It’s official: The Leafly Strain of the Year 2025 nominees are here.
Five strains. Five breeders. Five different contenders for Leafly Strain of the Year 2025. We’ll be announcing our pick for the winner on March 4th, so you’ve got a little over a month to try the strains you aren’t familiar with, place your bets, talk it over with your friends, argue about it with internet strangers, the works.
There are no losers here, not by a long shot. Every nominee on this list has a compelling case to inherit Super Boof’s crown.
But there’s only room at the top for a single strain, so let’s dive in and see what strains conquered the weed world in 2025.
And the nominees are!
Kush Mints x F1 Durb x TK41 | Hybrid
Gush Mints is the creation of legendary Oakland breeder Purple City Genetics, who has been a staple of the California scene for decades. The collective’s cannabis expertise is simply undeniable, and Gush Mints is the proof.
It’s a flavorful and fascinating strain that has become a standard of both dispensary shelves and stash boxes across the West Coast, and it’s made significant inroads in the rest of the country as well.
While Gush Mints has a terp profile you may have seen before (the blend of limonene, caryophyllene, and linalool is reminiscent of 2021 SOTY Dosidos), the strain is its own beast with a distinctly chilling, minty flavor. The nearest experience to smoking Gush Mints is picking some berries fresh from the bush, cold air in your lungs, snow under your feet.
Purple City Genetics’ indica-dominant hybrid is also a strictly after-dark sort of strain. When the lights are low, and it’s time to unwind and doze off, then Gush Mints will soothe any trace of stress left in your psyche and usher you to sleep faster than a slow football game after Thanksgiving dinner.
What made Gush Mints stand out above the pack this year and drew our team’s eye is its ability to synthesize the best parts of its Cookies heritage into a complete package that feels like an evolution of the genre. It’s a dream for growers, who value its ability to wash for hash, and its second-to-none bag appeal means that dispensary owners can’t keep it on the shelves. Purple City Genetics has shown they have a preternatural sense of market forces and have launched Gush Mints like a heat-seeking missile targeted towards the center of the zeitgeist.
Han Solo Hash Plant x Double Burger | Hybrid
Run from it, deny it, fight it, but the stereotype is true: Americans just can’t put down a burger. Hash Burger is a strain with a flavor profile that wholeheartedly embraces the spicy, stanky, savory elements that many strains shy away from. The strain’s primary notes are pepper, garlic, and onion, with a stab of ammonia that deepens and complicates the umami-forward flavor.
On the smoke, Hash Burger gives a robust, very potent high that is ideal for a low-intensity hang with small groups. It’s social and often gives the giggles, and pairs that uplifting social energy with a body high that keeps you grounded and feeling present. If your circle is tough enough for the burger, then few strains of 2025 would be preferable for any movie or gaming session.
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Hash Burger comes from Mr. Respect and the man known as Skunk Master Flex. The strain has DNA from Triangle Kush, GMO, Double Burger, and Han Solo Hash Plant, a clever and complex brew that has cemented the strain as the incredibly popular, and somewhat polarizing fixture of the weed world.
Hash Burger earned its spot in 2025 for being an unapologetic strain. Other stains run from the flavors and aromas that used to be everywhere, but have been swallowed by the candy-gas hegemony. Hash Burger goes another way. It is a gutsy strain with an unimpeachable terpene profile that doesn’t mind combating conventional wisdom, and we love it for that. Add in the fact that, as its name suggests, Hash Burger washes with the best of them, and you’ve got a strain that growers and extractors love, and with a dedicated fan base that has rocketed Hash Burger to nationwide stardom.
What’s an award season without a foreign entry? Well, Dulce De Uva’s name is foreign at least (that’s Sweet Grape in English, for those of you who took French instead of Spanish in high school). The strain itself hails from Colorado, however, where hash-specialist breeders Bloom Seed Co. brought this strain to life by crossing Grape Pie and a cultivar of OG Kush. That sort of profile is par for the course for the folks at Bloom Co.; they’re known for their fruity, sweet strains, and we think they’ve caught lightning in a nug jar with Dulce De Uva. And judging by our data, it seems like cannabis consumers from coast to coast agree.
It’s a bit tough to give more information about Dulce De Uva’s flavor that you aren’t going to glean from its oh-so-accurate name. It’s sugar-sweet and grape-forward, with subtle notes of gasoline and pine, and a delightful vanilla element that lies on top like a dollop of whipped cream.
It’s candy gas par excellence, folks. If you’re a fan of Runtz or its many heirs, then jump on Dulce De Uva as fast as you can if you haven’t made the strain’s acquaintance.
The high that Dulce De Uva delivers is relaxing and well-rounded, with a definite uplifting, euphoric current. It’s great for a solo smoke at the end of the day, especially for those of you who deal with persistent aches and pains. It’ll relieve tension, both physical and mental, with a middle-of-the-pack THC level that appeals to both casual and serious cannabis consumers. Dulce De Uva lets you remember that despite the drags of modern life, there’s sweetness to be had.
Dulce De Uva earns its nomination by being an exemplar of all the things that made us all fall in love with candy gas strains in the first place, a bold and beautiful strain that does everything right.
