Florida State Fair in Tampa, Florida

The Florida State Fair is the statewide fair that Florida law assigns to the Tampa area.

Under Florida Statutes 616.251 (2025), 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 be 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 1.75 million visitors every year and more than 250 hosted events each year, so the February fair is only the largest of many gatherings at the Tampa site; the same page elsewhere says the grounds attract over 1.5 million visitors a year, and the two figures are left as the fairgrounds states them. The fairgrounds FAQ describes a year-round calendar in Tampa that includes the Florida State Fair, expos, and agricultural and educational events, and the fair program lists Creative Living competitions, livestock shows and fair vendors.

The Florida State Fairgrounds traces the fair to 1904 and its first fair in downtown Tampa.

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. In 1915 the fair combined with Tampa's Gasparilla Carnival, and the combined event became what the fairgrounds now calls the Florida State Fair.

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 changed into a display of high school student art, and in 1970 a group of downtown business people conceived the sidewalk art festival that the nonprofit traces as its own origin.

The move came with a new governing body. The fairgrounds history says that in 1975 the Florida State Legislature created the Florida State Fair Authority, and the fair moved to its present grounds just off Interstate 4. The history note under section 616.251 lists chapter 74-322 of the Laws of Florida as the first act behind the authority, a chapter number from the 1974 session; the two state sources differ on the year.

The fair is run by a state body, the Florida State Fair Authority, rather than by the City of Tampa or Hillsborough County.

Section 616.251 creates the authority behind the Tampa fair as a public body corporate and politic and an instrumentality of the state, operating under the supervision of the Commissioner of Agriculture, who may make department staff available 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 Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners 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 other members to 4-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 18, 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 on the Tampa grounds is Cracker Country, a rural Florida living history museum.

The Cracker Country page calls it Tampa's only living history museum, set on four acres of live oaks, with original structures built in Florida between 1870 and 1912 that were relocated from around the state and furnished to represent home life, transportation and commerce. The fair FAQ counts thirteen original buildings and says the museum is open daily during the annual fair in February and the rest of the year only for field trips, homeschool events and featured public events. The FAQ places Cracker Country at the MLK Blvd entrance, Gate 2.

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 from 1929 to 1933. 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 a year 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 Tampa fairgrounds with barns holding 471 available stalls near TECO Arena, an indoor pavilion and a 52,000 square foot covered arena, and it offers hurricane evacuation stalls during evacuations. The fairgrounds FAQ also lists the MidFlorida Amphitheater at the U.S. Highway 301 entrance, plus Expo Hall, Entertainment Hall, the Florida Center and the Special Events Center, each with its gate.

The next Florida State Fair is scheduled for Thursday, February 4 through Monday, February 15, 2027, at the Tampa fairgrounds.

The fair FAQ states that the Florida State Fair is 12 days of fun ending on President's Day, and the 2027 fair page lists daily hours of 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM, with tickets on sale. The street address is 4800 U.S. Highway 301 North, Tampa, FL 33610, and the main line is (813) 621-7821, Monday to Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Most fairgoers use the main entrance on U.S. Highway 301. The fairgrounds directions send drivers coming from Tampa or St. Pete and Clearwater along I-275 to I-4 East, off at Exit 7 and south on U.S. 301 for a quarter mile; drivers on Interstate 75 use Exit 260 onto Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. A Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. entrance serves select events, including seasonal Cracker Country events, and an Orient Road service entrance handles competition deliveries, school trips to Cracker Country and tours.

The FAQ, as posted in October 2026, lists these fair prices for Tampa fairgoers. It describes the midway as 80+ rides in its armband answer and as over 90 rides in its height answer; both figures are its own.

The ride armband covers almost the entire Tampa midway except about 3 or 4 specialty attractions, such as the mechanical bull and bungee jump. Outside food and drinks are not allowed except for special dietary needs, food allergies, baby food or formula, and individually wrapped snacks for children. For the 2026 fair, the FAQ says persons 17 or younger had to be with an admission-paying parent or guardian 21 or older after 5:00 p.m.

Agriculture is written into the Florida State Fair's structure, from its supervising official to its livestock shows in Tampa.

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 Tampa fairgrounds, the FAQ says the Agribusiness Department handles the livestock portion of the fair and coordinates all open and youth farm animal shows, as well as year-round tours and programming like Ag-Venture to expose students to the agricultural industry.

The fairgrounds agriculture menu lists Champion of Champions, Competitions and Shows, AG Learning Experiences, Educational Clinics and Camps, and a Florida ethics certification program. The FAQ says camping on the Tampa grounds during the annual fair is for concessionaires, vendors, livestock exhibitors and similar groups, by reservation.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, re-reading the Florida State Fairgrounds about, Cracker Country, equestrian, FAQ, 2027 fair and directions pages, Florida Statutes sections 616.251 and 616.252 on the Florida Senate site, and the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts history page.