State Fair of Nevada

The Friday schedule of the 2026 State Fair of Nevada divided the dirt floor of the Main Arena into six rings: swine in Ring 1, sheep in Ring 2, beef in Ring 3, goats in Ring 4, poultry in Ring 5, rabbits in Ring 6. The shows overlapped through the morning. In the afternoon came showmanship classes, where the handling is judged as well as the animal. From six o’clock the champion drives ran: Champion Market Swine, Champion Market Lamb, Champion Market Steer, with banners for the best breeding cow and goat. The exhibitors were young members of FFA, 4-H, youth Grange and independent groups. The Nevada Junior Livestock Show exists, its organizers write, so that they can “exhibit their livestock projects before the public.”

On Saturday, June 13, at 6 p.m., the champions went back into the same arena for the Governor’s Livestock Sale of Champions. They were auctioned in a fixed order: swine, beef, sheep, rabbits, market goats, scholarship animals, poultry. A Saturday general-admission ticket included a seat. J.J. Goicoechea, director of the Nevada Department of Agriculture, told The Nevada Independent that the junior show had been moved from May to June so it could join the fair. “Most of our population centers don’t get exposure to agriculture,” he said. “There’s an entire generation out there that’s never known the state fair of Nevada.”

The arena, the pavilion and the bar upstairs

The Nevada State Fairgrounds, until recently called the Reno-Sparks Livestock Events Center, cover 43 acres at 1350 N. Wells Avenue in Reno. Clark/Sullivan Construction built the main arena for $5.9 million to plans by Don Mackey Architects. The firm says the structural steel building went up in six months on 300-foot clear-span trusses, which it counts among the longest clear spans in the West. Clark/Sullivan describes a climate-controlled arena with a permanent dirt floor the size of a football field and indoor seating for more than 7,500. The Reno Rodeo Association, which now manages the grounds, lists the main arena at 6,200 seats over a 150-by-300-foot floor.

A tunnel connects the arena to the Livestock Pavilion, which has a 1,000-seat arena and auction space. During the fair the pavilion held the 4-H static exhibits, a livestock quiz bowl, and a herpetology show on Friday afternoon. Above the main arena is Doc Bar, a VIP lounge reached only by stairs. On Wednesday, June 10, the day before the gates opened to the public, it hosted the 4-H speech, demonstration and fashion review contests. The 4-H horse show was held that morning in the Outdoor Rodeo Arena, and a dog show ran in the covered cutting arena. The University of Nevada, Reno Extension has administered 4-H in Nevada for more than 90 years.

Sisters Heidi Fait and Heather Nield, both in their 40s, showed steers, sheep and pigs at the old state fair, as their mother and uncle had before them. Their father sat on the fair board. “Our family vacations were the [livestock] shows,” Nield told The Nevada Independent. In 2026 their children were set to show. “I’m envisioning this state fair being what it was like when we were showing,” Fait said. “Of course, you always look forward to the good funnel cakes.”

Picon, pie and smoke on the Mezzanine

The fair opened on Thursday, June 11, with a ceremony in the Main Arena at 6 p.m., followed by a concert by Caleb Montgomery. Earlier that afternoon, contestants in Nevada’s Fair(est) Best Dressed Contest gathered on the Mezzanine North at a display of the letters NV. Vendor booths called the Walking Tour of Nevada stood in front of the arena and along the Mezzanine for all three days, showing the state’s history, communities and culture. Davis Shows ran the carnival from late afternoon until 11 p.m. A drone show planned for Saturday was cancelled “due to unforseen circumsatances,” in the fair’s own spelling.

The Picon Punch was named Nevada’s official state drink in 2025, and the fair calls it “the quintessential cocktail of Nevada’s Basque roots.” On Friday evening, Picon-makers from around the state poured for a judging panel that included Goicoechea and Mark Maynard, writer and director of Piconland, and for more than 100 tasters. Scotty Ygoa of The Star Hotel in Elko took the trophy for Best Picon Punch in Nevada. Heyday Inn won People’s Choice. Ferino Distillery, exclusive producer of the Amer Picon liqueur, received the white ribbon for a newly released canned Picon Punch.

On Saturday the Made in Nevada Farmers’ Market opened at 8 a.m. At noon, bakers in its tent entered the Slice of the Silver State Pie Contest. Marie Fong’s cherry rhubarb pie won the blue ribbon, Kim Hansen’s rhubarb pie the red, and a blackberry pie the white. At two o’clock, back on the Mezzanine, the Traeger Smoke Show set smoked ribs, pork belly and sausage before three judges. Shawn Jaynes won first place and a Woodridge Elite Traeger smoker. Visitors also voted thousands of times in the Nevada Art Showcase. The People’s Choice went to Shane Johnson for “Small Mountains, Big Frame,” and the fair photographed him beside the piece and the anvil he used to make it.

