Overview The Kansas State Fair is ten days of livestock shows, grandstand nights and more than 30,000 competitive exhibit entries on 280 acres in Hutchinson, and the fair calls itself the largest annual gathering of Kansans. It opens on the Friday after Labor Day. The fairgrounds carry more than 70 buildings, and outside those ten days they host over 500 other events a year, from horse shows to RV rallies. The Kansas State Fair Board runs it for the state. On site The Grandstand is the night program: a 10,000-seat stand, 448 feet long under an acre and a quarter of steel roof, finished in the late 1920s, that carries concerts, demolition derbies, auto races and truck and tractor pulls. By day people move between the livestock barns for 4-H, FFA and open shows, the equine events, the competitive halls for agriculture, foods, fine arts, floriculture and clothing, more than 1,000 commercial vendor spaces and the midway. There is a free stage at Lake Talbott, built in 1931, trams across the grounds and a splash pad in Fairgrounds Park. The Old Mill opened in 1915. In 2025 the gates opened at 7 in the morning and closed at 10 at night. Audience The calendar says who comes. The fair names its days: Young at Heart Day for seniors, Wildcat Wednesday for Kansas State University, a University of Kansas day, Chiefs Red Friday and Dillons Dollar Day. 4-H and FFA families bring animals to show, school groups come through on Kansas' Largest Classroom field trips, and the fair holds a veterans' breakfast, a Sunday church service and a legislative luncheon. Track record Hutchinson businessmen held the first fair in 1873 in a wooden livery stable behind the town's only bank. President William Taft visited in 1911, a year that drew 183,000 paid admissions, and the legislature funded the first official Kansas State Fair in 1913 on grounds Hutchinson donated. It ran every year from then until 2019, skipped 2020 and came back in 2021. Brand presence Partners are sold in Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze tiers, plus day naming and a separate list of livestock sponsors, and nearly every name attaches to a specific thing on the grounds. For 2026 Kansas Star Casino held the grandstand naming rights, Evergy sponsored the trams and a grandstand screen, Grasshopper was the official mower, PrairieLand Partners the official tractor, Key Industries put its name on Ike the Bison, the fair's mascot, and Lowen ran the free stage at Lake Talbott. Further down the tiers, Southwest Dairy sponsored the butter sculpture, Continental Siding the goat yoga, Elliott Mortuary the giant pumpkin and Cellular Sales the pedal pull.