away to the lucky winners.

The penultimate seminar of the show saw Todd Tuckey and friends looking back on Todd’s long career in the coin-op business and running his sales and servicing, TNT Amusements.

6:00pm – Todd Tuckey Fireside Chat

Todd looked back at many of the people he has worked with over the years, illustrating them with numerous videos chosen from the more than 2,500 he has created for his YouTube channel.

Before the final seminar, there was more music in the lobby area. This time it was provided by Pinball Rod and The Extra Balls, who put in a lively performance which energised the enthusiastic audience.

The very final seminar for this year came from the team behind Stern Pinball’s latest release.

8:00pm – Stern Pinball Presentation

George Gomez led the presentation, showing the early concepts and ideas for the Pokémon game which was originally designed by Jack Danger, before he took up a new role at the company and George took over design duties.

Software lead, Tanio, talked about the rules design, including how to appeal to both hardened Pokémon players and those unfamiliar with the theme.

Sound design lead, Jerry, described how he found musicians to create the game’s soundtrack alongside working with the licensor to ensure everything was fully on-brand.

It was on Saturday afternoon that we did our photographic tour of the vendor stands at the Texas Pinball Festival. While our video tour was recorded on Sunday morning, we wanted to ensure we got pictures while all the vendors’ stands were still set up.

We start in the corridors outside the main show hall before diving inside.

One of the regular features of the Texas Pinball Festival, which now also appears at Pinball Expo, is the History of Pinball exhibit. This focuses on pre-flipper purely mechanical devices and shows the origins of the modern game, featuring some true mechanical marvels.

We got pictures of all the machines set up for guests to enjoy. Click on any picture to enlarge it.

A growing area of the pinball hobby is the development of homebrew designs. The increased availability of hardware and software solutions now make the prospect of creating a game based around your dream theme within reach.

The Texas Pinball Festival has expanded its homebrew section in response, with multiple games in assorted stages of development displayed by their creators.

Marco Specialties has been spearheading the growth of this area, along with the control hardware supplier FAST Pinball.

Here are the homebrew machines at this year’s show.

Sunday

These are no seminars on Sunday, as the Seminars Room is reconfigured for the closing ceremony and prize raffle at 2pm. However, Sunday does see then whole of the Texas Takedown women’s tournament and the conclusion of the Texas Wizards main tournament upstairs in the Tournament Room, as well as five more hours of free play in the main hall.

In the Texas Takedown, the 72 competitors had three hours of qualifying, from 9am until midday. The top four from the qualifying round went straight into a final, played on three machines – Big Ben, Kings of Steel and The Walking Dead. The four finalists were Emily Cosson, Ariel Dutton, Rebecca Salam and Dawnda Durbin and they played using a 4-2-1-0 scoring system.

Emily won on the first two machines, giving her 8 points going into the third. She only had to score a single point to be guaranteed the win, since Ariel had 4 points, while Dawnda has 2 points and Rebecca was yet to score.

As it turned out, Emily won on The Walking dead too, giving her a perfect 12 points. Dawnda and Ariel were tied for second on 4 points, while Rebecca picked up her first point. In a tie-breaker, Dawnda was the winner, making her second and Ariel third, with Rebecca fourth.

In the Texas Wizards main tournament, Jack Revnew and Steve Bowden made it through to the final from the first semi-final, while from the second semi-final it was Tim Hansen and Nick Mueller. These four played on three machines with a 4-2-1-0 scoring system.

The first machine was Spider-Man where Tim won, with Steve second, Jack third and Nick fourth.

On King Kong: Myth of Terror Island, thing were mixed up a bit, with Jack first, Nick second, Tim third and Steve fourth.

That left an interesting situation going into the third and final game on Panthera, where Tim and Jack both had 5 points, while Nick and Steve both had 2 points.

As it turned out, Jack took the win with just his first two balls. The game actually reset after all players had completed their first two balls, so those scores were recorded and each player had the opportunity to play one additional ball in a new game to add to their scores.

Although Steve had a good ball, it was only good enough to give him second place in the game and third overall. Nick was third on Panthera but ended up in fourth overall. Tim was fourth on the third game, leaving him on 5 points for second place finish. Jack didn’t need to play his third ball as none of the other three had beaten his two-ball score.

This year’s Texas Pinball Festival ended with the closing ceremony, which began at 2pm on Sunday.

This where the Best in Show awards are presented to the owners of the best machines in multiple categories, followed by the draw for the grand prize in the raffle which is a Harry Potter Arcade Edition from Jersey Jack Pinball.

Tickets for the raffle were available from the TPF merchandise stand throughout the show, right up until the draw took place.

In addition, this year there was a draw for a Houdini 100th Anniversary machine from American Pinball. Guests could visit the American Pinball stand, scan a QR code and register their details to be in with a chance of winning. Sadly, despite the large international attendance, only US residents were eligible to win.

The Houdini prize draw took place first, as Nate Steen read out the first name to be selected. That name was Chris Engberg.

However, although Chris was somewhere nearby, he wasn’t present to accept his prize as required by the rules of the draw. So, after a wait for him to arrive, a second name was drawn to win the prize, That winner was Nicole Schulte.

Shortly after, a breathless Chris Engberg finally arrived.

