Congratulations to all the players who have qualified for the Stern Rewards Program for the 2024 calendar year by finishing in the top 1000 of the World Pinball Player Rankings! Contact us at ifpapinball@gmail.com if you’re interested in redeeming.

Detailed rules for the Stern Rewards Program, including an updated list of qualifiers, and updated list of rewards available can be found HERE.

Here is the current list of what’s available as of this moment. We will do our best to update the rewards website as often as possible.

Avengers Premium
Deadpool Premium
Deadpool Pro
Elvira House of Horrors Premium
Foo Fighters Pro
Foo Fighters Premium
Iron Maiden Pro
Iron Maiden Premium
James Bond 007 Pro
James Bond 007 Premium
Jaws Pro
John Wick Pro
John Wick Premium
Jurassic Park Premium
Mandalorian Pro
Mandalorian Premium
Rush Pro
Star Wars Comic Pro
Star Wars Comic Premium
Stranger Things Pro
Stranger Things Premium
Venom Pro
Venom Premium
X-Men Premium

The IFPA is proud to announce that registration for the 20th Annual IFPA World Pinball Championship is now open! For more details check out the registration page HERE.

The initial invite list is open for the top 75 players in the World Pinball Player Rankings as of 1/1/2025. Based on the interest of the top 75, we may extend the invite list additional spots so please monitor the registration page at your leisure. Should you be interested, please send payment to the IFPA as your way of committing to attending the tournament. Should you not be interested, it is equally important that we know, so please send an email to the IFPA stating you will not be available to participate.

Should you have any questions about our qualifying process or to find out more information about the tournament, please contact the IFPA at ifpapinball@gmail.com.

Three of the 80 spots will also be available for the highest ranked finisher not already in the IFPA field. One is reserved for the 2024-25 IFPA North American Pinball Championship, one is reserved for the 2024-25 IFPA European Pinball Championship and one is reserved for the 2024 IFPA Women’s World Pinball Championship.

The IFPA and Stern Army organized the Metallica Remastered Leaderboard for December 2024!

We’re happy to announce the winners from this contest! Please email ifpapinball@gmail.com for details on how to redeem your prize.

Domifrick 3,711,067,110
Deedo 1,065,627,930
BeckHUP 967,242,070
Blueberry 776,641,470

The IFPA is proud to announce that Jason Zahler has finished at #1 on the World Pinball Player Rankings, thus earning IFPA’s top honor as the 2024 “World’s Greatest Pinball Player”. No single tournament victory will ever secure this title for a given year. Only consistent play at the highest level over the course of multiple years leads to players reaching the pinnacle of the World Pinball Player Rankings. This is the first time that Jason has been crowned the World’s Greatest Pinball Player and one of seven players in history to receive this award (Keith Elwin (7), Jorian Engelbrektsson (3), Raymond Davidson (3), Zach Sharpe (2), Johannes Ostermeier (1) and Escher Lefkoff (2) being the other six).

Jason played in 21 IFPA sanctioned events during the 2024 season. His greatest achievements of 2024 were winning TWO Major Championships in the same season, both the IFPA World Pinball Championship and the Pinburgh Match-Play Championship, earning him 714.56 WPPR points for just those two events. Overall, Jason won 33% of the 21 events he played in, while placing in the top 4 at 71% of his 2024 events, a truly remarkable achievement.

We’ve seen a few two-player races develop over the past 18 years that we’ve crowned the “World’s Greatest Pinball Player” title, with the difference between Jason and Escher Lefkoff being only 10.09 WPPR points. This difference was even tighter going into the last month of the season with both players finding themselves in the #1 position. This represents the 3rd closest race in history (although you can easily argue with the current WPPR inflation values compared to previous seasons, this was the closest race of all time). The 2013 season had a 7.92 WPPR point difference with Zach Sharpe finishing just ahead of Keith Elwin. The closest race ever was in 2014 when Jorian Engelbrektsson finished ahead of Keith Elwin by 7.58 WPPR points.

Congratulations to Jason, and best of luck to everyone on the upcoming 2025 season in the race for #1. Jason will receive his WGPP trophy at the IFPA20 World Pinball Championship in Austria in June.

