Every September, the world’s tallest cowboy takes a breath of Texas air and greets the crowds at Fair Park with two of the most anticipated words in the state: “Howdy, Folks!” That is the signal that the State Fair of Texas has once again flung open its gates for its 24-day run, and there may be no better year to hear it than 2026, when the fair celebrates its 140th birthday under a theme built for the occasion — “Stars, Stripes, and Howdies,” a salute to the nation’s 250th anniversary that wraps patriotism, pageantry, and a heavy helping of fried food into one of Dallas’s oldest and most beloved traditions.
The 2026 State Fair opens Friday, September 25, and runs through Sunday, October 18, at historic Fair Park in Dallas, where gates open each day at 10 a.m. It is a milestone edition in every sense. The fair traces its roots to a charter signed on January 30, 1886, when a group of Dallas businessmen led by W.H. Gaston, John S. Armstrong, and Thomas L. Marsalis incorporated the Dallas State Fair & Exposition. That venture nearly collapsed before it began, when disagreements over where to build the fairgrounds split the founders into rival camps. Gaston wanted an 80-acre tract in East Dallas that falls within the modern boundaries of Fair Park; a competing faction chartered its own event just north of town. Both fairs ran that first autumn to big crowds, but neither made money, and the rivals merged in 1887 into the Texas State Fair & Dallas Exposition. What followed was a colorful but rocky early history: a grandstand collapsed during a fireworks show in 1900, the main exhibit building burned to the ground two years later, and when the Texas Legislature banned gambling on horse races in 1903, eliminating the fair’s chief source of revenue, the association found itself in crisis. Rather than sell out to developers, it sold its property to the City of Dallas in 1904 under an agreement reserving a period each fall for the fair — an arrangement that still shapes Fair Park today.
The reorganized State Fair prospered almost immediately, drawing an estimated 300,000 visitors in 1905 and surpassing the one-million mark by 1916. Presidents William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson visited; automobile races and stunt flying drew the crowds of a fast-changing America. The 1920s brought a grand auditorium that would become the Music Hall, and in 1929 the fair established one of its most enduring institutions, the Texas-Oklahoma football game, played in a stadium built the following year and later renamed the Cotton Bowl. In 1934, largely through the efforts of civic leader R.L. Thornton, Fair Park was selected as the centerpiece of the Texas Centennial celebration, and a $25 million project transformed the grounds into a masterpiece of art and imagination. The 1936 Centennial Exposition pulled in more than six million people over six months, and in 1986 the entire Fair Park complex was designated a National Historic Landmark. Wars have shut the gates only a handful of times — during World War I and from 1942 to 1945 — but the fair has otherwise kept its date with autumn.
At the heart of that tradition stands Big Tex, the lanky icon who has greeted guests at the center of the grounds since 1952. His origin story is one of the fair’s best, a tale of a small-town gimmick that outgrew its birthplace. In 1949, merchants in Kerens, Texas, desperate to keep Christmas shoppers from driving to Corsicana or all the way to Dallas, built what they claimed was the world’s largest Santa Claus — a 49-foot figure made of iron-pipe drill casing, papier-mâché, and seven-foot lengths of unravelled rope for a beard. The Santa novelty worked for one season and then faded, so in 1951 fair officials bought the figure for $750 and set Dallas artist Jack Bridges to work transforming it into a cowboy. Big Tex debuted at the 1952 fair standing 52 feet tall in size 70 boots and a 75-gallon hat, and he has towered over the grounds ever since, moving in the mid-1950s to the roundabout in front of what is now the Tower Building, where he still stands. But his closest brush with disaster came on the final Friday of the 2012 fair, when an electrical short sparked a fire in his base and destroyed the beloved figure. Like any proud Texan, he showed up for work the next year, unveiled in grand fashion on September 27, 2013, with the same “Howdy, Folks!” greeting. The rebuilt Big Tex continues to greet fairgoers today, and the 2026 theme, “Stars, Stripes, and Howdies,” celebrates the nation’s 250th anniversary.
For all the spectacle of the midway, the livestock shows, and the concerts, the State Fair of Texas also functions as one of North Texas’s most important nonprofits. It is a 501(c)(3) organization whose annual 24-day event is its largest fundraiser, supporting scholarships, agricultural education, youth programs, and the preservation of Fair Park. Since 1992, the Big Tex Scholarship Program has awarded more than $21.4 million in college scholarships to more than 3,850 students across Texas, and in 2026 alone the fair distributed more than $1.2 million to 103 new recipients. Through its Community Giving Program, the fair awarded more than $646,000 in 2025 to 142 organizations serving the South Dallas and Fair Park areas, and its Big Tex Urban Farms project celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2026 after donating more than two million servings of fresh produce to South Dallas families. A day at the fair, in other words, pays dividends long after the last corn dog is eaten.
Perhaps the most storied afternoon of the fair season arrives with the Texas-Oklahoma football game at the Cotton Bowl, an annual fairtime institution since 1929. It is one more thread in a tapestry that, since 1988, has stretched the traditional season from 17 days to 24. From a 19th-century cattle-and-farm-equipment show, the State Fair of Texas celebrates its 140th birthday in 2026 the same way it always has — with a deep breath, a towering cowboy, and a greeting that could only come from Texas. Howdy, folks, indeed.