Loveland Corn Roast Festival

At the corn line in Fairgrounds Park, volunteers hand over ears freshly roasted and buttered, and the line moves on to a table of seasonings. On the Saturday of the 2026 festival, the Loveland Reporter-Herald photographed Cruz Guzman shaking seasoning onto an ear while his 5-year-old daughter, Emiliyah, waited beside him. It also photographed Chamber of Commerce volunteer Brooke Hupp passing an ear across the counter. The Loveland Chamber of Commerce, which runs the festival, expected as many as 15,000 people over the two days and ordered 12,000 ears. Tokens sold at the token booths buy corn and beer and nothing else.

The festival fills Fairgrounds Park, at 700 South Railroad Avenue in Loveland, Larimer County, for a Friday evening and a Saturday in late August. The 2026 edition was billed as the 130th. It ran Friday, August 21, from 5 to 10 p.m. and Saturday, August 22, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., under the theme “Bringing the Community Together.” Organizers ask visitors to leave dogs at home.

Friday night: grand marshals and a shucking contest

The festival opens at 5 p.m. Friday with the naming of the parade’s grand marshals and a recognition of sponsors. The grand marshals are community members who have made a significant impact on Loveland, and their names are announced from the stage. Around the stage stand the beer garden, food trucks, tents for sponsors and retailers, a bouncy house for children, and the corn roaster.

At 5:30 comes the corn-shucking contest, in which teams race to clean the most ears in a short time. Mayor Pat McFall opened the 2026 contest. “There’s nothing better about this city than the history behind it, and nothing more proud for us than our Chamber of Commerce is still putting this on and keeping it going,” he said, and then: “You’re going to have a shucking good time out here.” The team from C3 Real Estate Solutions took the 2026 title.

A concert closes the evening, from 8 to 10 p.m. The Reporter-Herald listed the 2026 headliner as Styx Parade Theater. The festival’s Facebook page listed it as Paradise Theatre.

Clydesdales on Railroad Avenue

Saturday begins downtown at 9:30 a.m. with the Corn Roast Parade. In 2026 it started just north of Fairgrounds Park, went up Railroad Avenue to Sixth Street, and looped back down Cleveland Avenue to the park. The whole procession is capped at 6,200 feet. The 2026 parade carried:

• marching bands from Loveland, Mountain View and Thompson Valley high schools
• local businesses, civic groups and political candidates
• dancers
• antique tractors, one of them driven for Haggerty Farms Antique Tractors

Sweetie, the festival’s mascot, walked the route, played that year by Chamber Ambassador Desiree Landt.

The 2026 grand marshals rode at the head: Ron Albers and Ed Hart of the Veterans Honor Monument project. They rode with their wives and other monument committee members in a wagon drawn by Clydesdales. Miss Loveland Valentine, Ellory Anne Bauersfeld, rode with her chaperone, Norma Jean Goodheart, as one of their last official duties of the year. Bauersfeld, a 2026 Loveland High School graduate and Boettcher Scholarship recipient, had just begun her freshman year at the University of Colorado.

Parade rules allow candy to be handed out but not thrown. Along the curb, the Woodiel family, who live just west of downtown, filled a bag. “The kids got their haul,” Justin Woodiel said. “It might be their best year yet.”

Ducks on the Big Thompson

After the parade, the park reopens at 11 a.m. with everything from the night before, plus:

• a kids zone
• wine alongside the beer garden
• food vendors for anyone who wants something besides corn
• a cornhole tournament at noon, run by the Chamber’s young professionals group, FUEL
• the Rotary Club’s annual Rubber Duck Race on the Big Thompson River at 4 p.m.

Bands play through the afternoon. In 2026 the lineup was Brian Brooks’ Sundown Rising from noon to 2, Steve Manshel from 3 to 5, and Hairaiser from 6 to 8.

Most visitors come for the corn. A few days before the 2026 festival, organizers tried the roaster on test corn from Andrew Johnson. On the Saturday, Lisa and John Long came down from Estes Park to watch their granddaughter perform in the parade, then went to the park to eat. “It’s great,” Lisa Long said. “It will be even better after we start eating this,” John Long said, gesturing toward the corn.

A 2023 post by Northern Colorado realtor John Feeney says the corn is roasted over an open flame and often sells out by the end of the day. Andrea Woodiel spoke for her family: “We don’t always go to the downtown events, but we never miss the Corn Roast.”

Stagecoaches, an aeroplane, and a county fair

By Feeney’s account, the festival’s roots go back to 1894, when it was first held as a feast to feed the town. Roasted corn was at the center, and the event was meant to draw visitors from Denver who arrived by stagecoach. It ran three days, with horse races, a street carnival, sing-alongs and speeches. In 1910 the organizers arranged for a Wright Brothers aeroplane to appear.

The county fair came next. According to The Ranch Events Complex, which now hosts the Larimer County Fair, the fair was held in Fort Collins from 1879 to 1891, on a 40-acre parcel on Lemay Avenue. A financial crisis in 1893 ended the fair there. In 1912, The Ranch’s history says, Loveland added the fair as an extension of its annual Corn Roast. The town built a facility on a six-acre former horse racetrack beside the Big Thompson River, just south of downtown. The Old Fairgrounds came to hold a caretaker’s house, former cavalry stables, and two buildings used to house prisoners of war during World War II.

Feeney writes that the fair and the Corn Roast were held together until 1982, when the two separated, and that the Corn Roast was revived that year as a community event. The Ranch says the fair stayed at the Old Fairgrounds until 2002. In 1998 Larimer County voters approved a one-year sales tax to buy land for new grounds. A second measure in 1999 paid for building The Ranch, where the first fair was held in 2003.

The Corn Roast is now held at Fairgrounds Park in downtown Loveland. The Chamber has set the 2027 festival for August 27 and 28.