Fairgoers, you set a new attendance record last Monday, when 145,022 of you took advantage of the beautiful weather to beat the 2017 record — by about 500 tickets. But it’s been the only record set this year, though total attendance is running head of last year heading into Labor Day.
For 12 days at the end of summer, culminating on Labor Day, folks from miles around descend on Falcon Heights to marvel at giant produce and baby animals, crop art and quilting, milk(shakes) and butterheads.
With the highest average daily attendance of any of the nation’s competing State Fairs (we see you, Texas and Iowa), how many people can we fit into those 322 acres?
The Minnesota State Fair posts the previous day’s official attendance midday for the run of the fair, and we’ll update those numbers here each day.
Fairgoers in 2024 set five new daily attendance records. The first day of the fair this year got within about 1,700 tickets of hitting a record. And the first weekend of the fair surpassed last year by nearly 64,000 fairgoers, putting attendance on track to beat last year.
Total attendance in this post-pandemic era so far remains shy of 2018 and 2019’s 2-million-plus benchmark.
Almost all of the current daily records were set in 2018, 2019 or 2024 — with a notable exception. The first Sunday record was set in 1994 and still stands, more than 30 years later.
It’ll stand yet another year. Sunday’s attendance was far above 2024’s level, but was still 25,000 shy of the mid-’90s record.