Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship will bring competitive eating, rugby league legends and Australia’s humble meat pie together at Coogee Bay Hotel this September.
On a Sunday afternoon in September, Coogee will have a new reason to gather.
The beach will still draw its usual crowd, the coastal walk will continue along the cliffs and the familiar rhythm of the eastern suburbs will carry on around the water. But inside the Coogee Bay Hotel, another kind of Australian ritual will be taking shape.
On Sunday 20 September 2026, competitors will sit down with a very specific task ahead of them: eat as many meat pies as possible.
It sounds simple, almost deliberately so.
Yet behind the inaugural Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship will be a larger idea about Australian culture, family businesses and the foods that quietly become part of national identity.
Sean Garlick, former South Sydney Rabbitohs player and founder of Garlo’s Pies, will launch the championship with his family in the hope of creating an annual tradition of its own.
The inspiration will come from across the Pacific.
Every Fourth of July, Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest transforms Coney Island into a stage for one of the world's best-known competitive eating events. Garlick’s ambition will be to establish an Australian equivalent, built not around the hot dog but around something far more familiar to Australians.
The meat pie.
Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship
The significance of the Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship will not really be found in the number of pies consumed.
It will be found in the reason those pies are there.
For generations, the meat pie has existed almost everywhere in Australian life. It will be found in football grounds, bakery windows, service stations and paper bags carried home after a Saturday morning walk.
It is the food eaten when there is little time to think about food.
At the footy, it can be dinner. On a road trip, it can be a necessary stop. At a local bakery, it can be an uncomplicated breakfast or lunch.
The meat pie's familiarity is part of its strength.
Unlike foods that are associated with particular regions, restaurants or occasions, the Australian pie belongs to everyday life. It is ordinary enough to be overlooked, yet recognisable enough to become symbolic.
The championship will attempt to make that ordinary object the centre of a national occasion.
Garlick has said that the ambition will extend well beyond the inaugural event. The hope will be that Australians eventually regard the championship as an annual tradition, something that families might watch together in years to come.
That is a considerable ambition for an event beginning with people eating pies at a Sydney pub.
But traditions rarely begin as traditions.
They begin as an idea someone decides is worth repeating.
From The Footy To The Championship
Garlick's connection to the project will be rooted in both sport and food.
Before establishing Garlo’s Pies, he played rugby league for South Sydney. That background gives the championship an interesting cultural intersection.
Competitive eating is, in its own way, a sporting spectacle. It has rules, divisions, judges, preparation and performance. The appetite may be physical, but the event surrounding it depends on the same ingredients found in more conventional competitions: anticipation, personalities, rivalries and an audience.
The inaugural Garlo’s championship will deliberately draw on that sporting language.
There will be three divisions, each providing a different interpretation of the competition.
The Public Championship will give everyday Australians the chance to compete.
The Legends Division will bring former rugby league players into the contest.
Then there will be the Professional Championship, where experienced competitive eaters will take the stage.
Among them will be James Webb, described by the organisers as Australia’s number one competitive eater and the number four ranked competitive eater in the world.
That division will provide the closest connection to the established international competitive eating circuit, while the public and legends categories will keep the event connected to Australian sporting culture.
Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship Meets Rugby League
The presence of rugby league figures will give the day another layer of familiarity.
Paul Gallen, Aaron Woods, Mark Carroll, Mark Geyer, Billy Moore, John Sutton, Les Davidson and Craig Salvatori are among the NRL legends expected to take part.
These are names that belong to a very different kind of Australian competition.
Their careers were built around physical endurance, tactical decisions and the intensity of professional sport. At Coogee, they will be asked to demonstrate an entirely different form of commitment.
The humour of that contrast will be difficult to avoid.
There is something distinctly Australian about watching familiar sporting figures exchange the football field for a table covered in pies.
The Championship's inaugural Chief Pie Judge will be another recognisable rugby league figure, legendary referee Bill Harrigan.
His role will give the competition an appropriately official tone, even if the object being judged is considerably less conventional than anything usually found in a sporting arena.
Why The Meat Pie Matters
Australia's relationship with the meat pie is difficult to separate from its relationship with sport.
At suburban grounds, the pie is often part of the experience rather than simply something eaten during it. At professional matches, the sight of people eating pies in the stands is so familiar that it barely registers.
There is also something democratic about it.
A pie does not require elaborate preparation at the moment of eating. It comes wrapped, warm and portable. It can be eaten standing up, sitting in a grandstand or leaning against the side of a car during a road trip.
That practicality has helped it endure.
The food has also travelled through Australia's changing cultural history, adapting to different tastes while retaining its recognisable form.
The Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship will therefore be playing with a food that already carries a large amount of cultural meaning.
The competition will simply give Australians an excuse to look at it differently.
For one day, the pie will stop being background scenery and become the main event.
A Family Business At The Centre
The championship will also coincide with more than 25 years of Garlo’s Pies.
The company remains Australian-owned and family-run, and its continued local manufacturing will be central to the story behind the event.
That detail matters because the modern food landscape has changed considerably.
