Florida Python Challenge 2026 Sends Hundreds Into the Everglades to Hunt an Invasive Menace

The 2026 Florida Python Challenge is underway across the southern Everglades, drawing hundreds of registered hunters into the sawgrass in a state-backed effort to thin one of the region's most destructive invasive species. Organized by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the South Florida Water Management District, the annual competition runs from July 10 at 12:01 a.m. to July 19 at 5 p.m., offering $25,000 in total prizes, including a $10,000 grand prize for the participant who removes the most Burmese pythons.

For Florida, the stakes reach far beyond a cash purse. The Burmese python has reshaped the food web of the Everglades, a wetland that anchors South Florida's water supply, its tourism economy, and one of the most biologically distinctive ecosystems in North America. State officials frame the challenge as both a removal effort and a public awareness campaign, a way to enlist ordinary residents in a fight that professional biologists cannot win alone.

A statewide competition with a $25,000 purse

The challenge is open to anyone who registers and completes a required online training course covering how to identify Burmese pythons, distinguish them from native snakes, and remove them humanely. Registration costs $25 and remains open through the final day of the event. Organizers reported that more than 934 participants from 30 states and Canada had signed up in the most recent year, a turnout that underscores how the competition has grown from a niche event into a nationally watched spectacle.

The $25,000 prize pool is divided across several categories. Beyond the $10,000 ultimate grand prize, the FWC awards $2,500 to the top python remover in each of the professional, novice, and military categories, with $1,500 runner-up prizes in those divisions and $1,000 prizes for the longest python captured in each. The structure is designed to reward both seasoned hunters and first-time participants, broadening the pool of people willing to spend days wading through remote wetlands in the heat of a Florida summer.

Hunting is permitted across a set of designated public lands in South Florida, largely wildlife management areas where pythons have become established. Participants search on foot and from vehicles along levees and access roads, often at night when the cold-blooded snakes are more detectable. The timing, deep in the wet season, coincides with warm conditions that keep pythons active and, organizers hope, easier to spot.

Why the Everglades ecosystem is at stake

The ecological case for the hunt is stark. Researchers studying Everglades National Park have tied the spread of Burmese pythons to an estimated 95 percent decrease in mammal observations in parts of the ecosystem, a collapse documented in road surveys that once routinely turned up raccoons, opossums, rabbits, and bobcats. In the areas where pythons are longest established, some of those species have become difficult to find at all.

The pythons are generalist predators that prey on native birds, mammals, and reptiles, and they compete with imperiled native species for the same food. Their diet has included animals ranging from small rodents to wading birds to full-grown deer, and studies have documented the snakes near wading bird nesting colonies that are central to Everglades restoration goals. Every mammal and bird removed from the base of the food web ripples upward to the predators, including the Florida panther, that depend on healthy prey populations.

Because the Everglades is a slow-moving sheet of freshwater that feeds aquifers and coastal estuaries across South Florida, the ecological damage is not confined to remote backcountry. The same wetland supports fisheries, filters water bound for millions of residents, and draws visitors whose spending sustains local economies. State officials describe the python as a threat not only to wildlife but to the long-term function of a landscape that South Florida cannot replace.

Scientists caution that the mammal declines are the visible edge of a broader restructuring of the food web that remains only partly understood. What is clear is that a single introduced predator, likely established through the exotic pet trade decades ago, has become one of the defining pressures on a national park that the state and federal governments have spent billions of dollars trying to restore.

Who is hunting and the rules they follow

Participants range from professional contractors who remove pythons year-round to novices who registered specifically for the 10-day event. The FWC requires every hunter to complete training before entering the field, and it prohibits the use of firearms on the designated competition lands, meaning pythons must be captured and dispatched by hand using approved methods.

State rules require that hunters humanely kill the pythons they capture and submit the carcasses to designated check stations within 24 hours. Those stations allow biologists to verify removals, measure the snakes, and collect data on size, sex, and reproductive condition, information that feeds long-term research on the population. The humane-dispatch requirement reflects both animal welfare standards and the state's insistence that the hunt be conducted responsibly rather than as an unregulated free-for-all.

