Who Are the Autoflower World Cup 2026 judges? Meet The Panel
The Autoflower World Cup 2026 judges are a seven-person panel who scored every entry blind in Berlin, working through jar after jar on look, smell, and smoke.
Get to know them, and the results page reads very differently. Once you know the judges, the scores stop looking like a flat list.
Most of the Cup is decided by these judges, not by a public vote. Entries in the Indica Dominant, Sativa Dominant, Best New Autoflower, and CBD categories are scored blind, with no branding on the jars, across three criteria: look, smell, and smoke.
Meet the Panel
Seven judges scored the 2026 categories. The AWC frames each one by the sense they lead with: the eye, the nose, or the lungs, and their scoring runs from generous to ice-cold. Their average marks below show how they scored across their card, so a low line means a hard marker, not a weak entry.
Doctor Choice
The most generous voice on the panel. Doctor Choice leads with the nose, over-indexes on terpenes compared to the rest, and gave out this year’s only perfect 10s, three of them. Averages of 8.2 look, 7.6 smell, and 6.7 smoket his was the card every entrant hoped to draw.
It is also the scoring card of the Cup’s VIP guest: Sasha, the Joint Doctor, the breeder behind Lowryder, the first-ever autoflowering strain the whole category grew out of, so having him mark where autoflowers have landed in 2026 is a real full-circle moment.
For all that legacy, he keeps it low-key, calling himself “a pretty regular guy” who cares more about how cannabinoids work together than about chasing THC numbers.
Micha Knodt
The panel’s media voice and its “People’s Champ”, agreeing with the eventual category winners around 75 percent of the time.
Knodt is a Berlin-based cannabis journalist who has reported on cannabis and hemp for more than two decades and is one of Germany’s best-known names in the field, so a home-city Cup put him on familiar ground.
He leads with the nose and marks fairly, averaging 5.9 for look, 5.8 for smell, and 5.2 for smoke.
Timm Terpentino
The toughest critic in the room. The AWC calls him “Ice Cold”, and the numbers back it up: averages of 2.9 look, 2.6 smell, and 2.2 smoke, the lowest on the panel by a clear margin.
Terpentino is the founder of Green Connection, a project spanning cannabis video, research, and growing, and he judges the way you would expect from someone who lives in terpene profiles. If an entry impressed him, it earned it.
Arnau Tango
A fair marker who, as the AWC puts it, lets the smoke do the talking more than his peers. Tango judges on the smoke first and marks down the middle: 5.8 look, 5.6 smell, 5.5 smoke, one of the more balanced cards on the panel.
He is not new to the seat either. Tango has hosted and judged the Cup in previous years, and he came up through the Barcelona scene: growing at home as a kid, getting to know the trade through the grow shops, then watching the city's cannabis clubs take off before he moved into running events and competitions himself.
Rob CLTV
The panel's brutal eye. Rob CLTV rewards bag appeal far more than aroma or taste, then turns hard on the rest: 5.5 for look but just 2.7 smell and 2.3 smoke. That split makes him one of the two toughest markers on aroma and taste.
Off the scoring table, he is a familiar name in the home grow and review scene, co-host of the From The Stash podcast and a driving force behind CLtv, where he has built a name for blunt, detailed strain reviews that don't flatter the genetics.
His whole thing is terpenes over bag appeal, the smoke over the looks, so a card this hard on smell and smoke tells you exactly how little impressed him this year.
Stephanie Quatro
The “Lone Wolf” of the group, agreeing with the eventual winners only about 25 percent of the time and clearly trusting her own palate over the room. A lungs-first, fair marker, she was the rare judge to score smoke above look, averaging 5.0 look, 4.8 smell, and 5.7 smoke.
Off the panel, she is a cannabis creator who shares her world on her YouTube channel, Stephanie Quatro, and she marked the Cup the same way she films: on her own terms, backing her own nose and lungs over the room.
Cem Locos
The panel’s most talkative scorer, leaving the most notes of anyone this year. Locos is another who goes by the smoke, and a steady marker with it, with averages of 5.8 look, 5.2 smell, and 5.2 smoke.
Off the card, he goes by Jam Locos, real name Cem Özbugutu, a German cannabis creator and OCB ambassador who has been posting about the plant since 2016 and has more than 25 years around it.
He is known for detailed strain reviews and for cooking with cannabis, and even makes his own organic fertilizer from a family recipe. That habit shows on his card, the most annotated of the panel.
The panel at a glance
Line up the seven cards, and the range tells the story. Doctor Choice and Timm Terpentino sat at opposite ends of almost every column.
| Judge | Style | Avg Look | Avg Smell | Avg Smoke |
| Doctor Choice | The Nose, Generous | 8.2 | 7.6 | 6.7 |
| Micha Knodt | The Nose, Fair | 5.9 | 5.8 | 5.2 |
| Arnau Tango | The Lungs, Fair | 5.8 | 5.6 | 5.5 |
| Cem Locos | The Lungs, Fair | 5.8 | 5.2 | 5.2 |
| Stephanie Quatro | The Lungs, Fair | 5.0 | 4.8 | 5.7 |
| Rob CLTV | The Eye, Bruta | 5.5 | 2.7 | 2.3 |
| Timm Terpentino | The Nose, Brutal | 2.9 | 2.6 | 2.2 |
Average marks each AWC 2026 judge handed out across look, smell, and smoke.
That gap between judges is worth keeping in mind. A category winner did not just please one easy grader; it had to pull scores from a room that included the hardest markers in autoflower judging. Timm Terpentino alone could sink a soft entry.
Dig into The Numbers
Every judge’s score, category by category, is on the AWC 2026 results hub. If you want to see how the panel’s marks shook out into podiums, that is where to look, next to the Best Breeder results and the top autoflowers of 2026.
To follow next year’s judging and have your say in the community vote, join the AWC community on Discord.
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