The IFPA is pleased to announce that our Player of the Year for 2024 is 21 year old Escher Lefkoff from Longmont, Australia. Escher competed in 42 events during the 2024 season racking up an incredible 4260.25 WPPR points. Escher currently sits as the #2 ranked player in the world.

Escher was the IFPA Player of the Month in July, August and September, having won 16 of the 42 tournaments he played in during 2024, while finishing in the top 4 in 74% of them.

Escher’s highlights during 2024 included earning his 4th Major Championship at the 2024 European Pinball Championship. He also finished in 2nd place at the PAPA World Championships, 2nd place at the Pinburgh Match Play Championships, along with a 4th place finish at the IFPA19 World Pinball Championship.

The IFPA wishes to congratulate Escher on all of his success throughout this 2024 season!

The IFPA is pleased to announce that our Rookie of the Year for the 2024 season is Jaden Rich from Louisville, OH. This award is given to the player that earns the most WPPR points in their first year of active play.

Jaden played in 88 events during the 2024 season earning a total of 640.68 WPPR points. Jaden participated in his first IFPA sanctioned tournament on January 5th at the Kidforce Friday Night Knockout. Since entering the World Pinball Player Rankings at that time, Jaden has seen his rank increase to 412th in the world.

Jaden’s greatest achievement of 2024 was finishing in 12th place at the Cleveland Pinball and Arcade Show Main Tournament (a Stern Pro Circuit event), netting himself 55.32 WPPR points from that finish. Overall, Jaden placed in the top 4 at 27% of the 2024 events he played in, a truly remarkable achievement.

Congratulations to Jaden, our 2024 IFPA Rookie of the Year!

Qualifying results for the 2024-25 IFPA North American Championship Series are still coming in, but we wanted to take the opportunity to open up registration in advance to give players more time to respond to their invitations.

49 different IFPA State Championship finals (plus Washington DC) along with 8 different Provinces in Canada. These finals will all be held simultaneously on January 18th, 2025, with 1152 finalists competing for their share of over $150,000 in cash, a State or Provincial title, along with a spot in the IFPA North American Pinball Championship.

The IFPA Women’s North American Championship Series will be held January 19th, 2025, with 888 finalists competing for their share of over $30,000 in cash, a State or Provincial title, along with a spot in the IFPA Women’s North American Pinball Championship.

View the live NACS registration page HERE.

The WNACS registration page is available HERE.

IFPA State/Provincial Representatives should be sending out emails shortly, although most have already done so with our short registration period. It is important to note that if you do not have a registered IFPA player account, you are INELIGIBLE to participate. If you feel you should have received an invitation to one of the IFPA State Championships and did not, contact the IFPA immediately at ifpapinball@gmail.com, or click HERE to register your profile.

Registration closes on January 7th at 8pm CST for both the NACS and WNACS. Any player that has not accepted their invitation by that time will be ineligible to participate.

Remember that no player is allowed to compete in multiple IFPA State/Provincial Championships. Players that qualify for more than one IFPA State/Provincial Championship will have to make their choice during this open period of registration. This will mean that many states/provinces will go far past the top 16 players in order to fill all 16 spots (or 24 players for any Super State/Province).

Any questions about the NACS, or anything IFPA related, please contact us at ifpapinball@gmail.com.

Louis Marx is back with the sixth interview in the IFPA Tournament Director Stories series. This time he meets with Doug Polka.

To read the interview, click HERE.

With the 2024 pinball season officially wrapping up tonight, the World Pinball Player Rankings continues to show no signs of slowing down within the competitive pinball community. We wanted to take a quick look back at the growth we saw during 2024.

We’re proud to say that the total number of IFPA sanctioned events for 2024 was 12,603.  This represents a 22% growth from the end of 2023 where we had 10,324 IFPA sanctioned events on the calendar. Total player attendance at those events was 287,696, up 17% from 2022.

In addition, the number of unique players that played in an IFPA sanctioned tournament during 2024 was 38,538, up 17% from the number of players that were active during 2023.

The IFPA wishes to thank everyone in the competitive pinball community for continuing to support everything we do to spread the world about our incredible sport to the masses.

In conjunction with Stern Pinball, the IFPA is proud to announce the Stern Pro Circuit event list for the 2025 season. 15 events from the 2024 season remain on the tour, with 5 new events joining the ranks for 2025.

Check out the list HERE.