{"id":331183,"date":"2026-08-27T18:14:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T18:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/331183\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T18:14:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T18:14:20","slug":"state-fair-opening-day-attendance-more-than-doubles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/331183\/","title":{"rendered":"State Fair opening day attendance more than doubles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunny skies helped draw nearly 67,000 people to the opening day of the 2026 New York State Fair, more than double that of last year, fair organizers said.<\/p>\n<p>Attendance on the fair&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/spectrumlocalnews.com\/nys\/central-ny\/news\/2026\/08\/26\/opening-day-at-the-nys-fair\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">first day<\/a> totaled 66,898, the most people to enter the turnstiles on day one since 2023, when 71,701 people passed through. The number far outpaced last year, which got off to a damp start and attracted 32,736 fairgoers, and 2024, when 38,215 attendees visited. Wednesday&#8217;s attendance marked the second-highest opening day total since the fair was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Weather is such a big factor in attendance and we had a near-perfect opening day weather-wise,&#8221; said Katie Rey, fair spokesperson.<\/p>\n<p>The State Fair on Wednesday held a ceremony to mark the opening of the 10,500 square-foot New York Future Farmers of America Building. Day one was also marked by live performances by the Commodores, Quiet Riot and The All-American Rejects. The Great American Drone Show concluded the evening.<\/p>\n<p>Total attendance at last year&#8217;s 13-day State Fair came in at 925,989.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/4d5cb1f4-3489-490c-b69d-01cffcb3fb87.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"hashed-image image\" img-data-alignment=\"center\" img-data-width=\"percent-hundred\" loading=\"lazy\" img-data-caption=\"(Spectrum News 1\/Emily Kenny)\" img-data-wrap-text=\"true\" img-data-editing=\"true\"\/><\/p>\n<p>(Spectrum News 1\/Emily Kenny)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sunny skies helped draw nearly 67,000 people to the opening day of the 2026 New York State Fair,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[257,9,11,10,49,48507,51,50,12,380],"class_list":["post-331183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-central-ny","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-fair","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-spectrum-news-staff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}