During the Fair, The Kitchen, located in Maytag Family Theaters, is a popular demonstration kitchen for anything from cuts of meat to barbecue, cake decorating, charcuterie and cooking with honey. From November through April, stay tuned for interactive, educational and fun cooking classes for all skill levels. Learn from local experts, using local products. Look for special events throughout the year until the 2026 Iowa State Fair, August 13-23. 

Charcuterie Grazing Boxes
and Candle Making Class

Learn how to craft the perfect charcuterie grazing box and pour your own candle at a hands-on workshop on Sunday, November 16, at The Kitchen in the Maytag Family Theaters on the Iowa State Fairgrounds.

Filled with a variety of meats, cheese and other fun delicacies, this workshop is sure to give you everything you need to know about creating the perfect grazing box from getonboarddsm. You’ll also enjoy making your own 15-ounce candle with By Wisteria. With over 30 different fragrances and a wide variety of flowers, dried herbs, dried fruits and spices, you will create a one-of-a-kind, custom candle to take home.

Charcuterie Grazing Boxes and Candle Making Class

Sunday, November 16, 2025, at 2 p.m.

(Two-hour class; limit of 30 participants per class)

Cost: $75 per person

Cost includes your own take-home grazing box and a 15-oz 100% soy wax candle.

Learn more

The Iowa State Fair is featured in "State Fairs: Growing American Craft," an exhibition on display at the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery in Washington D.C. August 22, 2025-September 7, 2026. The exhibition is dedicated to artists' contributions to the great U.S. tradition of state fairs with more than 240 artworks on view, dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

Learn more

Weather Didn't Stop the Fun at the Fair This Year

Despite rain, heat and humidity, the 2025 Iowa State Fair was packed with fun, food, livestock, contests, competitions, entertainment and top-notch sweet memory-making moments.

The 2025 Iowa State Fair welcomed a total of 1,160,121 Fairgoers. While the all-time record of 1,182,682 Fairgoers was set in 2024, this year's turnout was the third-highest in history despite all the weather challenges. Along with multiple days of rain, the average daily temperature at the 2025 Fair was 8 degrees higher than the 2024 Fair.

Some highlights of the 2025 Fair included:

Sweet, all-time record attendance in the Grandstand: From Christian artist Forrest Frank's standing room only performance on August 7, to country, rock and hip hop the remaining nights, Fairgoers had a diverse lineup to buy tickets to throughout the Fair. Record-breaking crowds filled the Grandstand for unforgettable nights of music and memories. The 2025 Iowa State Fair Grandstand recorded 131,755 concertgoers. The old record of 128,504 was set in 2019.

The Sweetest Giant of Them All: A giant pumpkin shown by Pete and Alba Caspers of Peosta was pumpkin was one sweet showstopper, weighing in at 1,409 pounds. It weighed more than the biggest boar this year!

Delicious Wins: Two years running, Winn & Sara's Kitchen's food in the Best New Food Contest was voted People's Choice. The Bacon Chicken Ranch Eggroll won the People's Choice Best New Food Award, with 44.7% of the votes. A whopping 10,711 votes were counted in the Best New Food competition, while thousands more tried the more than 60 new foods offered at the Fair in 2025. Fairgoers also voted for their favorite new drink on the official Iowa State Fair app. The winner of the Best New Drink (with alcohol) went to JR's SouthPork Ranch for the Pink Pony Cooler, and Jada's Funnel Cakes received Best New Drink (without alcohol) for their Watermelon Lemonade.

Scratching Up a Sweet Record: Partnering with the Iowa Lottery, the Iowa State Fair helped achieve a Guinness Book of World Records title, bringing together 1,380 people to simultaneously scratch a lottery ticket on August 14 in Elwell Family Park. The Iowa Lottery celebrated 40 years of scratch tickets, too.

Sweet Ride: An amazing record-breaking number of six-horse hitches were shown in the Jacobson Exhibition Center on the last day of the Fair. Twenty horse teams took over one hour to fill the arena with 120 big, beautiful horses.

Ribbons, rewards and results: Other 2025 Iowa State Fair numbers are still being tallied. Watch for the 2026 Iowa State Fair theme soon and mark your calendars for August 13-23, 2026.

Renovations and Improvements

Interested in learning about Iowa State Fairgrounds projects and renovations? Learn more about the Renovations and Improvements that are taking place on the Iowa State Fairgrounds.