Black Puddings Get Thrown at Yorkshire Puddings on a Twenty-Foot Plinth in Ramsbottom on the Thirteenth of September
Three underarm throws for two pounds. The target is a dozen Yorkshire puddings stacked twenty feet up outside The Oaks.
The World Black Pudding Throwing Championships return to Ramsbottom in Greater Manchester on Sunday 13 September 2026, keeping the event's traditional slot on the second Sunday of the month. It runs from 11am to 4pm on Bridge Street, outside The Oaks pub.
The mechanics are simple and the accuracy required is not. Each competitor gets three underarm throws from a marked oche. The target is a stack of a dozen Yorkshire puddings arranged on a plinth twenty feet up. Knock down the most and you win. The ammunition is Chadwick's black puddings from Bury Market; the targets are Aunt Bessie's giant Yorkshire puddings. Entry is 2 pounds for three throws, raised from 1 pound, and watching is free.
The origin story is Wars of the Roses folklore rather than documented history: Lancashire and Yorkshire troops, out of ammunition at a 1455 skirmish, supposedly resorted to throwing food at each other. The symbolism holds up neatly — black pudding for Lancashire, Yorkshire pudding for Yorkshire — which is usually a sign that a story has been improved over time. A pub landlord is credited with reviving the contest in 1839, and the Stubbins Community Trust revived it again in 1984.
The 2025 edition nearly did not happen. It was cancelled in July of that year after the death of long-time organiser Phil Taylor, then reinstated by volunteers as a tribute event, staged alongside a music festival called Pud Rocks with stages named for Taylor and another late local figure, Harrison Rothwell. Ged Flan of Salford won it. The field included throwers who had travelled from Japan, Peru, Canada and Australia. Proceeds went to Bury Hospice and local charities.
Past champions have come from further afield than the event's parochial framing suggests: Jim Riley of Australia in 2001, Huseyin Ozluk of Turkey in 2009 and 2013, Warwick Turner of Australia in 2011, and Andrew Ferrier, who won in both 2018 and 2021.
Two weeks out, the 2026 competition has no result to report. What it has is a date, a plinth, and a supply chain that runs from Bury Market to a pavement in Ramsbottom.