Ransom County North Dakota Fair Festival

Late August brings the Ransom County Fair to Lisbon, the Ransom County seat, where the fairgrounds at 612 7th Avenue West become the county’s gathering place for the closing stretch of summer. The fair is run by the Ransom County Fair Association, and its 2025 and 2026 premium lists describe a Wednesday-to-Sunday gathering in which walking the grounds costs nothing, while its headline arena and grandstand nights carry their own event gates.

Around two hundred of the county’s 4-H members show at this fair each August, a figure the association’s treasurer gave the state legislature, and they exhibit alongside FFA members and open-class entrants in barns the association has lately rebuilt.

The Association Behind the Fair

The Ransom County Fair Association is the name on every fair-side document: the premium lists carry a contact heading in that name, and the state’s 2025 county-fair resiliency award list names the same body. That award, announced by the North Dakota Department of Agriculture on July 10, 2025, granted the association fifty-three thousand dollars to upgrade facilities, with vice president Shawn McLeod as contact, the same name and number the fair’s own board list carries.

Four officers stand constant across the fair’s homepage and both premium lists: Tom Nord as president, Shawn McLeod as vice president, Genene Aabrekke as secretary and Paulette Laudert as treasurer, with Laudert additionally titled Expo and Grounds Manager in the 2025 premium list. The wider membership around them varies slightly between documents. During the fair, the fair office answers at 701-683-5075, and the sponsorship letters give 701-680-2294 as the general information line. Other bodies hold their own lanes: Extension agents serve as the premium lists’ 4-H officials, among them Brian Zimprich, and the Extension service runs the 4-H side rather than the fair itself; the Lisbon and Enderlin FFA chapters supply officials for a county-wide fair seated in Lisbon; Merriam’s Midway Shows works the carnival as a vendor; the rodeo association sanctions the fair’s rodeo without running it; and programme layers credit DRN with sponsoring the bingo and the Cattleman’s Club with the beer garden.

Quick Facts

Item	Detail
Event	Ransom County Fair
Town	Lisbon, North Dakota, the county seat
Grounds	Ransom County Fairgrounds, 612 7th Avenue West
Season	Late August
Organiser	Ransom County Fair Association
Grounds admission	Free each day in the 2025 and 2026 premium lists
Headline events	NDRA Rodeo on Friday and Saturday, Sheyenne Speedway Races on Thursday
Fair office phone	701-683-5075 during the fair

Since 1952, in the Fair’s Own Words

The covers of both recent premium lists print the line “Ransom — Since 1952,” and the association’s treasurer told the legislature on January 30, 2025 that the fair in Lisbon has been in existence since 1952. The 2025 premium list invites readers to join its 73rd Celebration, the 2026 list bills a 74th Celebration, and the fair’s own site already advertises a 75th Annual fair for 2027. Counting one edition for every year since a 1952 start would land on a different ordinal for 2025, and nothing in the record explains the one-edition gap, so these claims are carried exactly as published and no founding year is calculated from either direction.

For a useful comparison, see the Ramsey County North Dakota Fair Festival for another county festival.

Other dates belong to other records and found nothing. Registry layers describe the association as a Lisbon social-welfare corporation whose ruling year is recorded as 1980, corporate paperwork, not a birthday for the fair, and Lisbon’s founding in 1880 and the county’s organisation in 1881 are town and county history. A regional schedule still carried the fair at Lisbon in late August 2022.

The grounds’ newest chapter is a building story from that same testimony. Her testimony describes replacing two very old barns with a heated, steel-span multi-use facility measuring 150 by 60 feet, built with a show ring, three horse stalls and 146 removable steel pens for the goats, pigs and sheep, plus two bathrooms with showers and an office. The project cost over nine hundred thousand dollars, part-funded by a loan of five hundred thousand dollars alongside grants and donations, already in year-round use in that layer, its archery drawing more than eighty participants; those are project figures from testimony, never prices any visitor pays.

What to Expect

Judging, Exhibits and the Premium Sale

Both documented fairs open on Wednesday with judging: 4-H and FFA static and livestock judging, together with open-class static entry and judging. The Expo Center holds the static exhibits, the open-class entry work and, on Sunday morning, the distribution of open-class premiums after exhibit checkout. Friday brings the Livestock and Horse Awards at 4 p.m. and the 4-H and FFA Premium Sale at 4:30 p.m., both in the Cattle Barn. Pre-fair judging days, including the 4-H and Open Class Horse Show on the Sunday before fair week at the Larry Mairs Horse Arena, stand in the lists’ own layers outside the published run.

