Four things:

• Eight regions across Aotearoa, each with its own Best Burger and up to two runners-up, on top of the national titles. Up to 30 titles in all.

• Burgers are ranked on a rating out of 30 rather than a running total.

• Every score is backed by a receipt and checked before it reaches the leaderboard.

• One national leaderboard, filterable by region and by category, updated in real time following audit and verification, right up to 9am on Saturday 3 April, when we blur it while scoring carries on.

Registrations open: September 2026

Early bird entries end: 30 November 2026

Registrations close: 12 February 2027

Final burger details due: 12 February 2027

Burger Nation runs: 3 March – 4 April 2027

Leaderboard blurred from: 3 April 2027

Audit and appeals: 5 – 13 April 2027

Winners announced: 14 April 2027

Every venue sits in one of eight regions and competes for that region’s titles as well as the national ones.

1.  Auckland / Northland

5.  Central Plateau / East Coast

2.  Hamilton / Waikato – Thames / Coromandel

6.  Wellington Region

3.  Tauranga / Rotorua / Bay of Plenty

7.  Upper South Island

4.  Taranaki / Whanganui / Manawatū

8.  Lower South Island

Early bird entry: $199 + GST (until 30 November 2026)

Standard entry: $249 + GST (from 1 December 2026). That is one fee per venue, however many of the four categories you enter.

The best part? You don’t need to know your burger details to lock in your early bird fee. Secure your spot now and confirm your burger(s) by 12 February 2027.

• Entry into one or more of the four categories, with one burger in each, on the one registration and fee. Each entry can carry an optional beer match and is featured on the Burger Nation website and the Find My Nearest Burger Map.

• A place in your regional contest as well as the national one, so you’re up against venues in your own patch.

• A marketing pack for your venue (posters, stickers, table talkers with QR codes) so customers can score easily.

• Digital assets for your own Burger Nation social campaign.

• Your own verified scores and audit outcomes on request, so you can see how your burger landed.

We’ll run a nationwide media campaign promoting the competition online, offline and across social channels, driving burger lovers straight to your door. With eight regional races running alongside the national title there’s a local story to tell in every part of the country.

Nope! If you think you’ve already got the winning burger, enter it as-is as long as it has McClure’s Pickles on, in or with it. Or if you want to dream up something new and special, we’d love to help promote it.

Contact us here and we’ll get you sorted.

Whilst we would encourage you to support our sponsors and take advantage of their special competition offers, you only need to include McClure’s Pickles as a rule. Every other ingredient is up to you.

Your burger needs to be clearly displayed as a Burger Nation entry on your menu or blackboard for the whole competition, and identified on the table talkers we send you. One more thing worth getting right: the burger name on your till or ordering system needs to match the name you entered, because every score is checked against a receipt showing the burger by name.

One thing your team needs to know: your own staff, your owners and their immediate family — a partner, parent, child or sibling — are not eligible to score your competition burgers. Those scores get removed at audit, so it is worth a word to the crew before you launch.

Yes! Each entry can carry one beer match at no extra cost, chosen from the range our official brewery partners put up — each brewery offers a maximum of six beers. Your matched beer is displayed alongside your burger on the website and in searches.

We’re locking in our brewery partners for 2027 and we’ll announce them soon. Each brewery partner will have up to six exceptional beers you can choose from to pair with your burger or burgers!

Easy. As much as we’d love you to support our partners, you’re still welcome to promote your match in-venue. It just won’t be listed online.

Your customers judge your burger/s on looks, taste and the all-important eats, marking each out of a possible 10. That gives every burger a score out of 30. Looks is presentation and appeal, taste is flavour, and eats is how it eats: the preparation, the fillings and the texture.

Every score is backed by a receipt showing the date, time and burger by name, captured in the app and checked before it reaches the leaderboard. Printed and digital receipts both count. For a delivery order it is the order confirmation receipt from our preferred food delivery partner Delivereasy, or from another delivery provider, that counts. A venue order docket sent out with the delivery is not accepted, either in place of the order receipt or in addition to it. Scorers register a free ID so each person scores a given burger once. Group purchases and shared phones are handled, and every venue can request its own audit outcomes.

You can track how you’re going all season on the leaderboard, filtered to your region or across the country.

New for 2027: burgers are ranked on a rating out of 30 rather than a running total. Racking up extra scores at the standard you’re already scoring at won’t lift your position.

An entry needs at least fifteen verified scores to be ranked. Your burger is on the leaderboard from day one, but until you reach fifteen it shows how far you have to go, something like 3 of 15, rather than a score. Once you reach fifteen the top and bottom 10 percent of your scores are trimmed before averaging, and ratings built on very few scores are weighted toward the competition average until enough scores come in. The full method is published before scoring opens and doesn’t change once it’s open. You’ll find it in our T’s and C’s.

Where two burgers competing for the same place are within 0.01 points of each other we go to the tie-break, which is set before the competition opens: the higher average taste sub-score first, then the higher number of verified scores as the better-evidenced result. If those are level too, we award the title jointly.

Up to 30 in all:

• Best Burger and up to two runners-up in each region.

• Four national category awards for Meat, Chicken, Seafood and Plant.

• The coveted Gold Burger and, new for 2027, the Silver Burger. Both are taken from the regional winners.

You can hold a regional title and a national one at the same time, and you don’t need to place in your region to win your category.

A region needs six qualifying entries to award all three places. With four or five it’s a winner and one runner-up, with two or three it’s a winner only, and with fewer than two no regional title is awarded (those entries still go in the running for the national category awards).

Scoring closes at 11:59pm on Sunday 4 April. The leaderboard is blurred from 9am on Saturday 3 April and stays that way while we finish the audit and clear any appeals, with winners announced on Wednesday 14 April 2027. That gap is deliberate: it is where every score behind a title gets checked, which is the whole point of the 2027 changes.

• Regional winners: a custom trophy valued at $500, window decals, serious bragging rights and automatic entry into Burger Nation 2028.

• Category winners: the same, plus a professional photo shoot valued at $500.

• Gold Burger: the coveted Gold Burger trophy valued at $1,000, 12 x 20kg McClure’s Pickle pails valued at $2,160, a professional photo shoot valued at $500, $250 voucher spend, decals and automatic entry into 2028.

• Silver Burger: the Silver Burger trophy valued at $500, 6 x 20kg McClure’s Pickle pails valued at $1,080, decals and automatic entry into 2028.

• Regional runners-up: window decals and recognition in the winners announcement.

• More sponsor prizes to be announced. 

Loads! We hand out spot prizes to scorers through the competition, and the best comments will be shared on Burger Nation social feeds, giving them extra kudos while giving you extra buzz. They can also follow their own regional race, which makes backing a local venue a lot more fun.

As a condition of entry your venue name, address, region, burger details and results are published by us and shared with our sponsors, potential sponsors, media and delivery partners so we can promote the competition and your entry. Your registered contact details go to sponsors too, so they can get in touch about competition products, support and offers.

Your customers’ details are a separate matter. Scorers register with Burger Nation, not with you, and their email addresses stay with us. Sponsors never receive them and neither do venues. You get your own scores and audit outcomes, not scorer contact details.

Yes! We’re in talks with some amazing sponsors and will update you here very soon!