Randolph County Missouri Fair Festival
Most county fairs take over a fairground. This one takes over a racetrack. The Randolph County Fair holds its headline day at a motorsports park, and the pairing sets the tone: race-day energy in the county’s largest city rather than its seat, with horses, music, food and ATVs sharing the bill.
The fair’s name is exactly the one at the top of this page — the Randolph County Fair — and its town is Moberly. Huntsville is the county seat, the courthouse town, but the fair does not stand there; it belongs to the county’s biggest community, out along Highway 24.
Its shape is the first surprise. The fair’s entry listing spans July 18 to 25, 2026, with Saturday, July 18 built into a headline day, and its documents then place further fair events on August 9, 14 and 29 — a spread across high summer, not one continuous fair week, and this guide keeps it spread.
What fills the season is youth-centred and practical: a scholarship breakfast, a craft and vendor show, two horse shows, a cornhole tournament, sheep riding for the smallest children, and a closing evening of livestock awards and a scholarship auction. Its paperwork — waivers, show bills, a scholarship page — carries as much of its story as any poster does.
One thing that paperwork never does is name a gate price: no admission, parking or pass figure appears in any source checked for this guide, and nothing here invents one. The fair immediately before this one in the series, the Ralls County Missouri Fair Festival, is a junior livestock fair in the town of Center; Randolph County’s is a broader fair in a larger town, and its record reads differently.
For a useful comparison, see the Pulaski County Missouri Regional Fair Festival for another county festival.
A County Fair at a Motorsports Park
The fair is hosted at the grounds of Moberly Motorsports Park, 4081 Highway 24, which the fair’s own posts simply call the fairgrounds. Its documents name the working spaces set within that borrowed setting: a small show arena and a show barn. A fair that borrows a racetrack gets wide open ground to match.
The organiser appears in two forms, and this page keeps both exactly as published, never fused. The fair’s formal documents — its mutton-busting entry waiver among them — name the Randolph County Fair Corporation, the legal form. Its event posts speak instead of the Randolph County Fair Board, the working name, and warn vendors that only the Fair Board sponsors the fair’s vendor show. Corporation in the documents, board in the posts, side by side.
The address in the fair’s vendor paperwork, PO Box 235, Moberly, is a mailing address and nothing more — directions built on it lead nowhere useful. The venue is the Highway 24 grounds; the box is where the paperwork sleeps.
Randolph County Fair Essentials
| Item | The published record |
| Event | Randolph County Fair |
| County | Randolph County |
| State | Missouri |
| Fair town | Moberly — not the county seat |
| County seat | Huntsville |
| Host grounds | Moberly Motorsports Park grounds, 4081 Highway 24 |
| Organiser | Randolph County Fair Corporation in the fair’s documents; Randolph County Fair Board in its event posts |
| Documented 2026 shape | Headline day Saturday, July 18; entry listing July 18 to 25; further fair events August 9, 14 and 29 |
| Season | High summer, July into August |
| Admission | Unpublished — no gate, parking or pass price appears in any source checked |
A Paper Trail Instead of an Anniversary
No founding year and no edition number for the Moberly fair appears in any source behind this guide, and neither is invented here. What the record offers instead is a living paper trail: a waiver that names a corporation, a show bill for an August horse show, a scholarship page counting the year’s awards.
The names that paper trail repeats are working names rather than distant founders. Its biggest morning is the Jack and Maxine Thornburg Scholarship Breakfast, hosted by the Randolph County 4-H Council — a meal whose purpose is to turn the fair’s first hours into money for its young exhibitors’ education. A fair that remembers itself this way keeps its history in people, not in dates.
Read that way, the documents are the history, still being written; when the fair publishes a founding story of its own, this page will carry it. Until then, its honest history is the one its paperwork tells: a volunteer-run institution in Moberly, a corporation on paper, a board in public, measuring its years in scholarships.
What the Season Holds
The documented programme divides into the July centrepiece and the August tail, drawn from the fair’s own posts and documents for 2026.
