Mary Jane Berlin 2026
It was such an absolute pleasure seeing friends from all around the world gathered at the largest cannabis festival event in the world.
70,000+ people attended. Let that sink in.
In Germany, 70,000 people came to celebrate cannabis all together. That gives me chills as I write this.
I started off my adventure with The High Rollers Invitational golf tournament, for stoners. High level stoners. CEOs and such.
We hopped on a luxury tour bus at the Messe, drove for about an hour to the golf course. One of the nicest in the area. I’m no golfer, but I sure am interested after this experience. I captured the event for the homies at Iuvo + partners.
Check out the images below.
There were players from Thailand, Canada, Germany, UK, and USA. Really solid group of people.
I teamed up with a film-maker named Eric to capture the event. I shot a combination with my Canon R5 and Leica Q3, and little film of course. We were assigned a sweet electric BMW golf cart to cruise the course.
Eric was a fascinating guy with a background in music production and music videos. He’s from and based in Berlin, and also responsible for shooting most of Iuvos video content. True creative artist, wildly authentic, and was a blast to share stories while capturing one together.
It’s moments like these were the plant connects people from opposite ends of the world, with different upbringings and backgrounds – together. Herb has always been a barrier breaker for me.
Speaking of Iuvo – check out these 35mm film images of the guys
Mary Jane Festival
This year I had more of an agenda than last year. I came with intention and purpose.
A couple months before the show it dawned on me to make a promo book. It was perfect timing as I’d collected a ton of my work from over the years for my new website build out. Over a weekend I just flowed with the design, it was a little magical.
Without getting too into the weeds about it, the book was hit! I packed my luggage with 60 books, weighing just under 50lbs – my allotted limit. Tossed a few changes of clothes and jam packed my camera backpack with gear.
The festival had grown even larger this year. There were new halls and the outdoor area was more like a music festival. I didn’t spend much time in the music festival area, so I can’t really speak about that.
Things to note about this year:
The presence of California brands. There was a whole like Sacramento – Nevada County outside tent section.
Brands clothing in EU is much more quality than what I see being handed out in the states.
Calmness and etiquette of attendees.
Too many side events and after parties to attend. Made it really hard to decide where to go with such limited time while jet lagged.
Learning that a lot of the legal herb in Germany comes from Canada and Thailand. I knew there was a lot of importing, but it’s always interesting to learn just how much of what comes from where.
That local Germans thought the 7-9euro food truck meals are very expensive.. I would kill for a $7 any type of meal in the states. And the food was legit.
The weather was, well more like the PNW. Cloudy, windy, rainy. The complete opposite of last year. I even got stranded with folks in a tent during a flash down pour in the middle of Saturday.
Being excluded by a long time client. Receiving texts from friends about where I was during dinners – ones I just wasn’t invited to. It’s a bummer when you get screwed over and then get kicked to the curb at the same time. iykyk –
The last thing that surprised me was seeing my work STOLEN by multiple companies in various ways. The biggest shock was seeing one of my *copyrighted* images as 4x4ft hero image on their booth. Yes, I am taking legal action. Yes, I will tell when the time comes.
Very Happy Berlin
I was happy to receive an invite from my friends at En Vola to go on a side adventure right after Mary Jane. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but was very stoked to see so many familiar faces, and ones who I’d only seen online.
The group was about 100 people from all over the globe. Mostly all content creators – or influencers. I don’t really care for those labels, especially in this circumstance, because these people – even though they truly are influential, are much more than just the cliche instagram content creator.
I was intrigued watching them plan and execute content throughout the trip. I’m more accustomed to more traditional media production, whereas most of these folks used their phones or creator camera kits. It was impressive what was produced with such lightweight gear. The best camera is the one in your hand!
If I were to guess, there’s 10 million+ in the collective networks in the group. Some people had 5-6mil just on their own channel!
Everyone was super fucking cool, easy going, and approachable.
We traveled south from Berlin on a plush tour bus to Demecan, Germany’s largest GMP pharama cannabis producer.
From there we went to a Castle near the boarder of Czech. We explored the local areas, broke bread, and partied for a couple nights.
I’ll let the photos tell the story…
