Meet Jinny Lu, The 2026 Ugliest Dog In America

In this fierce competition, the more peculiar your dog looks, the better.

At the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest at the Sonoma County Fair in Santa Rosa, California, dogs compete to be crowned the ugliest of them all.

The annual contest “advocates for the adoration of all animals and the benefits of adoption” and celebrates “the imperfections that make all dogs special and unique,” according to its website.

This year, Jinny Lu, a floppy-tongued, beady-eyed rescue pug draped in pearls, took the top honours. The six-year-old pup won bragging rights for herself and her owner – as well as a $5,000 (approx £3,697) prize and a trip to New York City, where they appeared on NBC’s Today show.

According to her biography on the contest’s site, Jinny Lu was “found in a wooden box in freezing weather in the mountains of South Korea”. She enjoys screaming at herself in the mirror.

Jinny Lu’s owner, Michelle Grady, told Today that Jinny Lu is a curious pup. “A lot of the time, she’s looking for things to get into. She loves purses. She loves mirrors,” Grady said.

What matters most is that they are all good pups. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so is ugliness. Here are the “ugliest dog” winners from previous years:

According to her biography on the contest’s website, Petunia is a hairless Frenchie and English bulldog mix who was rescued from a backyard breeder.

Rescuers from Luvable Dog Rescue in Oregon also got her surgery to correct her elongated palate to help her breathing.

Since she’s healed, her favourite activity is snuggling and taking trail walks in the Oregon woods where she resides.

Wild Thang won the contest on his fifth try, and his perseverance paid off.

In an Associated Press video of the event, one of the 2024 judges, California State Treasurer Fiona Ma, said Wild Thang’s story of being “like the bridesmaid and never the bride, really tugged at our heartstrings. He deserved to win.”

After a breeder brought him to animal control, Scooter was saved from euthanasia by the Saving Animals From Euthanasia (SAFE) rescue group. Scooter has wispy hair, reversed hind legs, and a long tongue that flops – and these qualities are what endeared him to the judges.

“In the cutest way possible, he kind of reminds me of a hairy hippopotamus,” Catherine Liang, one of the judges for the 2023 competition, told The New York Times.

The competition was put on pause for a few years during the Covid-19 pandemic, and in 2022, Mr. Happy Face, a Chihuahua mix with a mohawk, won the top prize at 17 years old.

“His soul is too beautiful,” his owner, Jeneda Benally, told Today after the win. “He came from a hoarding situation where he was very badly abused … It took a long time for him to feel OK with human touch.”

Benally said she dubbed him “Mr. Happy Face” after seeing him hobble out at the shelter, showing he “had an incredible capacity to show so much love”.

Scamp the Tramp was rescued by owner Yvonne Morones in 2014, and it was an immediate connection.

“It was on the way home that I knew I made the right choice,” Morones said in a statement about rescuing Scamp.

“There we were, two strangers in a car on the way home to a new start. Bob Marley was playing ‘One Love’ and I looked over and little Scamp was bobbing his head. It was like he knew he had found his forever home.”