Two Nights of Rodeo and One Night of Racing

The grandstand and arena nights give this fair its spine. In both premium lists, the NDRA Rodeo fills Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. in the Larry Mairs Horse Arena, and the Sheyenne Speedway Races take Thursday at 7:30 p.m. up at the grandstands, a fair-week bill printed inside the fair’s own programmes and distinct from the speedway’s separate weekly season. Saturday’s Rodeo Queen and Princess Coronation follows the contestant speeches at 6:30 p.m. Tripwire is billed after the Friday rodeo in both years’ layers and again after Saturday’s rodeo in the 2026 letters. Fireworks change nights between the books, sitting after the Friday rodeo in the 2026 list and after the Saturday one in 2025, so each year’s display belongs to its own night.

Kids Day, the Parade and the Corn Feed

Saturday, Kids Day, begins away from the grounds with the Fair Parade rolling down Main Street at 10 a.m. Back at the fairgrounds the day stacks up face painting, magic shows, a Livestock Ultrasound Demonstration, the 4-H Ice Cream Social, Bingo sponsored by DRN and Cow Pie Bingo. Prizes attach to the children’s Money Scramble for ages nought to nine, the Pedal Tractor Pull for ages four to ten and the Kids Bike Giveaway. Thursday evening carries a free tradition, the Sweet Corn Feed, which the 2026 sponsorship letter sets from 5:30 to 7 p.m. with pork loin sandwiches alongside the corn. Magic changes its name with the year: the 2026 list bills Halls of Magic across Friday and Saturday, while the 2025 fair presented The Magic of Keith Raymond on its Friday, and 2025 also held a Farmers Olympics and a Saturday Craft and Junk Show that the 2026 columns do not carry.

The Midway

Merriam’s Midway Shows runs the carnival in both documented years, opening at 6 p.m. on Wednesday. Across the 2026 week its hours run from 4 to 10 p.m. on Thursday, 4 to 11 p.m. on Friday, 1 to 11 p.m. on Saturday and 1 to 5 p.m. on the Sunday close. Both premium lists sell wristband rides only on the midway itself and refer readers elsewhere for the details, so neither book prints a wristband price.

Planning Your Visit

Grounds, Shuttles and Getting Around

The fairgrounds stand at 612 7th Avenue West in Lisbon, with the association’s mailing address at Post Office Box 890. The plant a visitor moves through is named across the premium lists: the Expo Center, the Cattle Barn, the Larry Mairs Horse Arena, the AgCountry Show Ring, the grandstands and the midway ground. Both premium lists promise shuttle carts for exhibitors and fairgoers, a kindness on spread-out grounds.

What a Visit Costs

In both the 2025 and 2026 premium lists, general gate admission to the grounds is free each day, and headline events are paid for separately at an Event Gate. The rodeo ladder stood at ten dollars for adults and five dollars for ages six to seventeen, with children five and under free, in both lists. The Thursday speedway ladder changed between the same two books: an adult paid fifteen dollars in 2025 and twenty dollars in 2026, students aged thirteen to seventeen paid ten dollars in 2026, children twelve and under were free in both years on condition they still collect a ticket, and military admission stood at ten dollars in both years on showing military identification. No parking price appears in any fair-side document, and no admission figure is published for 2022 or the billed 2027 fair.

Staying the Night

Neither premium list publishes a camping offer, a hookup, a camping price or a fair-week camping rule for these fairgrounds. Campers therefore look elsewhere: Sandager Park’s campground in Lisbon is run by the city’s park district on the Sheyenne River, the Dead Colt Creek Recreation Area campground sits near Lisbon under its own operator, and state park campgrounds elsewhere in the county are likewise separate operations, none of them a fairground offer.

A Long Weekend Following the 2026 Shape

Thursday: Exhibits and Engines

Spend the afternoon among the opened Expo Center exhibits, take the free corn feed between 5:30 and 7 p.m., then climb to the grandstands for the speedway races at 7:30 p.m.

Friday: Ribbons and Rodeo

Follow the day’s livestock judging, catch a Halls of Magic show at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. or 5 p.m., and be at the Cattle Barn for the awards at four and the Premium Sale at half past. The evening belongs to the first rodeo at seven, the fireworks the 2026 list sets after it, and the barn dance the fair’s 2026 letter places in the AgCountry Show Ring that night, with a DJ and the Corn Hole Tournament in the same ring.

