Hay Bales, Piggy Tales & Ewe! – Your guide to the 2025 Santa Cruz County Fair

And this year’s Santa Cruz County Fair (September 10^th-14^th) is extra special… because everyone who comes to the Santa Cruz County Fair is our special guest! That’s why the 2025 theme is so perfect: “Hay Bales, Piggy Tales & Ewe!”

This year’s Fair, September 10^th-14^th, is bursting with fun and food, animals and entertainment, people and possibilities!

Let’s start with entertainment! For the second year in a row, the Fair will feature a drone show. Each night of the five-day Fair, “Skye Dreams” will amaze fairgoers with 200 drones dancing in the sky above the fairgrounds. It’s an artistic and high-tech experience.

Live concerts this year include, RED – A Taylor Swift Tribute, The White Album Ensemble, The Outlaw Mariachi and Los Dinnos.

New shows this year include FMX Ramp-Age (September 10^th only! Additional ticket required) and Lucha Libre, Pro Wrestling Revolution. We also have a new Slime Lab, powered by the Santa Cruz Children’s Museum of Discovery.

The Fair also hosts Escaramusa El Centenario Charra Show with Lola Montes, a carnival midway, magic shows, kids’ shows, a horse show, POWERHOUSE!!! Percussive Dance, tractor parades and roving entertainment. Plus, all the savory and sweet fair treats you only get once a year… from funnel cakes and cinnamon rolls to fried artichokes and BBQ kabobs.

But wait! There’s more! In our Ag-Hort Department, you’ll get a gander at giant pumpkins and learn all about where our food comes from. In the Bug Barn, you can hold a living insect and study a working beehive. Wander through our Livestock Barns to see pigs, goats, sheep and steer… and talk with the 4-H and FFA teens who raised the animals. The Ag-History Project is a trip back in time. Kids can drive a tractor, learn how to milk a cow and try their hand at using old-fashioned farm equipment.

We’re very proud of our Exhibit Halls. They’re brimming with agriculture, horticulture, home arts, amateur wines, fine arts, LEGOs, poetry, youth displays, baked goods, canned goods, handspun/handwoven crafts, quilting, photography, floriculture, collections and more! It’s the best of what your friends and neighbors have to offer!

In the shadow of California’s Silicon Valley, nestled in the agriculturally rich Pajaro Valley, the Santa Cruz County Fair is a destination event. It’s known as one of the last old-fashioned community fairs. The annual event attracts some 65,000 people.

In 2023 and 2024, readers of the Santa Cruz Sentinel voted the Fair as the Best Annual Event in Santa Cruz County.