After the crowning of Beijing’s best burger last month – Home Plate – the readers of the Beijinger now turn their attention to the city’s best pizza.

This Saturday (Oct 18) from 11am to 8pm at Galaxy Soho, a collection of the city’s finest pizza joints will be offering your taste buds a chance to sample them before we launch our 64-contestant Pizza Cup this weekend.

For the past month, an assembled collection of approximately 200 Beijing pizza fiends have been working their way through a list of over 150 pizza restaurants in Beijing to select the 64 that will make our 2014 voting bracket.

Each venue been verified, evaluated, ranked and categorized into one of five large pizza categories: Pizza Specialists, Upscale Restaurants, Casual/Family Style Restaurants, Bars/Clubs/Cafes, and Fast Food Chains. We’ll seed each of these into our bracket for head-to-head competition that begins immediately following the launch party.

Sunny skies and a warm 23 degrees are forecasted for this weekend’s free-entry launch event, where we’ll be there with pizza, beer, coffee, and other distractions, and a beijingkids booth will keep the little ones preoccupied.

So whether you like your pizza the Italian way, the New York way, the Chicago style or Beijing style, round or squared, thick or thin, this will be the event to attend to get you in the mood.

Confirmed vendors to date include Gung Ho! Pizza, Pizza Plus, Tube Station, The Tree, Passby Bar, La Pizza, Luga’s Little Italy, First Floor, and Fly Pizza; booze will be on hand from Duvel, XL, and Nanjie Bar. 

Keep up to date with the latest vendor confirmations for the event here.

Image: The Beijinger