The Clark County Fair kicked off this weekend in Ridgefield, Washington, drawing crowds for rides, concerts and a 2,000-square-foot exhibit that lets visitors imagine life on Mars. The fair runs through August 16 at the Clark County Fairgrounds and Event Center, with gates open 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday.
Billed as the largest county fair in the region, this year's event leans into a space theme with its Mars Encounter attraction, a fully immersive experience that includes a full-scale Mars rover replica and shows how humans could one day live and thrive in a colony on the Red Planet, according to KATU. The 2026 theme, “Blast Off to Fun,” ties the exhibit to the national celebration of America's 250th anniversary, and organizers built the fair's marketing and hands-on space displays around it, per the Clark County Fair.
Concert season opened the same weekend, with reserved seating for country act Midland's opening-night show selling out before the fair even started, leaving only free, first-come first-served grandstand seats for those who didn't buy ahead. Midland led a three-day run in the Toyota Grandstand that also featured the I Love the '90s Tour and Collective Soul, the station's report notes. Reserved concert seating for headliners generally runs $38 to $48 and includes fair gate admission, while standard grandstand seating remains free with a regular fair ticket.
Rides, Rovers and Curly the Camel
Beyond the Mars exhibit, fairgoers can catch the X-treme Airdogs Show, visit Curly the Camel and the Pop-Up Pirates' parrot, and ride the giant Ferris wheel among the fair's broader lineup of rides. Butler Amusements is running the 2026 carnival midway, bringing back a refurbished Zipper ride and debuting new family attractions including the Crazy Dog coaster, Jumbo Dumbos and Jeeps, per the fair's own announcement. Fair food and barbecue specialties round out the grounds, alongside daily pie-eating and doughnut-eating contests.
Live music continues throughout the run beyond the headline concerts, and some ticket packages bundle fair admission, grandstand concerts and unlimited ride wristbands together. Advance general admission was held at previous rates this year — $10 for adults, $8 for seniors 62 and older, $7 for youth ages 7 to 12, and free for children 6 and under — with discounted tickets and wristbands sold online and at regional Wilco and credit union outlets through August 6.
A Regional Tradition Dating to 1868
The fair traces its roots to October 21, 1868, when it was first held at Esther Short Park in Vancouver under the Clark County Agricultural and Mechanical Society, before eventually settling into its permanent Ridgefield home. This year's run marks its 158th edition. The event has grown into a massive regional draw, pulling between 260,000 and 280,000 visitors annually and standing as the largest single-venue family event in the Portland-Vancouver metro area, according to KGW, which also reported the fair returned to full operations in 2022 after a two-year pandemic hiatus.
Motorsports and rodeo action fill out the Toyota Grandstand's daytime schedule alongside the evening concerts, including Hell-on-Hooves bull riding, Side-by-Side UTV racing and Monster Trucks, with a local-driver Tuff Trucks obstacle course competition planned for closing weekend. This year's Equestrian Court is led by real-life sisters Heidi Williamson, serving as Queen, and River Williamson, serving as Princess, who are making appearances across the fairgrounds to demonstrate horse-riding skills. Interactive food contests round out the daily schedule as well, with watermelon slurping, cheeseburger stuffing and hot dog eating events joining the fair's traditional pie and doughnut competitions.
