What is the Arizona State Fair?
Phoenix had fewer than three thousand people when it held its first fair in 1884, on a patch of bottomland by the Salt River. The river took that site in the flood of 1891, the city bought 80 acres of farmland at 19th Avenue and McDowell in 1905, and the Arizona State Fair has been on that ground ever since: 142 years of livestock, a mile horse track that became a car track that became a basketball arena, and a midway that lights up central Phoenix for five weeks every fall.
The 2026 fair runs October 1 to November 1, Thursdays through Sundays, noon to 9 p.m. on Thursday and Sunday and noon to 10 on Friday and Saturday. Admission is $20 for adults, $14 for seniors, $12 for ages 5 to 12, free under 5. Inside are nearly 70 rides, led this year by the 155-foot Goliath XXL, more than 90 food vendors, 4-H barns with sheep, goats and horses, the free Grandstand shows, a Backyard stage of tribute bands and the Coliseum Concert Series, six headline shows in the 1965 Veterans Memorial Coliseum whose tickets include the fair.
The fair is a self-funding state agency that takes no general-fund money and claims a place among the five best-attended state fairs in the country; the 2021 edition drew nearly 1.6 million people in 22 days, a record, and recent years have topped 1.4 million.
From Old Town it is about 25 minutes due west on McDowell Road, which runs unbroken from Scottsdale to the fairgrounds gate. For a visitor with kids it is the biggest cheap day of October; for anyone it is the one place in the Valley to eat fry bread under a Ferris wheel.
How to do the fair
Pick a Thursday or Sunday. The fair is only open four days a week, and the two weekend nights carry the crowd. The $55 unlimited-ride wristband, sold only in presale through September 30, is valid only on Thursdays and Sundays, which tells you the fair’s own view of its slow days. The $45 Dream Pass (ten rides or games) is the better buy for a child who will ride six things and quit.
Admission tricks. Military and first responders get $12 tickets for themselves and one guest with ID; the fair posts a few discounted days each year, and Foodie Fridays sell $5 items from noon to 6.
Getting there and parking. From Old Town take McDowell Road straight west about eleven miles, or Loop 202 west to I-10 and exit at 19th Avenue; 25 minutes without traffic, 45 on a Saturday night. The fair’s lots charge $25; the free shuttle from Phoenix College at 15th Avenue and Thomas is faster on busy nights.
Inside. Do the livestock barns and exhibit halls while you are fresh and the animals are awake, eat early at the Indian taco stands, then take the midway after dark when the lights are on and the heat is off. The Grandstand runs free shows, figure-8 racing, rodeo and monster trucks in recent years, and the Backyard stage has tribute bands Fridays and Saturdays.
Concerts. Doors at 6, show at 7, no opener; tickets (roughly $60 to $120) include fair admission. The 2025 Format show sold out in under ten days, so buy in summer when the series goes on sale.
Weather and food. Early October afternoons are still 95 degrees; go after 4 the first two weeks and bring a layer for the last two. Eat fry bread first and the stunt foods second (2026: Dutch fries in beef tallow, a PB&J corn dog, prickly pear funnel cake). A family of four will spend $80 on food without trying. Our Scottsdale with kids note has the rest of the fall calendar.
From the riverbank to the Madhouse on McDowell
The first Arizona Territorial Fair in 1884 was a citizens’ project on a small site near Central Avenue and the Salt River, south of a town that had been platted only fourteen years earlier. Accounts put the first crowd in the hundreds. The river that made Phoenix possible ended the fair’s first life: the flood of 1891 washed out the buildings and the racetrack, and the territory went without a fair until the legislature authorized a revival in 1904. In 1905 Phoenix Mayor John C. Adams raised private money to buy 80 acres of farmland northwest of town, bounded by McDowell Road, 19th Avenue and Grand Avenue, and the fair reopened that fall with a wooden grandstand and a one-mile horse track; auto racing came later. Statehood in 1912 turned the Territorial Fair into the Arizona State Fair; the Gem and Mineral Building of 1918 is the oldest thing still standing on the grounds.
The fair’s gaps are the state’s hard years: World War I, a cotton collapse and the Depression closed it for stretches, the wooden grandstand burned and a concrete one replaced it in the mid-1930s, the WPA Civic Building of 1938 housed Arizona’s Works Progress Administration, and World War II closed it again. From 1946 it ran every year until 2020. In the 1960s car racing ended and part of the track became Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, opened in 1965; the expansion Phoenix Suns played their first 24 seasons in the Madhouse on McDowell before moving downtown in 1992, and the fair kept the building for its concert series.
The fair is nobody’s line item. The Arizona Exposition and State Fair is a self-supporting agency: ticket, ride, concert and rental revenue pay for everything. A 2018 governor’s review looked hard at the aging buildings and the value of 80 acres a mile from downtown, and the fair stayed. The pandemic cancelled 2020, the first lost year since 1945, and the 2021 return set the record of nearly 1.6 million in 22 days, up from 1.3 million in 2019.
The Scottsdale angle
Scottsdale has no fair and never did; it has WestWorld, horse shows and car auctions, which is a different civic personality. What the state fair offers a Scottsdale visitor is the Arizona that the resort corridor edits out: 4-H kids from Buckeye and Safford in the barns, fry bread stands that are the rougher cousin of the Heard Museum’s Indian Fair, and a midway that has lit up the same corner since Phoenix was a cotton town. It is 25 minutes from Old Town, it costs less than a resort breakfast, and it is the most Arizonan thing you can do in October. Take the shuttle.
The fairgrounds have two more weeks a Scottsdale visitor should know about. The Arizona National Livestock Show takes over the barns December 27 to 31, free, with the 4-H and FFA kids showing the steers they raised; and the Maricopa County Fair in April is the small, $10 version of this one, with the same midway operator and a fraction of the crowd.