Wyoming Trading Post
Events

The Wyoming State Fair in Douglas: A Working Guide

Five days in Douglas every August: ranch rodeo, two PRCA nights, breakaway roping, a fire-department demolition derby, and the junior livestock barns. Dates, grandstand prices, carnival wristbands, and what is free.

By Wyoming Trading Post Editors Updated October 13, 2026
The Wyoming State Fair midway at dusk in Douglas, a lit Ferris wheel against a deep blue sky with the fairground buildings and crowd silhouetted along the row.
The midway at dusk on the Wyoming State Fairgrounds in Douglas. Five days, 137 acres, and the one week a year the whole state shows up in the same place. , Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The 2026 Wyoming State Fair ran August 11 through 15 at the Wyoming State Fairgrounds, 400 W Center St, Douglas, Wyoming, and the fair has set August 17 through 21, 2027 for next year. Five days, one grandstand event each night, a carnival, and the junior livestock barns. In 2026 the grandstand nights were priced individually and cheaply: $10 for the opening ranch rodeo, free for the breakaway roping, $20 a night for either PRCA rodeo or $30 for both, and $25 for the closing demolition derby. Gate admission to the fairgrounds is separate and sells through Showpass.

This is the other Wyoming summer event. Cheyenne Frontier Days is the one the world flies in for. Douglas in August is the one Wyoming actually goes to.

The 2026 grandstand schedule

Every night in the Ford Grandstand, in order, with the prices as published on the fair’s own events page:

NightEventTimesPrice
Tuesday, August 11Ranch Rodeo, with a Calcutta pre-showPre-show 6:30 p.m., event 7:00 p.m.$10, children under 12 free
Wednesday, August 12WSF Breakaway Roping6:00 p.m.Free
Thursday, August 13PRCA Rodeo, Legacy Night, with Mutton Bustin’ pre-showPre-show 6:00 p.m., event 7:00 p.m.$20, or $30 for both PRCA nights
Friday, August 14PRCA Rodeo, Future Friday, with Miss Rodeo Wyoming pre-showPre-show 6:30 p.m., event 7:00 p.m.$20, or $30 for both PRCA nights
Saturday, August 15Demolition Derby6:00 p.m.$25

Prices read from wystatefair.com and the fair’s Showpass listing on August 2, 2026. The 2027 lineup and prices had not been posted as of October 13, 2026.

Two of those deserve a note before you plan around them.

The ranch rodeo on opening night is the most Wyoming thing on the schedule and it is ten dollars. Ranch rodeo is not PRCA rodeo. Teams from working outfits compete at the jobs they actually do: sorting, doctoring, branding, wild cow milking. The riding is rougher and less polished than the professional card two nights later, and for a lot of people it is the better watch. The Calcutta beforehand is an auction on the competing teams, and it is worth arriving for.

The breakaway roping on Wednesday is free. A breakaway run is often over in a few seconds. A free night in a state fair grandstand is not something to skip because it did not cost anything.

A shearer in a blue striped shirt working a sheep on its back with electric clippers, wool peeling away in a single fleece, at a Wyoming State Fair demonstration.
Sheep shearing at the Wyoming State Fair. The demonstrations and the stock barns are the part of the fair that has changed least in a hundred years, and the part most visitors walk past on the way to the midway. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The demolition derby

Saturday’s derby closes the fair, cost $25 in 2026, and is produced by the Douglas Volunteer Fire Department. It is the highest-priced night of the five. If you are picking one grandstand night on price alone, the derby is not it. If you are picking one on atmosphere, it might be.

Bring hearing protection, particularly for kids. A grandstand full of engines running without mufflers for two hours is genuinely loud, and a set of folding earmuffs sized for children costs less than one derby ticket. Adults get by with foam plugs; children usually do not, because the fit is wrong and they take them out.

What the fair is, outside the grandstand

The Wyoming State Fairgrounds and Event Complex covers 137 acres under the line “Where Wyoming Comes Together,” and the fair itself dates to 1905 in Douglas.

Free with fairgrounds admission, per the fair’s entertainment page: the Everyday Ag program, Resources of Wyoming, and live music from the Wyoming Singer Songwriters, along with the general run of stage acts, demonstrations and vendor rows.

The real center of gravity is the junior livestock program. 4-H and FFA exhibitors from across the state bring market and breeding beef, sheep, swine and goats and show them across the week, and the Champion of Champions show puts each county fair’s grand champion market animals in the same ring. If you have never watched a sixteen-year-old walk a steer they raised into a show ring, it reframes what a state fair is for. The barns are open to walk with grounds admission, and most exhibitors are happy to talk about their animals if you ask.

Two riders in sashes and white hats on horseback in the middle of a Douglas, Wyoming street during the state fair parade, passing a crowd seated along the curb outside a saloon front hung with antlers.
Riders in sashes at the Douglas fair parade, which runs through the town rather than on the fairgrounds. It is the piece of fair week you watch from a curb, and the clearest sign that a town of about 6,400 hands the whole week over to this. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress (LCCN 2015634063). Public domain.

