The 2020 State Fair of Virginia has been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Virginia Farm Bureau board of directors announced Thursday.
The fair has run annually since 1854, and has been canceled only once before — during the 1918 Spanish influenza, according to the Virginia Farm Bureau.
“This was a difficult decision, but safety is our No. 1 priority,” Marlene Jolliffe, the fair’s executive director, said in a statement. “We’ve spent months developing plans and scenarios that would allow us to still host the fair this year, but with the ever-changing, unpredictable COVID-19 situation, we just couldn’t make it work.”
The fair was scheduled to run from Sept. 25 through Oct. 4 this year at the 330-acre Meadow Event Park in Caroline County, where the event has been held since 2009. Last year, nearly 245,000 people attended the State Fair.
