The 2026 edition of the New York State Fair is in the books, and despite a rare weather shutdown and new security protocol, Fair officials call this year's Fair a success.
Overall, 962,795 passed through the turnstiles over the 13 days of the Fair, an increase of nearly 37,000 from last year's Fair.
But this year's Fair wasn't without its challenges. For the first time in almost three decades the Fair closed its gates because of weather. On Sept. 2, heavy rains caused severe flooding across the fairgrounds, the worst being on the west end. Several vendors had their spaces flooded with water 2-3 feet deep.
Fair Director Julie LaFave said that emergency management plans for vendors were spot on.
"We did it in a very orderly fashion, LaFave said. "We actually gave them kind of a two-hour window of like 'this is when the parking lots will close. This is when the front gates will close. This is when the Fair will close. This is when you can come in with your vehicle and grab anything you need to before the storm comes in.' So I learned that all of the practice we do 12 months a year really paid off."
The last time the Fair was closed because of weather was in 1998, when a severe storm blew through the central New York in the overnight hours on Labor Day. That storm left two people dead and caused severe damage across the fairgrounds.
One area that did need some adjustments was a controversial new policy prohibiting private, vendor and exhibitor vehicles from entering inside the fairgrounds from 8:00 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.
"We had to start somewhere and this is the year we started," said LaFave. "We're going to learn some things along the way. We have learned some things along the way, but we've definitely made some changes and adjustments throughout the Fair with deliveries, with emergencies, with locations where we would allow things, not allow things. But I would say it went according to how we thought it would go."
LaFave noted an area that was fenced off for vendor storage proved to be a problem.
"We realized that having it fenced in didn't logistically work to have it be restocked when whatever truck was coming in to restock it. So we ended up taking off one entire side of the fence, the entirety of the rest of the Fair to make it easier because we realized that our own fence was creating an actual literal barrier to making it easy for them to restock. So that was an easy concession for us to make."
Now that the Fair is over, LaFave said her office now will go over all the comments and complaints coming in from vendors and fairgoers about all aspects of the 13-day exhibition, and consider them going forward.
But for now, LaFave Sees the end of the Fair as a bit of a letdown.
"By [Tuesday] morning, half of the rides are already taken down," she said. "Half of the vendors have already left. And there's just boxes and there's empty tents behind. It's a ghost town. And it's definitely, it's a little sad."
One of the most popular attractions at the State Fair is the annual butter sculpture. Now that the Fair is over, the 800lb of butter used to create the sculpture will be sent to Noblehurst Farms in Livingston County, where it will be recycled and turned into energy that is used on the farm.
