Stardew Valley Fair is one of the most important festivals of the year, combining mini-games, prizes, villagers, Star Tokens, and the famous Grange Display competition where players can show off the best products from their farm.
Stardew Valley Fair preparation matters because winning the Grange Display depends on more than simply bringing your most expensive crops. Quality, sell value, item variety, and filling all nine display slots can dramatically affect your final score.
Stardew Valley Fair is an annual Fall festival held in Pelican Town on Fall 16. Players can enter between 9 AM and 3 PM, compete in games, earn Star Tokens, purchase exclusive rewards, and submit up to nine items for the Grange Display competition.
Stardew Valley Fair: When and Where Does It Happen?
The festival takes place every year on Tuesday, Fall 16, in Pelican Town. You can enter the town between 9 AM and 3 PM, and leaving the festival ends the event and returns your character to the farm at 10 PM.
Unlike a normal day, most buildings around Pelican Town are inaccessible during the festival, so prepare everything you need before entering.
What should you prepare before the fair?
The most important preparation is selecting up to nine strong items for your Grange Display.
Try to bring items representing several categories rather than simply filling the display with nine identical crops. Good categories include:
- Animal Products;
- Artisan Goods;
- Cooking;
- Fish;
- Foraging;
- Fruits;
- Minerals;
- Vegetables.
The game awards additional points for diversity, so spreading your nine items across several categories is usually much stronger than focusing on only one.
Do not forget your Grange Display items
One common mistake is arriving at the festival without the items you planned to display.
Before going to Pelican Town, place your chosen items in your inventory. Once the festival starts, normal access to buildings becomes limited, making preparation especially important.
After Mayor Lewis judges your display, remember to remove the items yourself. They are not automatically returned to your inventory, although forgotten items can later be recovered through the Lost and Found.
How to Win Stardew Valley Fair Grange Display
Players searching for how to win Stardew Valley Fair should focus on three major factors: filling all nine spaces, choosing valuable high-quality items, and representing several different categories.
You need at least 90 points to earn first place and receive 1,000 Star Tokens. Second place requires 75 points, while third requires 60.
Fill all nine display slots
Always try to use all nine Grange Display spaces.
The game awards points based partly on the number of items displayed. Nine items earn the maximum nine points from this portion of the calculation, while leaving spaces empty reduces your score.
Even an average item can therefore be better than an empty slot.
A full display gives you the strongest foundation before the game evaluates item value, quality, and categories.
Use at least six different categories
Category diversity is one of the easiest ways to increase your score.
There are eight recognized categories, and each represented category awards five points, up to a maximum bonus of 30 points. This means six different categories are enough to receive the full diversity bonus.
A strong display could contain:
- One valuable fruit;
- One high-quality vegetable;
- One artisan product;
- One valuable fish;
- One animal product;
- One forage item;
- Three additional high-value items.
This structure gives you diversity while leaving three spaces for particularly valuable products.
Stardew Valley Fair Best Items for the Grange Display
The Stardew Valley fair best items are generally products with high sell prices, strong quality levels, and useful category classifications.
An Iridium-quality item can score substantially better than a basic-quality version, but raw sell value is also important.
Quality and price both affect points
Grange Display item scoring can reach a maximum of eight points per individual item.
Both sell price and quality influence that score. For example, high-quality items receive additional value because their actual sell price increases alongside their quality level.
The following simplified table shows how useful different combinations can be:
| Item Type | Good Choice | Why It Helps |
| Animal Product | Iridium Large Goat Milk | Quality + category |
| Artisan Good | Valuable Wine or Cheese | High sell value |
| Fish | High-value Gold/Iridium fish | Price + quality |
| Fruit | Gold/Iridium valuable fruit | Quality + category |
| Vegetable | High-quality valuable crop | Diversity + points |
| Foraging | Valuable high-quality forage | Adds category |
| Mineral | Valuable gem | Easy category diversity |
| Cooking | Valuable prepared dish | Adds another category |
The exact best items for Stardew Valley Fair depend on what your farm has produced during that year.
You do not need nine perfect late-game items to win.
A practical winning display
A reliable first-year strategy is to save your strongest items throughout Summer and early Fall.
For example, you could bring:
- Gold-quality Melon;
- Gold-quality Pumpkin;
- Diamond;
- Gold-quality fish;
- High-quality animal product;
- Cheese;
- Valuable forage item;
- Another artisan good;
- Another expensive fruit or vegetable.
This is not the only winning combination.
The important principle is combining value, quality, nine occupied spaces, and category diversity.
How Stardew Valley Fair Scoring Works
Understanding the score makes how to win the Stardew Valley Fair much easier.
Every display receives 14 base points automatically. Additional points come from how many items you submit, the categories represented, and the individual value of each item.
Grange Display score breakdown
The core scoring structure is:
| Scoring Element | Maximum |
| Base score | 14 |
| Nine displayed items | 9 |
| Category diversity | 30 |
| Individual item scores | Up to 72 |
| Maximum possible | 125 |
The maximum theoretical score is 125, although achieving it requires nine eight-point items and at least six recognized categories.
Fortunately, first place requires only 90 points.
That gives players plenty of flexibility.
How many points are needed to win?
The current reward thresholds are:
| Placement | Required Score | Star Tokens |
| First | 90+ | 1,000 |
| Second | 75+ | 500 |
| Third | 60+ | 250 |
| Fourth | Below 60 | 50 |
Reaching 90 points should therefore be the main objective when planning your display.
You do not need to chase the theoretical maximum unless you simply enjoy optimizing the competition.
What to Bring to Stardew Valley Fair
Players asking what to bring to Stardew Valley Fair should prioritize their Grange Display because most other attractions do not require special items.
