Ontario County New York Fair Festival
This is the Ontario County Fair, held five days each July at the Ontario County Fairgrounds, 2820 County Road 10 in Canandaigua, New York. The county name invites confusion, so clear it away first: this is not one of Ontario, Canada’s fairs — it is a New York county fair, run by the Ontario County Agricultural Society. It is neither a state fair nor the stock-car season sharing its grounds. Canandaigua is Ontario County’s seat, and the seat itself hosts.
For 2026 the fair runs from Tuesday, July 21 to Saturday, July 25, billed the 183rd in the county’s tourism record. Its centre of gravity is youth agriculture: 4-H livestock and exhibits fill the barns, midway and live music the grounds, and the grandstand carries spectacles — a rodeo, a tractor pull and a demolition derby in the latest documented year, with a pie auction as the opening-night signature.
One point needs honesty at the start. Entry has historically been charged per vehicle, not per person — but no fair-published 2026 price was found anywhere in the record, so none is invented here; every price below is fenced to its year.
A Volunteer Society’s Fair in the Finger Lakes
The operator is the Ontario County Agricultural Society — the form the state directory publishes. The fair’s own contracts use a second form, Ontario County Agricultural Society Inc, and its camping form takes payment in a third, simply Ontario County Fair. The forms stand as published, never merged, and no other body may be substituted: not Cornell Cooperative Extension, not the 4-H programme, not county government — none organises this fair. Extension and 4-H are programme machinery — 4-H youth bring many of the animals shown — but machinery is not management.
The society’s stated purpose is a fair dedicated to the promotion of better agriculture, better industry and better education of today’s youth; its site carries the motto layers “Cultivate the Next Generation” and “Build a Better Future for the Fair,” likewise unmerged. The directory names a president, Casey Kunes, also named as fair board president in 2020 and 2025 reporting. A 2020 report’s picture of a volunteer-run fair drawing approximately fifteen thousand patrons annually belongs to that year alone.
For a useful comparison, see the Onondaga County New York Great New York State Fair Festival for another county festival.
Quick Facts
| Item | Detail |
| Event | Ontario County Fair |
| Fair town | Canandaigua |
| County seat | Canandaigua — the seat hosts the fair |
| Grounds | Ontario County Fairgrounds, 2820 County Road 10, Canandaigua |
| Organiser | Ontario County Agricultural Society (Inc form on the fair’s own contracts) |
| 2026 span | Tuesday, July 21 to Saturday, July 25 |
| 2026 billing | The 183rd, in the county tourism layer |
| Admission | No 2026 price published in the sources found; historically charged per vehicle |
| Fair-week camping | Fair’s own 2026 form: one hundred dollars per camper, fifty per tent |
| Harness racing | None — the state directory records No |
Old Beginnings That Do Not Agree, and a Year That Never Happened
The billing runs in a sequence: the 180th for July 2023, the 182nd for 2025, the 183rd for 2026. Two cautions guard it. The fair’s website currently heads its pages “Welcome to the 184th Annual Fair” with no year attached — a next-edition header, never to be assigned to 2026. And the sequence is not unbroken: the 177th fair, scheduled for July 2020, was called off by the board over pandemic concerns and rescheduled into 2021. With a cancelled edition inside the count, no founding year can be computed from any billing, and the fair may never be called uninterrupted.
The deeper history comes in layers that do not blend. County-history accounts record a society formed in February 1819, holding a first annual fair that October, then a society reorganised in 1838 whose first reorganised fair was held at Canandaigua in October 1840. None of those years is the settled founding, and a fourth figure in listing pages — 1843, under a “fair committee” no fair-side or state source names — is refused outright. The record supports a Canandaigua fair with nineteenth-century roots, carried forward by the county society, its edition count kept as billing.
What to Expect
The Barns Belong to the Young Exhibitors
This is primarily a 4-H-driven agricultural fair, and the barns are its core. Youth livestock shows — cattle, horses including draft horses, poultry — run through the week, alongside open exhibits judged under the fair book — sewing, gardening, baking, woodworking among its departments. The fair book’s rules govern the week, down to Saturday’s after-eight animal dismissal. Expect the show rings and exhibit halls, not a headline act, to set each day’s rhythm.
