Records

A 3,156 Pound Pumpkin Just Became the Heaviest Jack-O-Lantern Ever

October 30, 2026 • 1 min read • Moe Train Eats

The 3,156 pound carved pumpkin lit up at night on a display pedestal in Salem, with World's Heaviest Pumpkin 3,156 lbs written on the stand — It needed its own stage, its own lights, and 32 hours of carving. Fair enough at 3,156 pounds.Photo: Guinness World Records

Some guys carve a pumpkin on the porch. This one needed a pedestal, a carving crew, and a guy from Guinness standing by with a certificate.

Ron Wallace grew the thing in Greene, Rhode Island. It weighed in at 3,156 pounds on Oct. 10 at the Southern New England Giant Pumpkin Weigh Off in Warren, the first pumpkin in history over 3,000 pounds. It beat the old record by nearly 300 pounds, and that old record had only been set a week earlier by Ian Paton in England. Wallace has done this before, too. His 2006 pumpkin was the first over 1,500 pounds, and his 2012 pumpkin was the first over 2,000.

A record holder to pig feed in three weeks.
Moe Train

Then Raising Cane's founder Todd Graves got hold of it and hauled it to Salem, Massachusetts, for the town's 400th anniversary. Three pro carvers, Eric Jones, Monique Hawk, and William Wilson, spent 32 hours turning it into a jack-o-lantern with bats, a witch, a skeleton, and a carved pot of Cane's Sauce on the side.

Guinness adjudicator Michael Empric confirmed the carved pumpkin still weighed 3,156 pounds, which buries the old jack-o-lantern record of 2,749 pounds. It sits on Salem Common until Nov. 1. After that, it gets chopped up and fed to pigs on a farm in New Hampshire. A record holder to pig feed in three weeks. That's a full life for a pumpkin.