State Fair

Minnesota State Fair attendance outpaces 2024 but falls short of record

a ticket booth sign is refracted through a glass crystal
A ticket booth on the Mighty Midway is refracted through a glass crystal during the 2024 Minnesota State Fair.
Nicole Neri for MPR News

As vendors and exhibitors spent Tuesday cleaning and packing up until next year, Minnesota State Fair officials reported that 1,940,869 people visited the fair during its 12-day run.

The final day Monday saw 150,442 people pass through the gates in Falcon Heights.

For the full 12-day run of the fair, this year’s Great Minnesota Get-Together saw the greatest fair attendance since before the pandemic, beating the previous post-pandemic mark of 1,925,904 set last year.

But this year’s fair fell short of the milestone of 2 million visitors. It also fell short of the overall fair attendance record of 2,126,551 people, set in 2019.

The fair attendance this year didn’t reach many new heights — just one daily record, on the first Monday, compared to five daily records in 2024. But it also didn’t have any significant off-days, another change from 2024, when two days had unusually small visitor numbers due to heat and severe storms.

Instead, 2025 was a year of pleasantly mild weather and steady streams of visitors passing through the gates in search of Sweet Martha’s cookies, Pronto Pups, a trip down the Giant Slide and other fair favorites old and new.

Those searches are now on pause until next year — when the fair will return for its annual 12-day run on Aug. 27.