Tompkins County New York Trumansburg Fair Festival

The Trumansburg Fair is still running, and it is worth saying so plainly, because older listings sometimes leave it sounding like a memory. Its own premium books run through 2025, its own site published a full programme for that year, and both state fair directories carry it as a current fair for 2026 — the state fair association’s schedule giving it Tuesday, August 25 to Sunday, August 30, 2026. The fair stands at the Trumansburg Fairgrounds, 2150 Trumansburg Road, in the village of Trumansburg in the Town of Ulysses. Ithaca is the county seat of Tompkins County, and Ithaca does not host this fair; the village does. Behind the fair stands a society whose name tells its geography: The Union Agricultural & Horticultural Society of the Towns of Ulysses, Hector and Covert. What that society runs each late August is a compact, volunteer-carried fair in the older mould — harness racing and horse pulls to open the week, horse shows nearly every day, demolition derbies to close it, and a midway in between.

About the Trumansburg Fair

The organiser’s full published name matters here, because the fair’s own paperwork uses shorter forms loosely. The governing form, carried by the state directory and by the cover of the fair’s own 2024 premium list, is The Union Agricultural & Horticultural Society of the Towns of Ulysses, Hector and Covert. Inside the same books, entry blanks are headed with the shorter Trumansburg Fair Association, and the rules pages name a Trumansburg Agricultural Society for premium cheques; those are variants from the fair’s own pages, recorded as published, and neither replaces the governing name. The officers published for 2024 are Gerald Reynolds as president, Jennifer Reynolds as secretary and Tim Swartz as treasurer. Coleman Bros. Shows works the midway under contract; it is a carnival company, never the organiser, and neither the county, the village nor the town runs this fair. The grounds hold a grandstand, a midway, exhibition buildings and the fair office, and the society’s book provides stalls and pens without charge for cattle and horses brought for exhibition.

Quick Facts

Item	Detail
Event	Trumansburg Fair
Grounds	Trumansburg Fairgrounds, 2150 Trumansburg Road, Trumansburg
County seat	Ithaca, which does not host the fair
Organiser	The Union Agricultural & Horticultural Society of the Towns of Ulysses, Hector and Covert
Season	Late August, running Tuesday to Sunday
Most recent documented run	Tuesday, August 19 to Sunday, August 24, 2025, in the fair’s own programme
2026 listing	August 25 to 30, 2026, per the state fair association; the state directory’s dates still to be decided
Admission	No price published for 2026; the fair’s 2024 book charged six dollars a person, with children twelve and under free
Parking	Free on the grounds, in the fair’s own book
Signature events	Colt Stake harness racing, horse pulls, Firemen’s Parade, demolition derbies

Three Towns, One Society, a Long Tenure

The fair’s documented history is carried in two kinds of record, and they do not fully agree, so neither is inflated here. The first is the society’s own billing: its 2024 premium list bills that year’s fair as the 173rd Annual. A regional round-up of the previous summer billed the 2023 fair the 171st annual, and a jump of two numbers in a single year does not reconcile as a straight count — so no edition number is assigned to 2025 or 2026 anywhere in this article, and no founding year is computed from the billing. The second record is an account given by the fair’s president in a 2021 newspaper interview, used here only as his published account: a fair that began in 1850 and had taken place every year except 2020, aside from a couple of years during World War II. The same interview records the fair’s return on Tuesday, August 24, 2021, after the 2020 cancellation forced by the pandemic. The 2024 book’s dedication says much about how this fair survives: it honours a president on the board since 1962 and in the chair since 1985, with his wife involved for just as long.

What to Expect

No programme for 2026 exists in the published record, so the shape below is the fair as its own 2024 premium list and 2025 programme document it — the two years agree in structure.

An Opening Day Built on Horses, Not Rides

Tuesday is a preview day and the rides stay closed. The afternoon belongs to the turf: the Colt Stake and harness racing at noon, judging of exhibits from one o’clock, and light and heavy weight horse pulls at six in the evening. The fair opens officially at noon on Wednesday; Wednesday and Friday are Children’s Days, and Thursday is Senior Citizen and Veterans Day.

For a useful comparison, see the Tioga County New York Fair Festival for another county festival.