The carnival, and the presale that actually saves money

The 2026 carnival was run by Carnival Midway Attractions and ran all five days:

  • Tuesday: 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
  • Wednesday through Friday: 2:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
  • Saturday: 2:00 p.m. to midnight

Wristband pricing, as published for 2026:

  • Presale daily wristband: $30.00 plus a $2.00 fee
  • Daily wristband at the gate: $40.00 plus a $2.00 fee
  • Megapass, all five days: $125.00, limited to 50 passes and sold presale only

The 2026 presale window ran July 1 through August 10, which for a family of four on two days was an $80 difference for buying ahead. The Megapass is the outlier: $125 for five days, about the price of three gate wristbands or four presale ones, with only 50 sold.

Gate admission

Fairgrounds admission is a separate ticket from any grandstand night, sold through the fair’s Showpass listing. The fair’s own pages did not publish a plain gate price as of August 2, 2026, and the aggregator sites that quote one do not agree with each other, so we are not going to invent a number here. Buy it through the Showpass link on wystatefair.com, or call the fair office at 307-358-2398 (Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) and ask.

The same goes for the bag and cooler policy, which the fair does not publish. Unlike Cheyenne Frontier Days, which publishes a detailed permitted-items list, Douglas leaves it to the gate. Call ahead if you are planning to bring anything larger than a purse.

What to bring

The grandstand is a grandstand: metal benches, no backs, open sky. Every night event starts between 6 and 7 p.m. in mid-August, which means you catch the last of the afternoon heat and then the drop.

A flat seat cushion. Two hours of a demolition derby on aluminum is longer than it sounds. A flat foam or gel stadium cushion is the highest-return item on this list and it packs flat.

A folding chair for the daytime. The stage areas, the vendor rows and the barns run all afternoon with limited seating. A low-profile folding camp chair that carries on a shoulder strap covers the hours between the barns and the grandstand.

Sun and layers. Douglas sits at about 4,800 feet on the North Platte and August afternoons are hot and exposed, while the evenings cool fast once the sun drops behind the Laramie Range. A straw hat and a long-sleeve shirt beat sunscreen alone, and a Pendleton wool lodge shirt or an equivalent overshirt covers the second half of a night event. The register here is the same one covered in our Western dress code guide: clean working clothes, not costume.

Water. With the caveat above about the unpublished cooler policy, an insulated bottle is worth having in the truck at minimum, and you will want it on the drive regardless of what the gate allows.

A handler with tattooed forearms holding a young cow by the halter at an outdoor agricultural fair, the animal calm and close to the camera.
Show halter, clean animal, months of work behind it. The junior livestock program is the spine of the Wyoming State Fair and the auction at the end of the week is where the year's effort gets settled. Photo by Giulia Botan via Pexels. Pexels License.

Douglas itself

Douglas sits on I-25 about 50 miles east of Casper, in Converse County on the North Platte. It is a town of about 6,400 that absorbs a state fair every August, which tells you most of what you need to know about lodging: book early or stay in Casper and drive.

The town is also the birthplace of the jackalope, which is not a joke it makes reluctantly. Taxidermist brothers Ralph and Douglas Herrick mounted a jackrabbit with a pair of deer antlers in the early 1930s (1934, by Ralph Herrick’s own account), the mounts sold, and by the late 1940s Douglas was calling itself the “Jackalope Capital of the World.” There is an eight-foot statue in Jackalope Square downtown, another at the Visitors Center, jackalopes on the Yellowstone Highway bridge over the North Platte, and the Visitors Center hands out jackalope hunting licenses valid only between midnight and 2 a.m. on June 31. We covered the whole business in our roundup of Wyoming roadside oddities.

Fifteen minutes in town before or after the fair is a fair use of the trip.

A tall jackalope statue in Douglas, Wyoming, a seated jackrabbit with antlers, standing on a plinth in a small park with pines behind it.
The Douglas jackalope. The Herrick brothers' taxidermy joke from the 1930s is now on the city seal. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith, Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

How to plan it

One night. Pick your grandstand event and arrive four hours early. Walk the livestock barns, eat on the grounds, catch a stage act, then take your seat. The ranch rodeo on Tuesday and the free breakaway on Wednesday are the two best value picks.

A full day. Come in at midday, do the barns and the demonstrations properly, take the carnival in the late afternoon with a presale wristband, and finish at the grandstand. That is a twelve-hour day.

The whole week. Realistic only if you have an exhibitor in the family, which is exactly who does it. If that is you, the Megapass math works and you already know it.

Further reading

  • Wyoming State Fair official site, for the current year’s grandstand lineup, carnival hours and ticket links.
  • Wyoming State Fair office, 307-358-2398, for gate admission, bag policy and camping questions the site does not answer.
  • The Douglas Visitors Center, for the jackalope hunting license.

Sources

  1. Wyoming State Fair, official site
  2. Wyoming State Fair, Ford Grandstand Events (2026 lineup, times, prices)
  3. Wyoming State Fair, Carnival (2026 hours and wristband pricing)
  4. Wyoming State Fair ticketing on Showpass
  5. Wyoming State Fair, Entertainment
  6. Wyoming State Fair, About (the fair started in Douglas in 1905)
  7. Wyoming State Fairgrounds & Event Complex (137 acres)
  8. Wyoming State Fair, 2026 4-H premium book (Champion of Champions; 2027 dates August 17-21)
  9. City of Douglas, Meet Jack
  10. City of Douglas, The Legend of the Jackalope (New York Times reprint)