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Rainy weather drives down attendance at Carolina Classic Fair

88.5 WFDD - Public Radio For The Piedmont | By Amy Diaz
Published October 12, 2026 at 4:10 PM EDT
WFDD File photo
Roughly 212,000 people attended this year's Carolina Classic Fair.

Attendance at the Carolina Classic Fair was down by roughly 39,000 guests compared to last year.

Officials say poor weather conditions are to blame.

The Carolina Classic Fair closed on Saturday due to weather impacts from Hurricane Isaias. That likely accounts for the bulk of the attendance decline — in 2025, the fair’s closing Saturday brought in more than 40,000 guests.

Officials say this year’s opening weekend was affected by gloomy skies and rain too. Weekday crowds, on the other hand, were up by roughly 2% compared to last year.

There were also about 2,000 more competitive entries this time around, including the largest pumpkin officials have seen in recent years. It weighed in at 1,089.5 pounds.
Amy Diaz
Amy Diaz began covering education in North Carolina’s Piedmont region and High Country for WFDD in partnership with Report For America in 2022. Before entering the world of public radio, she worked as a local government reporter in Flint, Mich. where she was named the 2021 Rookie Writer of the Year by the Michigan Press Association. Diaz is originally from Florida, where she interned at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune and freelanced for the Tampa Bay Times. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of South Florida, but truly got her start in the field in elementary school writing scripts for the morning news. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.
See stories by Amy Diaz