24 Best Father’s Day Gifts for Dads (2026)

The only Father’s Day gift I can recall my own dad getting was a plate of fried sardines. It was prepared by my mother, his ex-wife, who knew how gratefully he’d receive a dish he grew up with in the Italian neighborhood of a steel town dying with such theatrical flair that Bruce Springsteen named a song after it. (An acoustic Springsteen song, at that.) We lived in a nearby city that had plenty of red-sauce restaurants, but they weren’t serving tinned fish in those days. As my father had only the most limited of food preparation skills and didn’t date the kind of women who could cook, this was the only way he’d ever taste that flavor again.

As Father’s Day gifts go, being united with a long-lost recipe from childhood is pretty good. If you can pull it off, that’s what you should give your dad this year. Otherwise, I have here a few ideas I’ve spent the last few months gathering for various types of dads and across many different budgets. With the exception of a few things picked by other dads on the team, these are all things I’ve personally tested and approved, and I hope they make your dad as happy as those sardines made mine.

The Best Father’s Day Gifts for Your Dad

Hand holding a bright red thin ring with a backyard in the distance

Image may contain: Croquet, Sport, Ball, Cricket, and Cricket Ball

Front of a hibachi grill with meat cooking on top and a bush in the background

For the Dad Who Plays With His Kids

Photograph: Martin Cizmar

Spyra

SpyraFour Electric Water Blaster

Maybe your dad has fond memories of the Super Soakers of his youth, but the SpyraFour is the new best water gun ever made. WIRED has been covering the German brand’s powerful electric squirt guns since 2023, and they’ve only gotten better over time. Just ask my daughter, who has to use the SpyraThree while I blast away at her with this gun that refills much faster (it sucks up enough water for about 20 shots in a cool 12 seconds) and has a full digital smart display to select between shooting styles and show you how much ammo you’ve got left. This is a very powerful squirt gun that shoots accurately up to 50 feet, and it’s recommended for kids who are at least 14. I can confirm that when I let my 11-year-old and her friends play with it, the battle often ends in tears. This only adds to the appeal as a gift for any dad over 40—when I was her age, we threw rocks at each other, and I had to go to the emergency room to get stitches you can still see. Good times.

Aerobie

Pro Ring

Playing catch is one of those classic activities dads and kids love to do. Over time, I’ve found, it transitions from the kid asking to toss the Frisbee around to the adult asking. Yes, the Aerobie is still the best flying disc you can buy, but the real reason to gift it is as an excuse to toss it around and talk.

St. Pierre

Tournament Bocce Set

Bocce is the best backyard game—it’s great for people of all ages and has no learning curve, though it’s possible to get better with practice. I hoard bocce sets from thrift stores and have owned like four; the best set is one like this from St. Pierre, which is made in America and is the brand they use in tournament play.

For the Grill Dad

Photograph: Martin Cizmar

Mibrasa

Hibachi MH 300 PLUS

Live-fire cooking has been the hottest trend in grilling for half a decade now, possibly as a reaction to the rise of super-automated pellet grills and high-tech smart grilling. The latest up-and-coming device is the charcoal oven, which Spanish brand Mibrasa is best known for (the smallest model, the Nano, runs just under $12,000). That would be an amazing gift for your dad if the budget allows. However, those of more modest means can confidently gift this super-premium hibachi grill from Mibrasa, which is made of heavy-gauge steel.

The MH 300 Plus is roughly one square foot and weighs about 18 pounds empty—you can carry it around, but it’s a little on the hefty side. It gets scorching hot (almost 500 degrees Fahrenheit) and holds the meat very near to the charcoal so that the drippings are vaporized and turned into flavorful smoke. I’ve made steak tacos and chicken skewers, and they’ve turned out perfectly with a kiss of char. When I refresh this guide in a few weeks, I will have used it to test the Snake River Farms Wagyu beef gift box that just arrived, which looks like it will also appear on this list soon.

Jacobsen Salt Co.

Grilling Trio

Jacobsen Sea Salt is hand-harvested on the Oregon coast, where the waters of Netarts Bay impart a lot more character than most of what you buy at the grocery store. The Grilling Trio has three variants blended with herbs to create flavor profiles that complement Dad’s dishes. My favorite is the steak blend, which includes dried garlic, coriander seed, fennel seed, and a half-dozen other classic herbs.

