The Best Day to Go to the Minnesota State Fair According to Science

The 'best day' to go to the Minnesota State Fair can be objective, but most of the time, when someone is looking for the best day to go, they're looking for the date with the smallest crowds.

It's a fair thing to look into! The crowds can get absolutely insane on certain days of the fair. If crowds aren't your thing, you don't want to deal with small kids in a massive crowd, or you just don't want to have to wait in TOO long a line for your Pronto Pup, this is for you.

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Axios Twin Cities broke down State Fair attendance data over the past 30 years to figure out for us which day of the Great Minnesota Get-Together is typically the best one to go on.

Obviously, this isn't 100% foolproof because lots of things can change attendance numbers, like the weather, for example, but this is, at the very least, a good guide.

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The Worst Days to Go to the Minnesota State Fair

Based on attendance over the past 30 years, the days that you should definitely NOT go to the fair if you want to avoid crowds are the Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend. Attendance on the first Saturday and Sunday of the fair are also some of the busiest days.

What Day Has Smaller Crowds at the Minnesota State Fair?

As for the least attended day, that's typically the very first day of the fair. Which is today. So not helpful. However, in the past few years, the first day of the fair has seen attendance records, so maybe it's not a bad thing to miss today.

Based on the graph from Axios, on average, the best day to go to the fair (the day that typically sees the smallest crowds) is the Tuesday of the fair. Wednesday looks like the second-lowest attended day on average.

However, since the pandemic, the numbers have changed a bit. What they found is that the first Monday and the second Thursday have recently been the least attended days of the fair.

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Now, as I mentioned earlier, the weather can have a big impact on attendance numbers. Axios writes, "historically, highs in the 70s draw crowds 17% larger than highs in the 90s". Well, the entire state fair this year is predicted to have sunny weather and in the 70s, so we may be in for a record-setting year.

Based on all of this information, my recommendation is that the absolute best day to go to the Minnesota State Fair this year is going to be Monday. However, if you need to go on a weekend, the first weekend historically has a much better chance of smaller crowds.