Competitive Pinball Roundup: The 2025 Season Begins

There are so many pinball tournaments during any given month that it's nearly impossible to keep track of everything. As a player or spectator, keeping tabs on all the various events in the world of competitive pinball is a mammoth task, now more than ever. To ease that burden for the 2025 season, we're delivering the biggest pinball tournament news, all in one handy roundup, to help keep you in the competitive loop.

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Keep in mind, this is by no means an exhaustive recap of every pinball tournament out there, but rather a collection of results from “major” tournaments and select IFPA certified events, along with other notable facts and current happenings. In theory, if there's something important going on in the world of competitive pinball, you should be able to find it here.

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Apart from a handful of big events, the beginning of the year is usually pretty slow for competitive pinball, but 2025 has proven to be an exception. Keeping up the momentum from 2024, players were already out in full swing over the past few months, attending all manner of local launch parties and keystone competitions. With three Stern Pro Circuit Events already in the books, a new event class thrown into the mix, and several new national pinball champions crowned, this year is already off to an incredible start.

The 2024-25 IFPA Season Ends

While early January was particularly quiet on the tournament pinball front, things picked up quickly toward the end of the month as various regions in the US and Canada held individual state-level competitions as part of the 2024-25 IFPA North American Championship Series and 2024-25 IFPA Women's North American Championship Series. In each invite-only tournament, the top players in a given area battled in head-to-head matches to determine the best player in each state, securing a spot in the North American Pinball Championship. Here's the full list of winners for the 2024-25 IFPA NACS State Championships.

The 2024-25 IFPA North American Pinball Championship was held on March 6 at the Rochester Pinball Collective in Rochester, New York. Streamed live on Twitch by Backhand Pinball, 58 players in total battled for the title, coming down to a heated best-of-seven finals match between Jason Zahler (New Jersey) and Zach McCarthy (Colorado).

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McCarthy got off to a good start in Game 1 with a win on Diner (Williams, 1990), but Zahler answered back in Game 2 on Dragonfist (Stern, 1981) to tie things up. Game 3 was a nail-biter match of Old Chicago (Bally, 1976), which Zahler won by an incredibly narrow 130-point margin. In Game 4, World Cup Soccer (Bally, 1994), Zahler further extended his lead with a tremendous performance, and carried the momentum into Game 5, Foo Fighters (Stern, 2023), winning with a 660 million point walk-off. With a commanding 4-1 series finish, Jason Zahler fought hard for his new crown as the 2024-25 North American IFPA Pinball Champion.

Australian and German Pinball Champions Are Crowned

North America was far from the only continent with pinball championships left to play, as Australia crowned its 2024 champion on February 23. The 2024 Australian Championship Series finals were held in Townsville, Queensland, Australia at Empire Alternacade and Events, streamed live on Twitch by PinheadAustralia. After the 4 pools of qualifying and multiple rounds of playoffs, it all came down to two players: Escher Lefkoff and Jason Lambert. Going to Game 4 in their best-of-seven playoffs, Escher pulled away with a 3 – 1 series lead, solidifying his new spot as the 2024 Australian Pinball Champion in a final match on Led Zeppelin (Stern, 2020).

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That same weekend saw the very first Australian Women's Pinball Championship, with 16 players from across the continent competing in the inaugural tournament. Qualifying rounds consisted of double round robin head-to-head matches, leading into 4-player group elimination finals. After a full day of competition, Amelia Applewaite (Queensland, Australia) nabbed the victory on The Amazing Spider-Man (Gottlieb, 1980), becoming the 2024 Australian Women's Pinball Champion in the process.

At the same time, in Herten, Germany, the 2024 German Championship Series finals were underway at FreePlay.ruhr, streamed live on Twitch by JDL_Pinball. 64 players from across Europe gathered for a chance at the top spot, starting with 20 rounds of Matchplay qualifying. Only 8 players made it to the playoffs, which were 4-player group elimination matches, cutting down the field to the final 4. In an incredibly exciting final match, the championship title was up in the air all the way down to ball 3, player 4 on Avengers: Infinity Quest (Stern, 2020). Overcoming a 100 million point deficit, Axel Vercauteren (Belgium) put on a hell of a show, conjuring up some massive ball 3 magic to clutch the match and become the 2024 German Pinball Champion.