Oyster

Tempo Pro

Oyster has made the prettiest coolers on the market since the Norwegian brand’s debut in 2023. These aluminum ice boxes are double-walled for vacuum insulation, as you find on a travel coffee mug. The new Tempo Pro adds a small digital thermometer that tracks the temp inside without spoiling its clean lines.

For the Beach Dad/Pool Dad

This is one of the few products on this list that I have not personally tested, but for a dad with a pool, it’s such a good gift idea that I had to include it. Our reviewer gave the Sora, which sits in the middle of the Beatbot lineup, a stellar 8/10 review, saying it’ll clean up the debris from pretty much any mess short of a hurricane. This 20-pound robot crawls the walls of your pool, suctioning up grime and saving dad the hassle of skimming for an hour every week.

Vero

Vero X Realtree Tide Tracker

I wear an Apple Watch Ultra most days, but nothing annoys me more than needing to keep it charged during vacations and weekends. That’s where this very cool watch from Vero comes in. It’s a collab with Realtree, the Gucci of camo, and will track the tides for 14 days while being waterproof to almost 400 feet. Even—perhaps especially—if your dad has a smart watch or a luxury watch, this is a great gift that will serve him well in the outdoors and especially near the ocean.

Sunguard

Men’s Overhead Hoodie

I have been slathering myself in sunscreen—most dads I know do this too—which is why I’ve quickly become addicted to sun hoodies. I’ve amassed a half-dozen of them to wear when taking my daughter to the beach or pool, or when going for a hike. The best I’ve used so far is the Sunguard line from EMS, which offers 50 SPF protection in a polyester-elastane blend that’s thin, soft, and breathable. It dries ultra-fast, and the hood will cover as much of your face as you need to without being cumbersome when not in use.

For the Car Dad

Photograph: Martin Cizmar
Photograph: Martin Cizmar

Portable tire inflators and jump starters are both great things to have, and I have both. The AX65 from Noco is a high-powered combination of the two, and the best version of either I’ve encountered. The tire inflator is extremely quick, as fast as a gas station air compressor in my testing, and advertises it’ll take a tire from flat to 40 psi in two minutes. It holds 2,150 amp hours of power, enough to jump a regular passenger car multiple times. It jumped my Dieselgate-era Jetta with ease (I’ve had the device for a month and already needed to jump my car thanks to its lack of alarm when you leave the lights on). It’ll also recharge a phone or laptop via a 60-watt USB-C port, so it’s not just taking up dead space on road trips until disaster strikes.

BlueDriver

Pro Next Gen OBD2 Scanner

There are dozens of OBD2 scanners out there, and I’ve owned three or four different ones. The BlueDriver stands out for having lots of powerful features without requiring a subscription or credits to unlock its functions. This device connects to your car’s port and pairs to a phone app via Bluetooth so you can read, and in many cases clear, trouble codes. It plays pretty well with my VW, though it’s not a full VCDS system.

Decked

Halfrack 32

Decked makes the sturdiest of the many car storage systems I’ve used over the years, and what the medium-sized Halfrack lacks in size it more than makes up for in sheer toughness. It’s gasketed so it doesn’t leak, and not only can you stand on it, but supposedly drive a truck over it without it cracking (I have not driven my truck over it). It has a locking lid that can be opened with one hand and a convenient carry handle that folds down flush when not in use. This is the gateway to a full system of boxes and drawers, so if your dad likes it, you have gift ideas for years to come.

For the Yard Dad

Photograph: Martin Cizmar
Photograph: Martin Cizmar

My childhood neighbor Don Elmerick had the finest lawn I’ve ever seen. Elmerick, who lived across the street from my mother’s house for nearly 50 years before he passed in 2019, spent every summer meticulously tending to his acre of bright green grass, getting tan while mowing shirtless in jeans. His lawn was so nice that, as legend had it, the groundskeepers from the modest public golf course behind our house would come by to admire it. Every dad I know, including myself, would love to have a lawn like that. Unfortunately, I do not have the spare 10 to 20 hours a week it takes to do the research and labor required.

I won’t say that the Lawnbrite plan has my more modest patch of lawn looking like Firestone Country Club after six months of treatment, but it does look better than any lawn I’ve kept in my adult life. That’s thanks to this service, which uses data from your lawn to create a custom treatment plan and then sends different treatment bottles at strategic times. All you do is open the box, attach the bottle to a hose, and spray. I applied the Green Machine formula in the fall and then Weed Wipeout in the spring. If your dad is always talking about how nice another man’s grass looks, this is the gift for him.

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