Midway, Music, Food and Room for Children
Around the barns, the fair’s own About page promises good food, carnival rides, live music and entertainment at every corner, and the county’s 2026 tourism layer lists the same shape: 4-H activities, livestock shows, live music, food vendors, midway rides and free attractions. A kids’ zone drew praise in the 2025 press recap as very, very popular. Older layers add colour belonging to their years alone — a petting zoo, model trains and sheriff demonstrations in a 2023 layer, day themes such as a senior day and a family day in a tourism layer — none of it pinned to a 2026 weekday or promised as current programme.
The Grandstand and the Pie Auction
The grandstand seats more than four thousand people on the fair’s own figure, and its spectacles are the fair’s loud end. The best window is the local paper’s recap of the 2025 fair: an opening-night pie auction — forty-nine pies and a top sale of four hundred dollars, both records in the president’s recollection and auction proceeds only, never a visitor’s price — a Thursday-night rodeo with a band on the track before it, a tractor pull, and a demolition derby beside them. Fenced to 2025, those details show a fair week’s shape without promising 2026’s card.
A Track Tenant With a Fair-Week Past
A dirt track stands on the grounds, home to a stock-car raceway running its own weekly season as a tenant; its tickets, pit passes and camping offers are a separate operation contributing nothing here. What belongs to fair history is narrower: the 2019 fair week brought a midweek stock-car special, monster-truck rides, a truck-tug contest, a Friday tractor pull and a Saturday demolition derby with fireworks, and in 2025 the raceway’s championship night carried the fair’s 182nd billing. That is fair-week racing’s documented shape in those years: history, not the current programme.
Planning Your Visit
What Getting In Costs — and What Is Not Published
The newest fact is an absence: no 2026 admission, carload, walk-in or grandstand price appears on the fair’s own site, in either state directory or the county tourism layer. What the record documents is the model — one charge per vehicle at the gate, with a lower rate for single occupancy, motorcycles and walk-ins. The 2023 and 2020 layers agree on ten dollars per car, five dollars for single occupancy, motorcycles and walk-ins; an older yearless preview layer quotes eight dollars per carload or five dollars single, plus its own period grandstand ladder; a 2011 account records five dollars per vehicle as the only compulsory spend. Those are year differences, not tiers of one ladder — never averaged or rewritten as per-person prices, and none is the 2026 price. Check the fair’s own pages near the date.
Sleeping on the Grounds During Fair Week
Camping is a real, fair-published offer on the fair’s own 2026 form. A camper costs one hundred dollars for fair week and a tent fifty dollars, with water and electric hookup on most sites and a dump station on the grounds; campers’ names are kept on file for emergencies. Each vehicle needs a parking pass, weekly passes at fifteen dollars — a camper’s pass, never a fairgoer’s parking price. No per-night rate may be derived from the weekly figures, and the sites are no year-round campground in any layer. The raceway tenant’s own race-night camping terms are its, never the fair’s.
A Sample Saturday on the Grounds
Saturday is the last day, and a workable shape for it runs like this. Walk the barns in the morning, while the livestock are settled and the exhibit halls quiet. Spend midday between the exhibit buildings and the midway, with vendor food and the kids’ zone. Look through the barns again in the afternoon, before the after-eight animal dismissal. Finish at the grandstand for whatever spectacle closes the week — checking the fair’s own schedule, since the current card is the fair’s to publish.
Hours, Addresses and Getting There
The address is 2820 County Road 10, Canandaigua; one listing layer attaches a neighbouring town’s name to it, but the directory, the fair’s own forms and the state association all publish Canandaigua. Daily hours for 2026 are unpublished in the sources found: a 2023 layer gives ten in the morning to ten at night, a 2020 layer noon to ten — two older layers, not a current timetable. The fair’s About page notes parking for thousands.
Not to Be Confused With
Four neighbours crowd this fair’s name. Across the border, Canada’s province of Ontario runs an entire fair circuit — Orono, Burford, Picton and more — and none of those fairs’ dates, prices or programmes touches this New York fair. The grounds’ raceway runs a weekly season under its own name and prices, a tenant’s operation, not the fair even in fair week. A separate town named Ontario sits in neighbouring Wayne County, and other county events — a steam pageant, Farmington track racing, lakeside concerts — are neighbours, never this fair’s programme. And listings selling per-person tickets contradict the documented model here: a charge per vehicle at the gate.