Saturday: Parade Day

Take a kerb in town for the ten o’clock parade, then give the children the run of Kids Day, from the Money Scramble to the pedal pull, before the coronation and second rodeo.

Sunday: The Slow Finish

Sunday morning is checkout, premiums and goodbyes in the barns, and the carnival’s one-to-five session closes the fair at a gentler speed than it opened.

2025 and 2026, Side by Side

The grounds stayed free in both years and the rodeo ladder never moved, holding at ten and five dollars in each book. The Thursday speedway’s adult price climbed from fifteen dollars in 2025 to twenty in 2026, the Friday magic changed from The Magic of Keith Raymond to Halls of Magic, the fireworks migrated from after Saturday’s rodeo in the 2025 list to after Friday’s in the 2026 columns, and the barn dance shifted from Saturday night in the 2025 sponsorship letter to Friday night in the 2026 one.

Visitor Checklist

• Remember the split: grounds entry was free each day in the 2025 and 2026 premium lists, while rodeo and speedway nights are ticketed at an Event Gate.
• Check the current year’s premium list before travelling, because prices and programme details changed between the two recent books.
• Collect a ticket even for a child twelve and under at the speedway, since both books make that free admission conditional on getting one.
• Plan Saturday around the 10 a.m. parade on Main Street rather than heading straight to the fairgrounds.
• Do not count on fairground camping, as neither recent premium list publishes camping terms for the fairgrounds.
• Note the fair office number, 701-683-5075, which the fair’s documents give for use during the fair.

Beyond the Festival Grounds

Lisbon itself is worth the unhurried hour the fair schedule leaves you. Main Street, the Saturday parade route, is the town’s working centre in the Sheyenne River valley. Sandager Park gives the town a green bank on the river, and Dead Colt Creek Recreation Area adds water and shade a short drive out; neither belongs to the fair, yet both help explain why a late-August crowd settles contentedly here.

What the Fair Means in Ransom County

A fair of this size is a ledger of volunteer effort as much as a programme. The association’s treasurer carried its case to the legislature, the state answered with a facilities grant, and the association answered in turn with a rebuilt livestock plant that archers already use through the year. Roughly two hundred county 4-H members show here each August by that same testimony, making the fair the visible harvest of a year of club work across the county. Arriving at the very end of August, it closes the county’s summer with the parade, the premium sale and the rodeo nights its own books describe.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where exactly is the fair held?

The Ransom County Fair takes place at the Ransom County Fairgrounds, 612 7th Avenue West, in Lisbon, North Dakota. Lisbon is the Ransom County seat and hosts the fair in every document gathered here.

How much does it cost to get in?

Both documented premium lists state free gate admission to the grounds each day. Headline events charge separately: the rodeo stood at ten dollars for adults and five dollars for ages six to seventeen in both lists, while Thursday’s speedway racing cost an adult fifteen dollars in 2025 and twenty in 2026. Carnival wristband prices appear in neither list, and no parking price is published in the fair’s documents.

Can I camp at the fairgrounds?

No camping offer for the fairgrounds appears in either premium list, with no hookups, prices or fair-week rules published. Campgrounds exist nearby under other operators, but they are separate facilities with their own terms, not part of this fair.

Which days suit a family with young children?

Saturday is built for them, which both premium lists make Kids Day, opening with the Main Street parade at 10 a.m. and running through the Money Scramble, the Pedal Tractor Pull and the Kids Bike Giveaway. Quieter households may prefer Sunday’s slower close.

What to Expect From the Next Ransom County North Dakota Fair Festival

How often is Ransom County North Dakota Fair Festival held?

The fair is an annual late-August event in the modern record, documented running Wednesday to Sunday in both 2025 and 2026.

When is the next Ransom County North Dakota Fair Festival?

The fair’s own site already bills a 75th Annual Ransom County Fair for August 25 to 29, 2027, recorded here as a billing rather than a held fair. No admission prices for 2027 are published in any document gathered, so the recent books’ terms should not be assumed to carry forward.

Will the dates change?

The documented runs have moved within late August, landing on August 20 to 24 in 2025 and August 26 to 30 in 2026, so a modest shift is the pattern. Day-level details move too, as the fireworks night, the barn dance and one headline price all changed between the two recent books.

What endures at Lisbon is the shape of the thing: a volunteer association, a rebuilt set of barns, two hundred young exhibitors, free grounds in its recent books and a parade down Main Street. A visitor who reads the premium list before setting out will find the fair keeps the promises that list makes.