Wageningen Worm Charming Championships 2025. Foto Ruben Eshuis The Wageningen Championships Worm Charming were held at Unifarm last Thursday. ‘The weather was excellent for humans, but less so for worms.’ A Resource photographer attended the event and recorded the chaos.
During half an hour, sixteen adult teams and one team of children attempted to entice as many earthworms as they could to the surface. They did so by causing the ground to vibrate. In addition to an award for the most earthworms, there were also awards for the most original charming method and the best decorations. Guaranteed chaos.
‘As a result of the drought, there were extremely few earthworms’, says soil ecologist and organiser Jan Willem van Groenigen after the event. The winning team from the Louis Bolk Institute caught no more than ten earthworms in half an hour. The worms were added to the worm hotel on the campus after the championships. Van Groenigen: ‘If the weather is fine, hundreds of worms is not unusual, so ten is a really low number.’
The Louis Bolk Institute team also turned heads with their outfit and theme, which were linked to recent news on PFAS levels in eggs produced by backyard chickens: PFAS from the soil is said to accumulate in earthworms; chickens then eat the worms, which causes PFAS to be found in eggs. The Louis Bolk team came as ‘worm counsellors’, calling on the worms to discuss their PFAS issues.
Images
Ruben Eshuis’ photo series of the worm charming championships is shown below. Prefer video? Resource made the video below last year, which went viral and gained millions of views.