Before You Go
- Confirm the current year’s gate charge on the fair’s own pages — no 2026 price is published
- Plan on paying per vehicle, not per person, as the published layers document
- Fill the car if you can — the documented layers price the vehicle, not each passenger
- Book fair-week camping through the fair’s own form if you are staying on the grounds
- Remember the fifteen-dollar weekly vehicle parking pass if you are camping
- Check which grandstand spectacles fall on your day
- Leave real time for the barns and exhibit halls — the fair’s centre, not its sideshow
- Do not rely on any Canadian fair’s dates or prices — this fair is in Canandaigua, New York
Beyond the Fairgrounds
Canandaigua sits at the northern end of its namesake lake, one of the Finger Lakes, and a fair trip pairs naturally with the water: the lakeshore and its parks give somewhere to cool off between a morning in the barns and an evening at the grandstand. Courthouse, shops and eating places sit a short drive away, and farmland begins almost where the parking fields end. Staying longer opens the wider Finger Lakes, all vineyards, lake towns and summer roads.
Why This Fair Matters
The Ontario County Fair matters because it is the county’s own institution: a volunteer-run society fair at the county seat, built on young people’s education alongside agriculture and industry. Its 4-H centre is not decoration — the barns of youth-raised animals and judged handwork are the fair’s reason for existing, with everything else arranged around them. Across more than one hundred eighty billed editions, through a reorganisation and a cancellation two centuries apart, it remains a fixture of the Finger Lakes summer: the week the county shows itself to itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where exactly is the fair held, and who runs it?
At the Ontario County Fairgrounds, 2820 County Road 10 in Canandaigua — both the county seat and the host city. The operator is the Ontario County Agricultural Society, in the state directory’s form; the fair’s own contracts add “Inc.” Extension and the 4-H programme supply much of the youth programme but do not organise the fair, and neither does county government.
Do visitors pay by the person or by the car?
No 2026 price is published in the fair’s own pages, either state directory or the county tourism record, so no current figure can be given. What is documented is the model and its history: a single charge per vehicle at the gate, with a lower rate for single occupancy, motorcycles and walk-ins — ten dollars per car in the 2020 and 2023 layers, eight dollars per carload in an older layer, five dollars a vehicle in 2011. Those belong to their years — not one ladder, never per-person prices.
Is there fair-week camping on the grounds?
Yes, during fair week, on the fair’s own 2026 form: one hundred dollars for a camper and fifty dollars for a tent for the week, water and electric hookup on most sites, a dump station on the grounds, and a fifteen-dollar weekly parking pass per vehicle. The form gives weekly figures only — no nightly rate exists in the record — a fair-week arrangement, not a year-round campground.
Is the racing at the fairgrounds part of the fair?
Only in the narrow sense that the track has carried fair-week programme in some years — a stock-car special, pulls and a derby with fireworks in 2019, and a championship night under the fair’s billing in 2025. The raceway itself is a year-round tenant; its admission, pit passes and camping terms are its own for race nights, never the fair’s prices or programme.
What to Expect From the Next Ontario County New York Fair Festival
How often is the Ontario County New York Fair Festival held?
Once a year, for five days, Tuesday to Saturday, in the second half of July. The recent pattern is steady: July 22 to 26 in 2025 and July 21 to 25 in 2026. The one break in living memory is the cancelled 2020 edition, proof the sequence is not guaranteed unbroken.
When is the next Ontario County New York Fair Festival?
On the documented pattern, the next fair after the July 2026 edition falls in the second half of July 2027, again five days from a Tuesday to a Saturday. The fair’s website already heads its pages with the next edition’s billing — the society already signalling the following summer. Exact dates are the society’s to publish, on its own pages or the state association’s schedule.
Will the dates change?
The weekday shape has been stable — Tuesday to Saturday in late July across recent years — while the exact dates move by a day or two yearly, as between 2025 and 2026. A larger change cannot be ruled out: the 2020 cancellation shows the fair can be interrupted outright. Expect late July, Tuesday to Saturday — and confirm the year’s precise span before planning.
The Ontario County Fair asks little beyond a trip to Canandaigua in late July — and rewards it with the oldest kind of county fair: barns before rides, young exhibitors before headline acts, a whole county’s summer on its own society’s grounds.
