Florida State Fair — Tampa, Florida

The Florida State Fair is the statewide fair that Florida law assigns to Tampa. Under Florida Statutes 616.251, the Florida State Fair Authority is charged with the responsibility of staging an annual fair to serve the entire state, and its principal offices must sit in or near the City of Tampa. The fair runs each February on the Florida State Fairgrounds in eastern Tampa, a property the Florida State Fairgrounds describes as 337 acres of event space.

The fairgrounds counts roughly 1.75 million visitors every year across more than 250 hosted events, so the February fair is only the largest of many gatherings at the Tampa site. Expos, horse shows, concerts at the MidFlorida Amphitheater and seasonal Cracker Country programs fill the rest of the calendar. The fair itself mixes a carnival midway, livestock and youth agriculture competitions, creative living contests and food vendors at the Hillsborough County site.

The fair dates to 1904. The fairgrounds timeline states that what began with a small start in 1904, at Henry B. Plant's Tampa Bay Hotel, grew into today's fair, with the first one held in downtown Tampa at the Plant hotel on the Hillsborough River. The February 2027 fair falls 123 years after that first Tampa fair.

A merger in 1915 shaped its identity. The fairgrounds history says the fair combined with Tampa's Gasparilla Carnival that year, and the combined event became what the fairgrounds now calls the Florida State Fair. The two Tampa celebrations kept a shared February calendar while the fair stayed downtown.

The downtown fair also hosted serious art. According to Gasparilla Festival of the Arts, each February the fair held a juried art exhibit in conjunction with the Gasparilla invasion, in a space designed by architect Mark Hampton near the horticulture exhibit and livestock barns. In 1969 complaints about paintings of nudes led officials to relocate works to a private room. When the fair moved out of downtown Tampa, that exhibit shrank to a display of high school student art, and downtown business leaders responded by founding the sidewalk art show that became the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts.

The move came with a new governing body. In 1975 the Florida State Legislature created the Florida State Fair Authority, and the fair relocated to the fairgrounds just off Interstate 4 at U.S. Highway 301, where it has remained.

The fair is run by a state body rather than by the City of Tampa or Hillsborough County. Section 616.251 creates the Florida State Fair Authority as a public body corporate and an instrumentality of the state, operating under the supervision of the Commissioner of Agriculture, who may lend department staff to assist it.

Membership is fixed in Section 616.252: the authority shall be composed of 22 members. The Commissioner of Agriculture or a designee votes, as does the member of the Board of County Commissioners of Hillsborough County whose district contains the Florida State Fairgrounds. A nonvoting youth member must be active in Florida Future Farmers of America or a 4-H Club and serves one year. The Commissioner appoints the remaining members to four-year terms, and the statute allows six of the members to be from Hillsborough County. The Commissioner also appoints and sets the pay of the executive director.

As of October 8, 2026, the Tampa fairgrounds lists Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson as leading the Fair Authority Board, with Susanne Clemons as chair, Reggie Holt as vice chair and Eve Council Gloede as secretary. The fairgrounds states that board activities follow the Florida Sunshine Law, section 286.011.

The best known permanent attraction is Cracker Country, which the fairgrounds calls Tampa's only living history museum. It is a rural Florida museum on four acres of live oaks, with original structures built in Florida between 1870 and 1912 that were moved from around the state and furnished to show home life, transportation and commerce. The fair's FAQ counts thirteen original buildings and notes that the museum opens during the Florida State Fair and on select dates, entered from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.

Several Cracker Country buildings carry Tampa Bay links. T. Mabry Carlton donated the Carlton House to help found Cracker Country in 1978; the 1885 house came from Hardee County and was the childhood home of Doyle E. Carlton, Florida's 25th governor. The Okahumpka Train Depot was built in 1898 to serve a section of the Henry B. Plant railroad system that stretched from Tampa to Savannah, and the Smith family of eastern Pasco County once drove their hogs to Tampa to sell, a one-day trip.

Horses have their own complex. The Bob Thomas Equestrian Center is a 23-acre facility at the fairgrounds with barns holding 471 available stalls, TECO Arena, an indoor pavilion and a 52,000 square foot covered arena, and it offers hurricane evacuation stalls for horses from around Tampa Bay. The fairgrounds also lists the MidFlorida Amphitheater off U.S. Highway 301, plus Expo Hall, Entertainment Hall, the Florida Center and the Special Events Center as rental venues.

The fair FAQ states that the Florida State Fair is 12 days of fun ending on President's Day, and that the 2027 fair dates are Thursday, February 4 through Monday, February 15, 2027. The fairgrounds lists daily hours for the 2027 fair of 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Its mailing and street address is 4800 U.S. Highway 301 North, Tampa, FL 33610.

Most fairgoers use the main entrance on U.S. Highway 301. The fairgrounds directions send drivers coming from downtown Tampa or St. Petersburg along I-275 to I-4 East and off at Exit 7, then south on U.S. 301 for a quarter mile; drivers on Interstate 75 use Exit 260 onto Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. A second gate on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. serves Cracker Country, and an Orient Road service entrance serves the equestrian center.

For the 2026 fair, the Tampa fairgrounds priced parking at $8 per vehicle online in advance, $10 online once the fair began and $15 on site. The midway ride armband covered almost the entire midway of more than 80 rides, excluding 3 or 4 specialty attractions, and individual ride credits sold at 7 for $10, 25 for $30 and 50 for $50, with each ride costing 4 to 8 credits. Outside food and drinks are not allowed except for special dietary needs, baby food and individually wrapped snacks for children.

Agriculture is written into the Florida State Fair's structure. The Commissioner of Agriculture supervises the authority, and the youth seat on the board is reserved for an FFA or 4-H member. At the fairgrounds, the Agribusiness Department handles the livestock portion of the fair and coordinates open and youth farm animal shows, and it runs year-round tours such as Ag-Venture to introduce students in Hillsborough County and beyond to agriculture.

The fairgrounds' agriculture program lists the Champion of Champions competition, livestock shows, educational clinics and camps, and a Florida ethics certification program for young exhibitors. Livestock exhibitors, along with concessionaires and vendors, are the groups allowed to camp on the Tampa grounds during the fair.