The Minnesota State Fair broke its fifth attendance record this year on Sunday, as officials counted 256,015 people who visited the fairgrounds on the festival’s penultimate day.
Another record-breaking crowd at the Minnesota State Fair on Sunday, including Gov. Tim Walz
A total of 256,015 people attended the Great Minnesota Get-Together on its penultimate day.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
September 2, 2024 at 8:53PM
That’s a new record for second-Sunday attendance, beating out the 245,243 visitors the day before Labor Day in 2019.
The new Sunday record also coincided with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s first and only visit to the fairgrounds during this year’s festivities. Now the Democratic nominee for vice president, Walz spent 30 tightly controlled minutes visiting with fairgoers between stops for a pork chop on a stick and a conversation with Rachel Visser, this year’s Princess Kay of the Milky Way.
With one day to go, a total of 1,750,015 people have visited the fair so far this year. The record for overall attendance, set in 2019, is 2,126,551.
Although the 2024 iteration of the Great Minnesota Get-Together saw its share of record-breaking days, two of them also counted among the festival’s least-attended as extreme weather bore down on the fairgrounds. On Aug. 26 — the first Monday — 80,546 people went to the fairgrounds. And on Aug. 29, 81,231 people attended.
The final Saturday of the 2018 Minnesota State Fair holds the record for attendance at 270,426.
The governor said it may be 2027 or 2028 by the time the market catches up to demand.
