Planning Has Begun for the 2021 Minnesota State Fair

Despite an uncertain future, planning for the Minnesota State Fair is underway for 2021! As I hope you know by now, I LOVE the Great Minnesota Get-Together and I’m really hoping we can truly all get together like normal this year.

Even though the pandemic stopped the usual state fair from happening they still hosted super fun food parades. I somehow was able to snag tickets for the first round of the food parade and I can confirm it was a fun and tasty event. I was just happy I didn’t have to ruin my state fair-going streak! The state fair still lost a lot of money in 2020 even with the success of the food parades. In a news release, the state fair says that they reported “an operating loss of $16.2 million.” 

Of course, we are all hoping to be able to get back to a normal state fair this year, including the organizers, but because no one knows where we’ll be with the pandemic in August the state fair board is planning for multiple scenarios. They didn’t release what those scenarios are though. 

Either way, the plan right now is for the Great Minnesota Get-Together to run August 26th through Labor Day (September 6th). Whether it’s the massive hoopla we all know and love or it’s a smaller-scale event, we won’t know until we get closer to the event date. State Fair General Manager Jerry Hammer said at their annual meeting last week, “‘Our staff is ready to go, and we can’t wait to welcome everyone back together at the State Fair.’”