Fallon, a divorce bill and a hay palace

The property itself is older than the fair. The state endowed it for agricultural purposes in 1867, according to the Great Basin Sun. The fair was founded in Reno in 1874, during Ulysses S. Grant’s second term, as David C. Henley, publisher emeritus of the Lahontan Valley News, noted in a 2013 column in the Nevada Appeal. A Washoe County history says the fair first used a building downtown and moved in 1888 to its fairgrounds off east Fourth Street.

By 1915 mounting debt drove the fair out of Reno. Henley tells what happened next. Legislators told Churchill County state senator William A. Keddie, son-in-law of Fallon founder Warren W. Williams, that they would approve Fallon as the new site if he voted for a hotly debated bill legalizing six-week “quickie” divorces. Keddie voted yes, the bill became law, and the fair moved to Fallon in 1915.

The fair stayed in Fallon four years. It was held at the old Churchill County Fairgrounds on the north side of Williams Avenue, where a Safeway and the city’s first Walmart now stand. Its exhibits promoted the newly completed Lahontan Dam. On the southeast corner of Maine and Center streets the city built a “Hay Palace” 60 feet on a side, made of alfalfa bales held together with wooden boards. Citing David W. Toll’s “Compleat Nevada Traveler,” Henley writes that the fair’s king and queen were crowned there. Fallon historian G.F. “Kelly” Engle remembered the main street of those years: “Maine Street was wide and dusty, unpaved and bordered on its west side with an almost unbroken row of saloons.” Fallon ran into red ink as Reno had, and in 1919 the fair went back to Reno.

Spaghetti dinners and a second fair in Carson City

The fair stayed in Reno for most of the century that followed. In 1951 the legislature directed the state board of agriculture to lease the fairgrounds to Washoe County for fifty years. In March 2011 the fair’s board met and cancelled the season. “For the first time in the history of the fair, since 1874, there will not be a state fair this year, ending a 136-year run that established itself as being the longest running event in Nevada,” executive director Rich Crombie said. The fair had raised or secured pledges for 13 percent of what it needed to clear its debt and stage a 2011 fair. Crombie thanked the people who had come “to Casale’s for spaghetti dinners and to Legends for the Nevada Round Up to put their dollar bills in the kitty.” He said the fair would not file for bankruptcy. In Carson City, Sandy Wallin’s 4-H livestock club of 14 children lost its year-end event. “It looked more like a state fair than a carnival with a couple of animals on the side,” she said of Crombie’s fair.

In 2013 Henley counted Nevada as one of only two states, with Michigan, without a state fair. Plans were being discussed that year to revive it at Fuji Park in Carson City. A nonprofit launched a Nevada State Fair there in 2016 and says it holds the state’s trademark to the name. Its fair opened on the same days as the official one in 2026, with rides, vendors and games but, according to Goicoechea, no animal exhibits. The nonprofit said in an emailed statement that the state’s revival risked “undermining more than a decade of private investment.” Goicoechea answered: “It is agriculture, it is 4H, it is Grange, it is FFA, it is all 17 counties coming together to represent the state and the heritage of agriculture in our state.”

New management and new sewer lines

In 2022 the Reno grounds passed through a long chain of hands. The state owned them, Washoe County leased them, the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority managed them, and ASM Global sold their dates. Developer Perry Di Loreto, presenting for the Nevada Western Heritage Center Alliance, estimated $13 million to $15 million in deferred maintenance. The Reno Rodeo had formed a Legacy Committee in 2015 to plan improvements, and the alliance took up that work. In 2023 it received federal pandemic recovery funds for drinking water, wastewater and storm drainage.

Assembly Bill 333 passed unanimously in 2025 and was signed by Governor Joe Lombardo. It returned the fairgrounds to the Department of Agriculture, which brought back the official fair. The bill carried no appropriation, and sponsors put up about $150,000 for the 2026 fair. The department calls that fair the first official, state-sponsored one since 2010; KOLO and This Is Reno counted the gap as 16 years, and The Nevada Independent as 15. Lombardo proclaimed June 2026 Agricultural Heritage Month. On June 1 the Reno Rodeo Association took over day-to-day management of the grounds.

On September 16, 2026, the department announced more than $10 million in further work: new pavement, sidewalk grading, storm drains, and septic and sewage systems. Goicoechea gave the reason: the grounds are “a designated large‑animal evacuation site.”