Chemdawg x Super Skunk | Hybrid
We know, we know, this is sort of like nominating Titanic for Best Picture in 2025. But, first off, Titanic still totally holds up, and so does Sour Diesel. Secondly, the numbers make the case for Sour Diesel impossible to quibble with, and if Titanic had put up the sort of stats we were seeing Sour D post in 2025, you’d better believe the boat movie would be in the running again.
If you aren’t familiar, Sour Diesel is the legendary cross between Chemdawg x Super Skunk that appeared on the East Coast in the 90s and has kept the cannabis consuming public in a vice grip ever since. Like all strains of a certain age, the exact origins of Sour D are subject to rampant speculation, mystification, and naked lies, and we don’t really have the time to get into it here. Suffice to say that whoever the first breeder was, they knocked that ball clean out of the park with Sour Diesel, and we are all in their debt, whoever they are.
Smoking Sour D is a revelation to the uninitiated. It’s a lightning bolt of cerebral energy, get-up-and-go in a joint. Sour D will have you buzzing from your head to your toes with creativity and social energy, and has been the fuel behind the best stoned conversations for decades. It’s diesel, skunky, caryophyllene-forward terpene profile makes it taste like the spirit of progress, and that distinctive flavor is what has kept it at the forefront of the dispensary ever since there have been dispensaries.
Everyone has a story about the first time they tried Sour Diesel, and everyone has an opinion on when it was the best. However, the number of cannabis consumers is growing every year, and the truth is that a huge percentage of the people who smoked Sour D this year weren’t even alive when the strain arrived on the scene. Somebody new falls in love with Sour Diesel every single day.
With the consumer base expanding so rapidly and so many of them being drawn to Sour Diesel in the same way that the stoners of ages past were, if America still, after all these years, can’t get enough of Sour D, then who are we to argue?
Apples and Bananas x Eye Candy | Hybrid
2025’s strain for those with a sweet tooth, Blue Lobster, is a fruit-forward strain that comes to us out of the great state of Maine (where else?), but has a bi-coastal history that includes collaboration between Cipher Genetics, who bred the original cross from Apples and Bananas and Eye Candy, and Maine Trees, who hunted, named, and popularized the strain. They went on to work with West Coast cultivators to expand the strain’s reach, which is still growing and shows no signs of slowing down.
If you’re a double mocha frap drinker, a Halloween candy hoarder, or even someone with an appreciation for the sweeter side of life, then Blue Lobster may just be an all-timer for you. It smells primarily of blueberries and grapes, but it’s a real fruit salad strain, with notes of plums, apples, and even some citrus fruits.
Blue Lobster isn’t kidding around, so those with low tolerances beware. Most cuts are going to be north of 25% THC, so tread carefully, but with a little bit of caution, Blue Lobster can make for a wonderful time. It’s a buzzy, talkative strain that makes itself comfortable before eventually fading to a calming, relaxing haze.
Blue Lobster has been on the tips of the industry’s tongues for a few years now, racking up prestigious awards and media buzz. Truth be told, it seems as though the main thing that kept the strain from busting out into national prominence was that it was as hard to find as its namesake on dispensary shelves.
2025 was the year when the supply finally began to meet the demand, and more and more people were able to fall in love with the strain they’ve heard so much about. Blue Lobster can catch some flak in online spaces, but that’s how you know it’s the real deal; a Strain of the Year contender that inspires no trolls is no Strain of the Year contender at all.
Leafly Strain of the Year 2025 nominees
How we selected our nominees
Our selection process is a multi-step process that sees our team of cannabis experts dive into Leafly’s unparalleled database of strains and menus to see what strains America chooses at the dispensary, poring over reviews and social media conversations, taking stock of the winners of many cannabis cups, and talking to budtenders and breeders. We also get really, really stoned on the coolest stuff we can find, so we can judge firsthand.
After we sober up a bit, we all get together to hash out each strain’s strengths and weaknesses before we reach our conclusion. Our goal here is to pick a strain that has broken through somehow in the previous year, to further boost a strain that has seen a significant rise in both menu popularity and earned prevalence in the zeitgeist. SOTY is not the best-selling strain of the year, nor the one with the most THC, nor the prettiest nugs. It’s the strain that best exemplifies the past year in all its glory, nothing more, nothing less.
This year, we decided to do things a little bit differently with our Leafly Strain of the Year crowning, and we know it’ll be worth the wait.
We’re taking a page out of Hollywood’s book and doing it up Oscars style because we believe that weed is as deserving of the red carpet treatment as any other industry. Cannabis is firmly in the mainstream now, headed for Schedule 3, and we think that a celebration is in order. So, we’re getting all glammed up and adding a bit of glitz and pizazz to the proceedings while we nerd out about some of the strains that defined the cannabis world in 2025 with our five nominee strains.
No advertiser is able to influence our pick for Strain of the Year, nor anyone wearing a suit. Our team of experts can also not be bribed, though any enterprising companies with deep pockets are certainly welcome to try; we like both diamonds and novelty bongs.
We kid, of course. Leafly Strain of the Year is the biggest award in cannabis, and you can be sure that nothing but our own thoughts influenced our picks.
