PestWorld Opens in Grapevine Tomorrow, and Four Sessions Won't Count in Texas

The pest management industry's annual convention opens Tuesday morning at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine, and the first thing worth reading is not the exhibit hall map. It is the state-by-state continuing education table.

PestWorld 2026 runs Oct. 20 through Oct. 23. The National Pest Management Association bills it as four days of education across seven tracks, with the industry's largest exhibit hall attached, along with an opening ceremony and reception, main-stage presentations and PestFest. "Join thousands of pest management professionals, suppliers, and innovators," the association's event page reads, which is roughly what a trade show of this size is: a few thousand people who sell, regulate or research pest control, in one building, for a working week.

For Texas license holders, the useful document is NPMA's own per-state approval list. The Texas version is blunt in a way the marketing copy is not. It lists 29 sessions, assigns each one to a Texas credit category, and then flags four of them — the rodent session, the wildlife session, the first half of the intern showcase and the remote-monitoring session — with the words "Not Approved" and a credit value of zero.

Those four are, awkwardly, some of the more interesting hours on the schedule. "Rodents Outside the Box: Exploring Non-Commensal Rodent Control" is the session for the part of the rodent market that lives in a field or a greenbelt rather than a kitchen. "Hogs, Alligators, and Snakes, Oh My!" covers the wildlife calls that have become a routine revenue line for Texas companies working the suburban fringe, where a feral hog sounder in a greenbelt or a snake in a garage is a Tuesday. Both will be full. Neither will move a Texas renewal.

The approved list reads like a map of what the state's structural pest control categories actually cover. "Beyond Contamination: The Evolving Link Between Salmonella and the German Cockroach" and "Urban Ant Biology, Ecology and Management with a New Twist" both land under the Pest heading, as does "Mosquito Control Beyond the Home," a commercial-services session that treats mosquito work as a growth line rather than a seasonal add-on. "Approaches to Tick Repellents and Acaricides" gets filed under Lawn & Ornamental in Texas, and the ham beetle session — a stored-product insect normally encountered in food plants — is counted as Commodity Fumigation.

The termite rows are worth a look on their own. "An Update on the Range Expansion of Invasive Termites Across North America, and New Tools to Stop Them" carries the Termite credit, which is where the Texas money is; the state has been watching Asian and Formosan subterranean termite detections spread for years, and range questions are the ones that change how inspectors read a slab. "Fumigation Services: An Ever-Changing Regulatory Option" carries the Structural Fumigation credit, and "The Trojan House" and the urban ant identification session round out the practical tracks.

There is also a cluster of sessions on chemical strategy that would have been filler five years ago and is not now. One asks whether using multiple chemicals actually makes bed bug infestations worse. Another covers insecticide resistance monitoring and population genetics in bed bugs and German cockroaches. Both are Texas Pest credits. A third, on horizontal insecticide transfer and secondary mortality in German roach work, is filed under General-Other.

The mechanics matter as much as the schedule. NPMA submits credits only for attendees who have their badge scanned at the session and whose applicator or license number is current in their online account; certificates then post to that account. Texas attendees who skip either step get the education and not the paperwork.

Registration and the full program are on NPMA's event site. The exhibit hall and the sessions run through Friday.