A Horse Show Nearly Every Day

The barns anchor the week. Thursday brings the youth horse show in the morning and the cattle show after it; Friday is the miniature horse and pony show; Saturday’s draft horse show starts the biggest day; Sunday opens with the open horse show. Smaller fixtures — a children’s pedal tractor pull on Friday afternoon, a cornhole tournament late Sunday morning — fill the gaps.

Grandstand Nights and Derby Metal

The grandstand does the week’s loud work. A motorcycle rodeo runs on Thursday evening and a championship figure 8 race on Friday evening, with a late wristband session after it — billed under one name in the 2025 programme and another in the 2024 book, both recorded as printed rather than merged. Demolition derbies fill the second half: an evening derby midweek, a Saturday night card adding a monster truck show and pickup and mini van derbies, and the derby final at five o’clock on Sunday, which the fair’s president has called the most popular thing at the fair.

The Midway and the Free Acts

Coleman Bros. Shows fills the midway every afternoon and evening of the documented programmes. The free grounds entertainment named in the 2024 book is the Party Animal Petting Zoo and a Pirates of the Caribbean act, carried here as that year’s bill rather than a standing promise; the year before, the book’s free layer named a circus act instead.

Saturday, the Fullest Day

Saturday stacks the fair’s signatures into one day: the draft horse show in the morning, a three-hour early-afternoon window at two dollars for admission and rides alike, the Firemen’s Parade at four o’clock, a children’s power wheels demolition event, the evening derby card, and fireworks at half past nine.

Planning Your Visit

Finding the Grounds

Aim for 2150 Trumansburg Road in the village of Trumansburg. The same grounds also appear in print as 2150 State Route 96; the two forms name one place and are left as published rather than blended. The post office box the society uses is a mailing address only, never the venue. Parking sits on the grounds and costs nothing, in the spaces the management sets out.

What Admission Has Cost, Honestly Stated

This is the part of the record with a genuine hole, and it is better shown than papered over. No gate price for 2026 was found in any fair-side source, and the fair’s general admission for 2025 is likewise unpublished in the pages available — its only self-published 2025 price is the Saturday two-dollar window described above. The last complete ladder is the 2024 book’s: six dollars a person at the gate, children twelve years and under free, admission free all day Tuesday, free admission from noon to eight on Thursday for senior citizens and for military visitors and veterans, a season ticket at fifteen dollars, and reduced five-dollar and three-dollar tickets for exhibitors and helpers, with no pass-out tickets issued. Grandstand seats were priced by the night in the same book: Tuesday and Thursday free, Wednesday and Friday evenings eight dollars, Saturday after the parade and Sunday evening ten dollars. A year earlier those evenings cost less — six and eight dollars in the 2023 book — which is exactly why none of these figures is carried forward as a current price.

A Sample Saturday

Come in the morning for the draft horse show, when the grounds are quietest and the exhibition buildings easy to walk. Give the livestock and domestic exhibits the late morning. Eat on the midway, then use the early-afternoon window, when admission and rides drop to two dollars, for the children’s rides and the petting zoo. Take a grandstand seat before four o’clock for the Firemen’s Parade, stay through the evening derby card, and end with the fireworks — Saturday holds every signature the fair has.

Staying Over, Without Illusions

There is no public campground at this fair, and visitors should not plan around one. What the fair’s books contain is an exhibitor rule: anyone parking a mobile home, trailer or camper on the grounds as living quarters pays a daily rental, set at twenty dollars a day in the 2024 book after standing at fifteen dollars in the 2023 book. No camping terms for 2025 or 2026 were published in the record, so even that exhibitor figure belongs to its year. Camping sold for a different event that rents these grounds in July belongs to that event alone.

How Trumansburg Compares

Tompkins County effectively has two fairs, and they are easy to confuse on paper. The other is a youth fair run by the county’s cooperative extension in July, in the county seat — a different organiser, a different month and a different town. The Trumansburg Fair is the older style of institution: a society fair owned by its three-town membership, opening with harness racing rather than a headline concert, and small enough that its president’s six decades on the board are part of its character. Set beside the state’s big multi-week fairs it is modest in scale, and that modesty is the distinction.

