Florida's Annual Burmese Python Challenge Underway

Hundreds of competitors are taking to Florida’s Everglades this weekend for the state’s annual Burmese python challenge.

The 10-day competition aims to help capture and humanely kill the invasive species, which the state says threaten local wildlife.

People who remove the most Burmese pythons – one of the largest snakes in the world – get a hefty sum of $10,000, and there are other grand prizes. The challenge runs through next weekend, when it will be time to see who has the most.

Last year, winner Taylor Stanberry, the first woman to catch the most in the competition’s 13-year history, caught 60 snakes.

Other runners up received $2,500 for catching the most and longest pythons in novice, military and professional categories.

The longest python caught stretched out to 15 feet and 11 inches long. Nearly a thousand participants from 30 states and Canada removed a record 294 Burmese pythons in 2025.

What are the rules?

People must register for the event, pay a fee of $25, complete online training and pass a quiz to be able to compete. Youth under the age of 18 must be registered by a parent or guardian and accompanied by a registered adult.

When looking for the pythons, participants can use flashlights and headlamps, but the use of a gun is not allowed and competitors can be disqualified for killing a native snake or removing or damaging its eggs.

Using dogs, drones, traps, bait, chemicals, explosives, smoke and motorized tools to catch the snakes is also prohibited.

Any participant who does not humanely kill a python will be disqualified and novice participants must kill them immediately at the capture site.

After they are killed, the carcasses must be chilled or frozen before they are turned in to a check station within a period of 24 hours.

Registration remains open through the final day of the challenge. The challenge ends on July 19 at 5 p.m. local time.

Burmese pythons pose a longstanding threat

The Burmese python was first found in the Sunshine State in the late 1970s and poses a threat to Florida’s ecology by outcompeting native snake species and eating endangered Key Largo wood rats.

A female can lay between 50 and 100 eggs at a time and more than 27,000 wild Burmese pythons have been removed since 2000, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

How much of a threat the snakes pose to humans around the Everglades is unclear.

The commission says they are a threat, and may also prey upon pets, such as cats or dogs.

But a 2014 estimate from the U.S. Geological Survey said there was “a low risk to people in the park.”

Anyone may remove and humanely kill pythons and other nonnative reptiles at any time on private lands with landowner permission, as well as on 32 commission-managed lands throughout south Florida.