The Great American Beer Festival has come and gone and the results should come as a bit of a surprise to Pennsylvania craft beer fans.

In the 2026 competition Pennsylvania saw one sole brewery take home an award. While that brewery should certainly be celebrated, the overall result marks a shocking and historic drop-off for our state. If you look back through past festival archives, Pennsylvania breweries routinely hauled in a substantial collection of medals, establishing the commonwealth as a true powerhouse in American brewing. With six wins in 2025 and only one in 2026 this marks the biggest drop in year over year wins in almost a decade.

To go from perennial multi-medal winner, with local favorites like Troegs, Victory, Iron Hill, and many others frequently claiming hardware, to a meager single win is a staggering regression.

The difficult part of analyzing Pennsylvania’s sole win is the data the public does not have access to that helps identify the context behind the singular win. Did the state just not submit enough beer? Were there more submissions than in past years? All information that we cannot know because the Brewers Association who hosts the competition does not typically release this data.

However, we can look at the 2026 winners list and see where our single win falls within the country. Another state that took home a single medal? Arkansas also found themselves with a single win.

Let’s do a quick tale of the tape to see where we rank with Arkansas based on available data:

• Operating breweries: Pennsylvania stands at 583, while Arkansas sits at 56.
• Barrels of beer produced: Pennsylvania pumps out 2,000,000 barrels annually compared to Arkansas at 71,000.
• Yearly economic impact on state: Pennsylvania generates 4.9 billion dollars against Arkansas at 540 million.

When a state with nearly six hundred breweries and a multi-billion dollar economic impact performs identically to a state with a fraction of that infrastructure, something is clearly amiss. Even worse? The lowest producing state of craft beer in the country (Washington D.C.) outpaced Pennsylvania with 3 medals compared to our one.

Now let’s compare that with the states Pennsylvania has always found itself competing with when it comes to total volume of beer made. Throughout the history of the data the Brewers Association produces, Pennsylvania constantly ranks closest to California, Ohio, Colorado, and Oregon in most major categories. Here is a breakdown of the winners from each of those states in the 2026 competition:

• California: 80 medals
• Colorado: 39 medals
• Oregon: 17 medals
• Ohio: 9 medals
• Pennsylvania: 1 medal

Safe to say that if all the available data is to be believed, Pennsylvania is falling dangerously behind the competition. Whether it is a shift in brewing focus, a drop in submission numbers, or our local favorites simply losing favor with national palates, the commonwealth’s craft beer scene has officially hit a flat note on the biggest stage in the country.

With the lack of overall data available it is hard to pinpoint the exact reason the Keystone state walked away with one singular win in the 2026 competition. Especially when you compare PA to the other states we normally compete with. But when you factor in the current downward trend of craft beer in the state, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.