What is the Maricopa County Fair?
The Maricopa County Fair is the county’s own spring fair, held over two weekends each April at the Arizona State Fairgrounds in Phoenix, the same 80 acres at 19th Avenue and McDowell that host the far larger Arizona State Fair each October. It has a carnival from Butler Amusements, barns full of 4-H and FFA livestock, an exhibit hall of quilts and county crafts, sea lion shows, monster trucks and three stages, and it costs $10 to get in. The 2027 fair runs April 2–11, open Friday to Sunday the first weekend and Thursday to Sunday the second, closed Monday to Wednesday in between.
It is a different institution from the State Fair, not a smaller copy. The State Fair is run by a state board; the county fair is run by Maricopa County Fair, Inc., a private 501(c)(3) with 45 elected commissioners and a 19-member volunteer board, which takes no county tax money and reported about $2.3 million in revenue in 2025. Its stated mission is youth education, and the money that does not go back into the fair goes to scholarships: $144,500 to 23 county students in 2025. The Junior Livestock Auction on the second Saturday night, where a teenager’s steer or lamb sells to a local business, is the heart of the week.
For a Scottsdale family it is the easy spring fair: 25 minutes from Old Town, a tenth of the State Fair’s crowds, half its admission, and a week in April when the Valley is still cool enough for a midway at 2 in the afternoon.
How to do it
Tickets and prices. In 2026 admission was $10 for ages 8 and up, free for 7 and under, sold online or at the gate; the fair’s own price page carries 2026 figures and the 2027 dates, so expect the same or a dollar more. Ride wristbands were $35 in presale and $45 at the fair, or buy carnival tickets at $1 each with rides taking 3 to 10 tickets. The second Thursday has had $2 rides in recent years. Admission tickets are good any day of the fair, and a hand stamp gets you back in the same day.
The free days. Three days offered free admission until 3 p.m. in 2026: the first Friday, the second Thursday and the second Friday. The second Thursday also waived admission from 3 to 8 p.m. for five canned goods for St. Mary’s Food Bank, seniors 55 and over got in free on the second Friday, and K-6 students who read books under the Read to Ride program got four free rides on Thursday. Check the fair’s site for the 2027 versions; the pattern has held for years.
Getting there and parking. From Scottsdale, Loop 202 west to the 51 or Interstate 10, then 19th Avenue north to McDowell; the fairgrounds lots are $13 and the free-admission days do not cover parking. The light rail stops three miles north at 19th Avenue and Camelback and there is no fair shuttle, so drive. Gates opened at 11 a.m. in 2026.
What to see. Start in the barns while the 4-H and FFA kids are showing; the cattle, hogs, sheep and goats are county animals raised by county children, and the Agricultural Mechanics projects next door are the ones who would rather weld. The sea lion show on the Avenue runs several times a day. The Sanderson Ford Arena hosts the monster trucks on the final weekend, headlined in 2026 by Megasaurus, a car-eating mechanical dinosaur. The Exhibit Building has the quilts, the crafts and the indoor vendors, and the main stage runs local bands, dance schools and martial arts demos. All of it except the rides is in the ticket.
What to eat. Fair food, with a county twist: Steve’s Smoking BBQ by the County Fair Stage and the usual turkey legs and fried everything. No outside food; one sealed bottle of water per person is allowed.
What to skip. The first Friday night, which draws the biggest crowd, and the rides before dark, when the asphalt midway is hot even in April.
A citrus festival that became a fair
The public record on the fair’s origins is thin. The fair itself publishes no history, and the best available account, in the Arizona Republic’s 2018 coverage, says only that it began in the 1950s as a county fair and citrus festival, when the Salt River Valley’s groves still ran from Mesa to Glendale and a county fair was where you judged oranges. Maricopa County Fair, Inc. received its federal tax exemption in September 1981, and by the 2010s it was a million-dollar-a-year operation entirely funded by gate, carnival and vendor revenue. The pandemic cancelled the fair in 2020 and 2021; it came back April 6–10, 2022, and has grown each year since, with revenue passing $2 million in 2024. The organization added a memorial scholarship for Kevin Rogers, a board member and past president, and has made the scholarship program, open to county students who have shown at the fair at least twice, its public face.
Two fairs, one fairground
Visitors confuse the two fairs because the address is identical. The State Fair is the Arizona Exposition and State Fair, a state agency, on these grounds since 1905, open five weeks each fall with nearly 70 rides, 90 food vendors and Coliseum concerts, charging $20 and drawing more than a million people. The county fair rents the same grounds for a week in spring with a carnival a third the size, admission at half the price and a program built around the county’s agricultural youth. It uses the same gates, the same lots and the same Coliseum halls, which is why the State Fair’s own site promotes it. If you have been to the State Fair, the county fair feels like the same place on a quiet day, which is the point.
Why it belongs on a Scottsdale calendar
Scottsdale has no fair of its own; its spring family calendar is the Chandler Ostrich Festival in March, which is bigger, louder and three times the price, and the parks and pools covered in the site’s guide to Scottsdale with kids. The county fair fills the gap in early April, after spring training empties out and before the heat arrives: a $10 ticket, a Butler midway, animals a child can touch and a livestock auction that explains, better than any museum, what the Valley was before it was resorts. Go on a free-until-3 Thursday and it is the cheapest full day out in the Valley.