Texas Pinball Festival Returns to Frisco Conference Center in March 2026

More than 400 pinball machines lined the floor of the Embassy Suites Dallas–Frisco Hotel & Conference Center last weekend, every one of them set to free play, as the Texas Pinball Festival wrapped its 22nd annual run at 7600 John Q Hammons Dr. in Frisco.

The award-winning festival returned to Frisco March 20–22, filling a 60,000-square-foot game room with machines and family fun and welcoming guests from across the United States and beyond. The lineup included vintage and new pinball machines alongside classic arcade games, all on free play, with debut titles such as BeetleJuice from Spooky Pinball, Pokemon from Stern Pinball, and Three Musketeers from French newcomer Hexa-Pinball.

The theme of this year's show was dragons: the event logo featured a dragon, dragon-themed pinballs occupied their own dedicated section of the show floor, and dragon sculpts were placed throughout the venue. A curated row of 14 dragon-related games ran the gamut from Dungeons & Dragons by Stern Pinball to Harry Potter by Jersey Jack Pinball and older classics like Dragon's Lair by Don Bluth.

Three Texas-based pinball manufacturers, Barrels of Fun, Turner Pinball, and Multimorphic, showed off their most recent releases at the festival. Vendors, collectors, and hobbyists brought parts, supplies, game room memorabilia, pinballs, slot machines, jukeboxes, and video games for sale, while adult and children's tournaments offered competition for trophies, ribbons, and cash prizes.

Sunday's tournament area hosted the Texas Wizards Tournament Finals and the Texas Takedown: Women's Pinball Championship. Attendees also had a chance to win a Harry Potter Arcade Edition pinball machine through a raffle benefiting the National Videogame Museum in Frisco, and festival wristbands earned 50% off admission at the museum throughout the weekend.

American Pinball ran a separate draw for a Houdini 100th Anniversary machine, though only U.S. residents were eligible to win. When the winning name, Chris Engberg, was called, he wasn't present to claim the prize as required, so a second name was drawn: Nicole Schulte. Shortly after, a breathless Chris Engberg finally arrived, and American Pinball owner Bryan Vincent decided to award a second Houdini machine to him as well.

A new addition to the festival's schedule was TechDay, which ran Wednesday and allowed machine owners to bring their pinball to the venue, where an allocated technician would diagnose and repair faults on the spot while the owner learned the techniques firsthand. A TechDay ticket cost $80, with replacement components available at a discounted rate.

The festival has grown substantially since its early years, moving through larger venues including a Holiday Inn in Las Colinas, the Grapevine DFW Lakes Hilton in 2007, and the Hilton Anatole in Dallas in 2013 before Frisco became its permanent home in 2014. The hotel group block for the 2026 event, listed under code TPF2026, sold out, though the booking link remained active for cancellations. Alternative nearby hotels ranged from the Holiday Inn Express at $114 a night to the Hampton Inn Frisco at $139 and the Home2 Suites by Hilton Dallas-Frisco at $147.

Children under five were admitted free. A full weekend pass cost $105 for those who pre-registered by March 9. The Embassy Suites can be reached at (972) 712-7200.