Saturday, July 18: The Headline Day
The day begins with the Jack and Maxine Thornburg Scholarship Breakfast, hosted by the Randolph County 4-H Council, and runs, in the fair’s own words, all day long at the fairgrounds: a craft and vendor show from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., a cornhole tournament hosted by Como Cornhole, and food, music, horses, ATVs and games across the grounds. If only one day of the spread fits a diary, this is it.
Two Horse Shows, Two Months
The Randolph County Fair Horse Show runs on July 18 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Gateway to the High Country Cowboy Church, registration closing at 8:45 a.m. sharp. Three weeks later the 4-H and Open Horse Show follows on Sunday, August 9, under the fair’s own show bill — a second, distinct fixture, not a rain date for the first.
Mutton Bustin’ and the Calf Scramble
On Friday, August 14 the fair’s waiver dates its mutton busting — small children riding sheep. Entry is fenced by the fair’s own rules: riders aged four to six, a sixty-pound limit, the first twenty-four entries only, and one event per child, since children aged six to twelve may enter the Calf Scramble instead. The five dollars attached is a contest entry fee; it is not, and is never presented here as, a price of admission.
The Vendor Show and Its Ground Rules
The July 18 craft and vendor show is priced for sellers, not visitors: a ten-by-ten spot costs twenty-five dollars, or thirty with a table and chairs, while 4-H and FFA members participate free. The fair adds a warning worth passing on as it stands — only the Fair Board sponsors its vendor show, and fake publishers have spoofed it before now, so vendor details count only from the fair itself.
Awards Night and the Scholarship Auction
The season closes on Saturday, August 29 with the livestock awards ceremony and the 2026 Scholarship Auction. The scholarships documented for 2026 recipients stand at one thousand dollars — money paid out to young exhibitors, funded through the auction, and the clearest statement of what this fair is for. They are awards, not prices, ending the season where the scholarship breakfast began it.
Planning Around a Spread-Out Season
Finding the Highway 24 Grounds
Set the destination as Moberly and the Motorsports Park grounds at 4081 Highway 24. One piece of the programme sits elsewhere: the July 18 horse show is held at the Gateway to the High Country Cowboy Church, as the fair’s own post states. The post office box in its paperwork is a mailing address, not a gate anyone can drive to.
Choose Your Day Before You Drive
A spread season rewards choosing. July 18 brings the full fair day; August 9 is for horse people; August 14 belongs to the youngest riders; August 29 is the formal close. Whether the August events form one extended programme or fair-run fixtures around a July core is a question the sources leave open — the July 18 to 25 listing never turns the season into a single week on this page. Confirm the current year’s dates with the fair before travelling on any of them.
Money: What Is Published and What Is Not
No gate, parking or pass price appears in any source behind this guide, and no source calls the fair free — so this page prints no figure either way. Every amount the fair does publish belongs to something narrower: a child’s contest entry, a vendor’s pitch, a scholarship paid out. Carry cash, and expect any charge to be learned at the grounds.
Beds, and the Camping Question
The fair publishes no camping offer, rule or rate, so plan no pitch at the grounds on the strength of this page. For beds, Moberly carries the county’s widest choice; Huntsville, the seat, is the smaller town. In fair season, book ahead either way.
July 18, Hour by Hour
A suggestion built from the day’s documented fixtures and their published hours, rather than a timetable the fair has issued:
Start with the scholarship breakfast, then drift to the horse show, running from eight in the morning at the Cowboy Church with registration closed by 8:45. Give the middle of the day to the grounds: the vendor show between ten and three, the cornhole tournament, food and music at the raceway. Let the show’s five o’clock finish set the evening’s shape, and close the day at the grounds.
Moberly’s Spread Season, Center’s Single Week
The fair linked near the top of this page, in Ralls County, gathers everything into one July window: a junior livestock fair in the small town of Center, centred on a single pavilion. Randolph County’s fair does nearly the opposite — it spreads from mid-July to the end of August, borrows a motorsports park in the county’s biggest city, and mixes livestock with vendors, tournaments and machines.