A New Season Begins

The tail end of January also saw the first Stern Pro Circuit event of the 2025-26 IFPA competitive season: INDISC 2025. Time and time again, INDISC provides top-tier tournament pinball, enough so that it won the 2024 TWIPY for Best Tournament. Held in sunny Riverside, California, from January 23 – 26, INDISC had a plethora of competitions, including multiple Classics tournaments, the High Stakes Championship, the Women's Championship, and of course, the Open IFPA World Championship. Though hundreds of players entered, only a lucky and skillful few took home the top prizes.

INDISC Winners:

• Open IFPA Championship A Division – Zach McCarthy (Conifer, CO)
• Classics Championship – John Shopple (Mesa, AZ)
• Women's Championship – Kaylee Campbell (Charlotte, NC)
• Classics Target Matchplay – Conrad Rustad (Bremerton, WA)
• High Stakes Championship – Escher Lefkoff (Queensland, Australia)

The second Stern Pro Circuit event, the 2025 StarFighters Pinball Festival, took place at Starfighters Arcade in Mesa, Arizona from February 20 – 23, offering multiple IFPA certified tournaments. The Main tournament alone drew in over 150 eager players, with first place awarding over 200 WPPRs and a hefty prize pool to boot. SPF25 also offered IFPA Certified Classics and Women's tournaments, along with a handful of additional tournaments for a full weekend of pinball fun. Two players in particular brought their A-game to SPF25, with both Raymond Davidson and Trent Augenstein clutching two tournament wins each.

SPF25 Winners:

• Main Tournament A Division – Raymond Davidson (Elk Grove Village, IL)
• Classics Tournament - Raymond Davidson
• Women's Tournament – Jane Verwys (Chicago, IL)
• Max Match Play – Trent Augenstein (Delaware, OH)
• Sunday Strikes – Trent Augenstein

The third Stern Pro Circuit event of the year, the 2025 IFPA Pin-Masters: World Pin-Golf Championship, was held immediately after the North American Pinball Championship at the Rochester Pinball Collective. Like the name implies, this is a Pin-Golf only tournament, where players aim to score a certain amount of points in as few balls as possible, with target scores based on the scores from the North American Pinball Championship. Over 80 players attended the qualifying round, leading to a hard-fought finals. Familiar names graced the final four, but only one could be crowned the 2025 Pinball Champion, resulting in a surprising but well-deserved finish.

2025 Pin-Masters Winners:

• 2025 World Pin-Golf Champion – Raymond Davidson (Elk Grove Village, IL)
• 2025 World Pin-Golf NOVICE Champion – Preston Pywell (Wichita, KS)

Big WPPRs to Start the Year

Between all of the championship series, Stern Pro Circuit events, and high-value competitions, players have been grinding WPPRs heavily as the 2025 IFPA season kicks off. This year, the IFPA introduced a new type of qualifying format, Hybrid Best Game, with several locations already hosting tournaments to check it out. Kidforce Pinball in Ohio chose Hybrid Best Game for their Grand Re-Opening tournament, which I was lucky enough to check out, while the player-favorite spot Lumberjack Johnny's in Wisconsin picked up the format for their annual WPPR Chopper tournament.

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Current standings for the 2025 NACS are heavily favoring states that have held Stern Pro Circuit events, but the results are impressive all the same. Sitting at the top spot with 571 WPPRs in California is Derek Thomson (Alberta, Canada), thanks to his top 10 placements in the Open and Classics tournaments at INDISC 2025. Over in the Pro rankings, which track competitors across multiple seasons, Escher Lefkoff (Queensland, Australia) is the current #1 player in the world, boasting 3,134 WPPRs in total. For Women's Pro rankings, Jane Verwys (Chicago, IL) leads the pack with 506 WPPRs.

Upcoming IFPA Events

Thankfully, as the colder months give way to springtime and everyone gets a bit more social, there's no shortage of pinball tournaments to attend. Multiple Stern Pro Circuit events are just around the corner, including the 2025 Texas Pinball Festival in Frisco, TX from March 21 – 23, as well as Cactus Jack's Silverball Showdown in Oklahoma City, OK from April 4 – 6. Between the 30+ other IFPA Certified events and other local sanctioned tournaments, a surplus of WPPRs is ready for the taking.

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For other up-to-date information on competitive pinball, you can check out the World Pinball Player Rankings, a complete calendar of IFPA sanctioned tournaments, a list of IFPA sanctioned leagues, and the prestigious IFPA Hall of Fame.