Fair Week Checklist

• Check the fair’s own announcements for the current year’s dates before travelling, since one state listing still shows them undecided
• Bring cash for the gate until a current price list is published; the recent documented gate was six dollars
• Arrive Tuesday if harness racing and horse pulls matter more than rides
• Time a Saturday arrival for the early-afternoon two-dollar window
• Claim a spot early for the four o’clock Firemen’s Parade
• Keep Thursday in mind for the senior citizen and veterans observance
• Leave the camper at home — the grounds offer no public camping
• Allow unhurried time in the exhibition buildings, the fair’s quiet centrepiece

Beyond the Fairgrounds

The fairgrounds sit in the village of Trumansburg, in the Town of Ulysses, in the farming country in the northwestern part of the county — the first of the three towns in the society’s name, with Hector and Covert supplying exhibitors of their own. The grounds work beyond fair week: other organisers rent them through the season, including a large music festival in July that is a separate event entirely, and a monthly market also uses the site — worth knowing only so that fair week is not confused with either. Ithaca, the county seat, keeps the county’s offices and its own separate events. The setting is the point: a village fairgrounds in a village that still organises its late summer around it.

Why This Fair Matters

A union society of three small towns is an organisational form from another century, and in Tompkins County it is still the body that produces the fair — not a county department, not a promoter, not a sponsor with naming rights. That continuity shows in the details the record keeps: harness racing retained as the opening day’s centre, premiums still paid after the fair closes, a presidency measured in decades. For the exhibitors of Ulysses, Hector and Covert the fair is the county’s agricultural show window; for everyone else it is proof that a fair does not need to grow to survive — it needs a society that keeps showing up.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Trumansburg Fair still running?

Yes. The fair’s own site published its full programme and premium list for August 2025, and the state fair association’s schedule lists it for August 25 to 30, 2026, with the state agriculture directory carrying it as a current entry too. No source reports a closure or a final edition; its only documented interruptions are the 2020 pandemic cancellation and a couple of years during World War II, both from its president’s published account.

Where exactly is the fair, and is it in Ithaca?

It is at the Trumansburg Fairgrounds, 2150 Trumansburg Road, in the village of Trumansburg — the same grounds also printed as 2150 State Route 96. Ithaca is the county seat and does not host the fair; confusing the two towns is the easiest mistake a first-time visitor can make, because the county’s other, extension-run youth fair is held in Ithaca in July.

What has admission cost in the fair’s recent books?

For the current year, the honest answer is that the fair has not published a gate price in the sources available, and no figure is invented here. The most recent complete ladder is in the fair’s 2024 book: six dollars a person, children twelve and under free, parking free, free admission on the Tuesday, and an early-afternoon Saturday window at two dollars that the fair’s own 2025 programme also advertised. Grandstand evenings in 2024 ran from free to ten dollars depending on the night.

May visitors camp on the grounds during fair week?

Not as a visiting camper. The only camping arrangement in the fair’s books is a rule for exhibitors living on the grounds in their own campers or trailers, charged at twenty dollars a day in the 2024 book, and no terms for the current year have been published; there is no public campground offer.

What to Expect From the Next Tompkins County New York Trumansburg Fair Festival

How often is the Tompkins County New York Trumansburg Fair Festival held?

Once a year. The fair is an annual late-August fixture, running six days from a Tuesday to a Sunday, from its soft-opening harness racing day to the Sunday demolition derby final.

When is the next Tompkins County New York Trumansburg Fair Festival?

The fair keeps a late-August slot, and its most recent state listing placed it in the final week of August, Tuesday to Sunday. The coming edition’s exact dates had not been published in the record when this article was prepared, so the society’s own announcement is the source to confirm before travel.

Will the dates change?

The pattern is steadier than the dates themselves. Across the documented years the fair has always occupied a Tuesday-to-Sunday run in late August, while the exact calendar days move by several days from one year to the next, so a small shift should be expected even though the season and shape hold.

Late August in Trumansburg still belongs to the society of three towns: harness horses on a quiet Tuesday, barns full by Thursday, a parade on Saturday and derby metal on Sunday. Check the newest announcement and go — it has outlasted every report of its ending.