For all that contrast, the two fairs share a discipline. Neither publishes a gate price, and both are documented less by posters than by paperwork — an entry listing and a grant file in one county; a waiver, a show bill and a scholarship page in the other. Read both records for what the documents actually say, and both fairs make sense.
Before You Head for Highway 24
- The fair town set as Moberly — Huntsville is the seat, not the venue
- Your day chosen from the spread: July 18, or the August 9, 14 or 29 fixtures
- The current year’s dates confirmed with the fair before travelling
- Cash carried, since no gate or parking price is published in advance
- No campsite assumed at the grounds — the fair publishes no camping offer of its own
- Sun protection and water for open motorsports ground
- Young riders checked against the mutton-busting age and weight rules
- Vendors: details accepted only from the fair itself, as its warning insists
Beyond the Park: Moberly and the Seat
Moberly carries the trip’s practical side: the county’s widest spread of beds, food and ordinary errands. It keeps other headline weekends of its own — a travelling basketball tournament and a duck-themed community event among them — but those belong to other dates and other organisers, not to this fair.
West along the highway sits Huntsville, the county seat: the courthouse town governing a county whose fair stands somewhere else. It is the wrong destination for fair day and the right one for understanding the county — a small, quiet administrative centre a short drive from the motorsports park’s noise.
Why the Scholarship Auction Matters
Most fairs end by counting their gate. This one ends by paying out. Its last fixture hands one-thousand-dollar scholarships to its young exhibitors, funded through an auction held in the fair’s own name; its first fixture is a breakfast raising money for the same purpose. Youth money brackets the whole spread.
That shape gives the spread its logic. A fair run by a corporation on paper and a board in public, anchored at a borrowed racetrack, could look scattered. The scholarships make it legible: every separated date is a working day in one project — turning a county fair into education money for the county’s own young people.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where is the Randolph County Fair held?
In Moberly, at the grounds of Moberly Motorsports Park, 4081 Highway 24, which the fair’s own posts call the fairgrounds. One fixture sits elsewhere: the July 18 horse show is held at the Gateway to the High Country Cowboy Church. Huntsville is the county seat, not the fair town, and the PO Box 235 address in the fair’s paperwork is a mailing address only.
When is the Randolph County Fair?
Across a spread of high-summer dates rather than one week. The documented 2026 edition carries an entry listing of July 18 to 25, builds Saturday, July 18 into a headline fair day, and then places fair events on August 9, 14 and 29. Whether those August dates form one extended programme or fair-run fixtures around a July core is not settled by the sources, so this page prints the spread as it stands.
How much does admission to the Randolph County Fair cost?
No admission, parking or pass price is published in any source checked for this guide, and this page states none — nor does it call the fair free. The figures the fair does publish belong to narrower things: a five-dollar mutton-busting entry, priced pitches for vendors, and one-thousand-dollar scholarships paid out to exhibitors.
Who organises the Randolph County Fair?
The fair’s own record uses two forms, kept here exactly as published. Its formal documents, the mutton-busting waiver among them, name the Randolph County Fair Corporation; its event posts speak of the Randolph County Fair Board, and say only the Fair Board sponsors the fair’s vendor show. Neither form is merged into the other.
What to Expect From the Next Randolph County Missouri Fair Festival
How often is the Randolph County Missouri Fair Festival held?
Once a year, as a high-summer season: a July core at the Moberly grounds, with fair events documented running on into late August.
When is the next Randolph County Missouri Fair Festival?
In high summer, on the pattern the 2026 edition set — a headline July day, an entry span around it, and further fixtures in August. The coming edition’s own documents will fix its dates; check them rather than assuming this year’s spread repeats.
Will the dates change?
The season is the steady part: high summer, July into August, is this fair’s documented home. Its exact footprint is settled edition by edition, and the 2026 shape was a spread rather than a single week — expect the months to hold and the dates to be confirmed yearly.
Come on July 18 for the fair at full volume: breakfast, vendors, horses and music at a racetrack in the county’s biggest city. Come in August for its quieter purpose — small riders on sheep, and a season ending in scholarships. Either way, aim for Moberly, not the courthouse town.
