Overview The Iowa State Fair runs 11 days every August on a 450-acre fairground in Des Moines, and its most famous exhibit is a cow sculpted from about 600 pounds of Iowa butter, 5.5 feet high and 8 feet long, first made in 1911 and kept in a 40-degree cooler in the Agriculture Building. With an average of more than 100,000 people a day, the fair says the grounds become the third-largest city in Iowa while it runs. The fair first ran in 1854 and moved to its present grounds in 1886; the grounds and 160 acres of adjoining campgrounds are on the National Register of Historic Places, and most of the buildings predate World War I. Phil Stong's novel State Fair, inspired by it, became three motion pictures and a Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway musical. On site Sarah Pratt took over the Butter Cow in 2006 after 15 years apprenticing under Norma "Duffy" Lyon, who began sculpting it in 1960 as its first woman sculptor. A companion sculpture shares the cooler each year, a practice that began in 1996. The barns hold 4-H, FFA and open-class livestock shows, and the fair runs contests for the biggest boar, ram, bull and rabbit; competitive entries across livestock, exhibits and family living run past 50,000. Nearly 600 vendors and concessionaires work the grounds. The Grandstand, rebuilt in 1927, seats about 15,000, and its 2025 concerts drew 131,755 people. Elwell Family Park runs truck and tractor pulls and a demolition derby, the Bill Riley Talent Search takes contestants from 2 to 21, and more than 3,200 people camp on site. Audience Fairgoers stay. In the fair's 2022 survey of 503 visitors, 65% planned to spend six hours or more on the grounds, one in eight planned 12 hours or more, 52% planned to come back for a second day, and one in 11 planned to attend all 11 days. Food, people-watching and free entertainment topped the list of what they enjoyed most, ahead of the livestock and the Butter Cow. About 537,000 of that year's visitors came from out of town, in parties averaging 3.7 people. Much of the fair is entered by fairgoers themselves: 4-H and FFA members show their own animals, and more than 30,000 children a year go through Little Hands on the Farm. Track record Attendance: 1,182,682 in 2024, then a record, with a single-day record of 128,732 on Saturday, August 10; 1,160,121 in 2025; 1,218,834 in 2026, a new record. There was no fair in 2020. The fair's 2022 study put out-of-town visitors' spending in Des Moines at about $100.5 million. It is the only fair listed in 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, and Midwest Living named it one of the Top 30 Things Every Midwesterner Should Experience. Brand presence Sponsors are ranked the way the fair ranks livestock, in seven levels from White Ribbon up through Red, Blue and Purple Ribbon, Champion and Grand Champion to Best of Show, and nearly everything on the grounds can carry a name: the Grand Concourse, the free horse shows, the livestock livestream, the drone shows, the Big Boar contest and a sensory-friendly morning. Brands that want a booth take mobile marketing space outdoors, a one- or two-day rotating booth in the air-conditioned Varied Industries Building, or a single Day of Fair spot on the Grand Concourse. Official sponsors appear on two towers at either end of the Grand Concourse. The 2026 sponsorships were fully booked.