In a magnanimous gesture, American Pinball owner, Bryan Vincent, decided he would award a second Houdini machine to Chris.

Then it was time for the Best in Show awards.

The award winners were chosen by a committee of six judges – Keith Holbrook, Scott Martin, Bill Morrison, Gary Stuart, Rich Wiski and Michael Lube.

The runners-up and winners were announced by Bill Morrison, with the awards presented by Dan Horne of sponsors Nitro Pinball.

Best Antique (pre-1960s)
Winner: Bryan Redshaw – Spitfire
Runners-Up: Bryan Redshaw – Cavalcade Jeff Frick – Deluxe World Series

Best 1960s
Winner: Colin Wood – Doozie
Runners-Up: Ken Head – Kings and Queens Scott McClure – Gigi

Best 1970s Electromechanical
Winner: Chris Little – Hot Shot
Runners-Up: Cross Kirchmeier – Sea Hunt Aaron Beasecker – Atlantis

Best 1977-1985 Solid State
Winner: Bill Stahly – Freefall
Runners-Up: Colin Wood – Harlem Globetrotters Marshall Dixon – Rocky

Best 1986-1991 Solid State
Winner: Rick Ward – Taxi
Runners-Up: Tom George – Diner Adam Jordan – Radical!

Best DMD 1991-2010
Winner: Mike Denton – The Simpsons Pinball Party
Runners-Up: David Kemp – Cirqus Voltaire Bill Dent – Attack from Mars

Best Modern 2010-current
Winner: Kim Keist/Corey Keist: Dungeons and Dragons: The Tyrant’s Eye
Runners-Up: Rick Worrell – The Mandalorian Mike Denton – Iron Maiden

Best Original
Winner: Adam Jordan – Andromeda
Runners-Up: Danny Allen – Varkon William Hayden – Gorgar

Adam wasn’t present at the ceremony to collect his award.

Best Newcomer
Winner: Landon Fraker – Spirit of 76

Best Restoration
Winner: Scott McClure & Matt Pluff – Brite Star
Runners-Up: Brett Davis – Silverball Mania William Baker – Playboy

Best Custom (Homebrew)
Winner: Kyle Smet – Big Trouble in Little China
Runners-Up: Nate Lembke – Tiki Tapu Ernie Silverberg – Monsters, Inc.

Best Classic Arcade
Winner: Stacey Devino/Stephen Wylile – Wheel of Fortune
Runners-Up: Estil Vance – Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom Joe Reyna – Dragon’s Lair

Best Custom / Innovative Video Game
Winner: Estil Vance – Cadillacs and Dinosaurs

Grand Champion: Best in Show
Winner: Peter Batterton: Tales of the Arabian Nights

To end the closing ceremony and officially end this year’s show, the winning ticket for the prize raffle was drawn. The designer of the prize Harry Potter machine, Eric Meunier, drew the winner from the drum of tickets.

Eric then read out the name on the ticket. The winner didn’t need to be present to receive their prize, but fortunately he was standing close by.

The winning ticket belonged to Adam Breakey who took home the Harry Potter Arcade Edition machine valued at $9,995.

With the prize awarded, the show drew to a close. Machines and stands were folded up, packed away for another year, and loaded into trucks, as guests filed out of the hall to make their way home. As they left, the dates and location for the 2027 show were displayed on the corridor banners.

Finally, you can watch our traditional video walk through the main show hall, the corridors and even the Tournament Room, all in full 4K UHD. We shot this on Sunday morning, by which time a couple of the vendors had already packed up and a few of the machines had been taken out. However, all the vendor stands were included in our earlier picture gallery.

And that brings our coverage of the 2026 Texas Pinball Festival in Frisco, Texas, to a close.

The show continues to expand, both in its duration and its scope. The TechDay on Wednesday and the two tournaments on Thursday along with karaoke at a nearby bar make this a five-day show for some visitors. TechDay was well received and seems like a permanent feature, so it’s easy to imagine additional events being organised on Wednesday and Thursday.

Musical performances at pinball shows are often divisive. The Houston Arcade Expo puts like acts right on the show floor in the evening to create a party atmosphere. The Texas Pinball Festival hosts them on the stage in the lobby which feels like a good compromise. We certainly found all the acts enjoyable and entertaining, and a nice diversion from the intensity of constant pinball playing.

Despite The Three Musketeers not quite making it to the show, the unveiling of Yukon Yeti and the re-artworked Houdini, plus the first show appearance of the Pokémon game and the huge display of Beetlejuice machines made TPF the perfect opportunity to catch up on the newest titles.

The show continues to enjoy healthy support from the local community as well as those further afield. There was also a good turnout of industry names, plus a nicely expanded homebrew section and the usual wide range of vendor stands. The international visitor count also seemed to grow this year.

So, as shown above, the 2027 Texas Pinball Festival returns to the Embassy Suites Frisco Hotel & Conference Center. Officially it runs 19th-21st March, but be prepared to arrive early. We certainly expect to be there from the 17th and look forward to seeing you there too.

Also, don’t forget to listen to our thoughts about the show along with those of Jonathan Joosten from Pinball Magazine in our next Pinball Industry News PINcast, published at the start of April. Check out our PINcast page for details as well as previous PINcasts.