Many brands that Australians have grown up with are now owned by large international companies. Familiar packaging and familiar names can remain unchanged even as ownership moves elsewhere.
Garlo’s has followed another path.
Its identity has remained tied to Australian ownership and local production, and the championship will provide an opportunity to place those values alongside the cultural history of the meat pie.
The result will not simply be an eating competition.
It will also be a public expression of what the Garlick family believes a contemporary Australian food business can represent.
There will be a connection between manufacturing, family ownership and the rituals surrounding food.
Building Something That Can Last
The hardest part of creating an annual tradition is not launching the first event.
It is convincing people to return.
The Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship will begin with the advantage of a familiar concept. Australians already understand the meat pie. They understand sporting competitions. They understand the theatre of watching people attempt something difficult.
The question will be whether those ingredients can become something more lasting.
Garlick's stated ambition is long-term. He has described a future in which families might watch the championship together, just as audiences in the United States have made Nathan’s competition part of the Fourth of July landscape.
That comparison is useful, but the Australian version will inevitably develop its own character.
Coney Island has the boardwalk, the beach and its Fourth of July setting.
Coogee has the Pacific, the promenade, the pubs and its own deep connection to Sydney's weekend culture.
If the championship returns year after year, its identity will be shaped by that setting.
The Coogee Setting
Coogee Bay Hotel will provide a particularly recognisable Sydney backdrop for the inaugural championship.
The suburb's relationship with the ocean will be impossible to ignore.
A short distance from the venue, the coastline will continue its daily rhythm, with swimmers moving through the water and walkers following the shoreline. The hotel itself will provide the more enclosed, social environment in which the competition can unfold.
There is a pleasing contrast in that arrangement.
Outside, the Pacific will provide one of Sydney's most enduring natural spectacles.
Inside, a group of competitors will be focused on an entirely different kind of endurance.
The combination should give the event a sense of place that a competition held in an anonymous exhibition hall could not easily reproduce.
The meat pie is being presented as an Australian icon, and the inaugural championship will place it firmly within a recognisable Sydney setting.
More Than A Food Competition
The Championship will also be accompanied by entertainment, personalities and opportunities for media coverage.
Channel Nine is documenting the journey as Garlick and his family attempt to establish the competition, adding another layer to the story.
That attention reflects the unusual nature of the idea.
There are countless food festivals and sporting events across Australia, but comparatively few occasions where a familiar everyday food is given the treatment normally reserved for major competitive spectacles.
The event will be part food culture, part sporting entertainment and part family-business story.
It will also be an experiment.
Can an eating competition become a tradition?
Can a humble pie carry enough cultural weight to support an annual national event?
And can an Australian family business turn an idea that initially sounds slightly absurd into something people genuinely look forward to?
Those questions will remain unanswered on 20 September.
The inaugural championship will only be the beginning.
A New Kind Of Australian Sunday
There is something fitting about the event taking place on a Sunday.
Sunday is traditionally the day of the Australian weekend gathering. It is the day of family lunches, sporting fixtures, coastal walks and trips to the pub.
The Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship will draw those strands together in an unusual way.
There will be former footballers, professional competitive eaters and members of the public sharing the same basic challenge.
The audience will not need specialist knowledge.
Everyone will understand the object at the centre of the contest.
That accessibility may ultimately prove more important than spectacle.
A successful annual tradition needs to be understandable enough for someone encountering it for the first time, while providing enough character for people to want to come back.
The meat pie already has that familiarity.
The championship will attempt to build the occasion around it.
Event Details
The inaugural Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship will take place on Sunday 20 September 2026 at Coogee Bay Hotel in Sydney.
The event will feature three divisions: the Public Championship, the Legends Division and the Professional Championship.
The Professional Championship will include James Webb, Australia's number one competitive eater and number four in the world, alongside other leading Australian competitors.
The Legends Division will feature former NRL players including Paul Gallen, Aaron Woods, Mark Carroll, Mark Geyer, Billy Moore, John Sutton, Les Davidson and Craig Salvatori.
Bill Harrigan will serve as the inaugural Chief Pie Judge.
Venue: Coogee Bay Hotel, Sydney
Date: Sunday 20 September 2026
Official information: Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship
Event times should be confirmed through the official website before attending.
The First Bite
By the end of the day, the important question may not be who ate the most pies.
The more interesting question will be whether the Garlo’s Australian Pie Eating Championship has begun something that can outlast its inaugural gathering.
Australia has always been good at turning ordinary things into shared rituals.
A beach can become a Sunday institution. A football match can become a family tradition. A bakery can become a landmark known across generations.
The meat pie already has a place in that story.
At Coogee Bay Hotel on 20 September, the Garlick family will attempt to give it another.
The competitors will take their seats, the pies will arrive, the judge will call proceedings to order, and the room will turn its attention towards a food most Australians already know intimately.
For a few minutes, the humble pie will become the centre of the country.
Whether it becomes the beginning of an annual tradition will be decided over time.
For now, the first championship will simply have to begin with the first bite.