For many participants, the appeal is as much about the challenge as the prize. Finding a well-camouflaged snake in dense vegetation, often at night and in oppressive heat, tests patience and skill, and most hunters return empty-handed on any given outing. The check stations, where the largest captures draw crowds and cameras, have become a public face of the event and a focal point for the awareness campaign that surrounds it.

A problem decades in the making

The Burmese python has been reproducing in South Florida for decades, most likely after animals escaped or were released from the exotic pet trade. Since 2000, more than 27,000 Burmese pythons have been reported removed from the Florida environment through a combination of contractor programs, year-round public removal, research efforts, and the annual challenge.

Even that number represents only a fraction of a population that scientists cannot precisely count. The snakes are cryptic, they thrive in remote and difficult terrain, and females can lay large clutches of eggs, all of which make the population resilient to removal. Detection remains the central obstacle: researchers estimate that only a small share of the pythons present in any given area are ever seen by humans.

To close that gap, the state and its partners have invested in tools beyond hunting, including specially trained detector dogs, radio-tagged scout snakes that lead biologists to breeding aggregations, and environmental DNA sampling that can flag a python's presence in water. The annual challenge sits within that broader toolkit, valued less for the raw number of snakes it removes than for the attention and public participation it generates.

What the challenge can and cannot do

Experts are candid that the annual hunt, while useful, will not eradicate an established population that now spans a vast area of South Florida. In prior years, participants have removed a few hundred pythons over the 10 days, a meaningful figure but a small one against a population estimated in the tens of thousands or more. The competition record from the most recent edition was 294 snakes, and cumulative removals across all editions of the challenge total well over a thousand.

The greater value, biologists and state officials say, lies in awareness. The challenge draws national media coverage, recruits new people into year-round removal work, and reinforces public understanding that releasing exotic pets carries lasting consequences. It also functions as a large, coordinated data-collection effort, giving researchers a burst of specimens and location information each summer.

Critics and skeptics note that a once-a-year event cannot substitute for sustained management, and even supporters agree the challenge is one piece of a long campaign rather than a solution on its own. The realistic goal, officials have said, is suppression and containment, keeping python numbers and their range from expanding further while restoration work on the wider Everglades continues.

Part of a wider fight against invasive species

The python challenge is the most visible front in a much broader battle Florida wages against nonnative species. The state's warm climate, busy ports, and history as a hub for the exotic pet and plant trades have made it one of the most heavily invaded places in the country, home to established populations of species ranging from Argentine tegus to lionfish to invasive plants that choke waterways.

For state agencies, the python serves as a cautionary case study in how quickly an introduced animal can entrench itself and how costly removal becomes once a population is established. That lesson informs Florida's push to tighten rules on the possession and sale of high-risk species and to encourage residents to report sightings of nonnative animals through the state's dedicated hotlines and apps.

The economic dimension is significant as well. Florida and its partners devote millions of dollars annually to invasive-species control, spending that competes with other conservation and infrastructure needs. Every hour volunteers spend hunting pythons, officials argue, is effort the state does not have to fund directly, which is part of why the challenge has endured as both a management tool and a community event.

What's next

When the 2026 challenge closes at 5 p.m. on July 19, the FWC will tally the removals, weigh and measure the largest captures, and announce winners in the coming weeks. The state will fold the data collected at check stations into its ongoing research, and year-round removal by contractors and the public will continue long after the competition ends.

Longer term, the python fight will remain intertwined with the broader Everglades restoration effort, one of the largest environmental projects in the country. Scientists will keep refining detection technology and studying whether new tools can shift the balance against an entrenched predator, while state officials continue to press the message that prevention, keeping the next invasive species out, is far cheaper than removal.

For Florida residents, the challenge is a yearly reminder that the health of the Everglades is a statewide concern, tied to water, wildlife, and the economy well beyond the boundaries of the national park. The snakes will still be in the sawgrass when the contest ends, but for 10 days each summer, the state turns a slow-moving ecological crisis into a public call to action.