Blood & Pigment Reveals 2026 People's Choice Winners for Blood & Plunder Categories
The 5th annual Great Pirate Paint Off wraps its flagship Units and Port Royal categories as Blood & Pigment announces People's Choice winners from a four-day community vote.
The 2026 Great Pirate Paint Off reached its penultimate milestone on April 9 when Blood & Pigment posted the People's Choice results for its two most hotly contested categories: Blood & Plunder Units and Port Royal. The four-day voting window closed in early April, though the announcement arrived a few days behind schedule after the AdeptiCon convention in late March pulled the Blood & Pigment team away from their usual publishing rhythm.
The contest, now in its fifth year, is the premier community painting event for Firelock Games' pirate titles, drawing entrants painting official Blood & Plunder, Oak & Iron, and Port Royal miniatures finished during the 2026 calendar year. Port Royal's inclusion as a full standalone category marks a notable step up for the game's profile within the annual event, running alongside the established Blood & Plunder Units poll for the first time at this scale.
The People's Choice format uses a two-stage process: a panel of judges scores entries using a ranked voting system to narrow the field to a shortlist, and then opens that shortlist to the full community for a several-day public poll. Each category's top voted entry earns a 2026 Great Pirate Paint Off medal. Participation prize draws run separately, with sponsor-backed prizes from Firelock Games, Monument Hobbies, and Baron of Dice seeding over $1,600 in total contest plunder this year.
The winning entries — photographs of which accompany the April 9 post — drew particular notice for basing creativity and historically grounded colour choices, two recurring strengths in Blood & Plunder's competitive painting field. With neutral leather tones and warm earth palettes representing the colonial Caribbean setting, the top entries offer a practical visual reference for painters looking to push their own work beyond basic faction colours. Cohesion across multi-figure units, a notoriously difficult bar to clear, featured prominently among the entries that advanced to the public vote.
The contest still has runway left: the Blood & Plunder Ships and Battle Force categories remain open until April 30, with their own judging and People's Choice voting scheduled for the first week of May. Full winner galleries for the Units and Port Royal categories are live now at bloodandpigment.com.
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