Your inventory can therefore remain relatively empty except for your nine competition pieces.
Bring nine carefully selected items
Before leaving the farm, review your stored products.
Choose your nine items using this order of priority:
- High quality;
- High sell price;
- Different categories;
- Items you do not mind temporarily removing from storage;
- Products that help complete six categories.
You can use a Stardew Valley Fair calculator created by the community to estimate a display score before attending, but understanding the basic rules often makes a calculator unnecessary.
Aim comfortably above 90 rather than trying to reach exactly 90.
Save strong items throughout the year
A useful habit is creating a chest specifically for the fair.
Whenever you obtain an excellent Gold or Iridium-quality product, save one candidate until Fall 16.
Good candidates include:
- Valuable fish;
- High-quality fruit;
- High-quality vegetables;
- Large animal products;
- Cheese;
- Wine;
- Gems;
- Valuable forage items.
This makes preparation much easier when the festival arrives.
Stardew Valley Fair Wheel: Best Strategy for Star Tokens
The Stardew Valley Fair wheel is one of the quickest ways to multiply Star Tokens after earning your first batch from the Grange Display or other mini-games.
Players choose between green and orange and wager some of their tokens on the result.
Green has significantly better odds
The spinning wheel is not evenly balanced.
Without Luck modifiers, the wheel lands on green approximately 73.3% of the time and orange approximately 26.6% of the time. In other words, green is around 2.75 times more likely to win.
That makes betting on green the statistically stronger strategy.
However, no individual spin is guaranteed.
You can still lose several green bets in a row because each spin is independent.
Do not bet everything at once
A safer strategy is wagering only part of your Star Tokens.
The Stardew Valley Wiki’s expected-value analysis recommends betting approximately 46.7% of your current tokens on green when trying to maximize expected profit while reducing the risk of losing everything.
In practical terms, you can simply bet around half.
For example:
- 1,000 tokens → bet around 450–500;
- 1,500 tokens → bet around 700;
- 2,000 tokens → bet around 900–1,000.
Winning repeatedly can quickly build enough tokens for the most important fair rewards.
Best Stardew Valley Fair Rewards
Star Tokens are the special currency used during the festival.
They do not carry over to the following year, so spending them before leaving the fair is usually the best approach.
Prioritize the Stardrop
The Stardrop is generally the most important reward because it permanently increases your character’s maximum Energy.
Unlike most fair shop items, it can only be purchased once.
Other rewards return in subsequent years.
For that reason, new players should normally focus on earning enough tokens for the Stardrop before spending heavily on optional prizes.
Version 1.6 added a Prize Ticket
Starting with Stardew Valley 1.6.1, the fair shop also includes one Prize Ticket costing 1,000 Star Tokens.
Other rotating or fixed rewards can include useful items such as Triple Shot Espresso, Glowstone Ring, Hay, and Mixed Seeds depending on the available stock.
Once you obtain your priority rewards, additional Star Tokens can be spent according to your current farm needs.
Other Games at the Stardew Valley Fair
The Grange Display and spinning wheel get most of the attention, but the festival contains several other activities.
These mini-games offer alternative ways to earn Star Tokens if you prefer not to rely heavily on the wheel.
Fishing and target games
Fishing players can earn Star Tokens through the fair’s fishing mini-game. There are also target-based activities that reward accurate timing and performance.
Because the mini-games can be repeated, you can continue earning Star Tokens even after the Grange Display judging has finished.
The wheel is generally faster when luck goes your way, but mini-games offer a more active alternative.
Visit the fortune teller
Welwick operates the Fortune Teller Booth for 100g. The fortune references villagers with high positions in your Social menu and your strongest skill, making it more of a fun character event than a Star Token farming method.
It is worth visiting at least once if you enjoy Stardew Valley’s character interactions.
Ridgeside Fair Stardew Valley and Modded Games
Players searching for ridgeside fair Stardew Valley are generally using the Ridgeside Village expansion mod rather than the vanilla game.
Ridgeside Village adds more than 50 NPCs, new areas, items, quests, shops, and additional festivals while also integrating its residents into several existing Stardew Valley events.
Ridgeside Village expands the regular fair
Ridgeside Village can add its NPCs to the standard Stardew Valley Fair and includes an additional fair area for them when the appropriate festival attendance configuration is enabled.
The vanilla Stardew Valley Fair still occurs on Fall 16.
Ridgeside also adds its own separate Ridgeside Gathering on Fall 20, so players should not confuse the two events.
Mods can change festival content
Large expansion mods may modify maps, NPC attendance, dialogue, shops, and other festival elements.
If your game looks different from screenshots in a vanilla Stardew Valley fair guide, check your active mods before assuming something is wrong.
Always verify that your mods support your current Stardew Valley version, especially after major game updates.
Common Stardew Valley Fair Mistakes
The festival becomes much easier once you understand the scoring system, but several mistakes can reduce rewards unnecessarily. Most of them are simple to avoid with basic preparation.
Bringing nine identical valuable items
Nine expensive wines may look impressive, but category diversity can provide up to 30 additional points.
A mixed display containing several strong categories may outperform a display filled entirely with one valuable product.
Think about overall scoring rather than item price alone.
Leaving display slots empty
Because the number of displayed items affects your score, unused slots reduce your potential total.
Fill all nine whenever possible. Even if your ninth item is weaker, occupying the slot can still improve the final result.
Forgetting to collect your items
Your displayed products are not automatically returned after judging. Remove them before leaving the festival.
If you forget, the game allows them to be recovered through Mayor Lewis’s Lost and Found system.
Betting all Star Tokens on one spin
Green has better odds, but better odds do not mean certainty. Betting your entire balance can erase your progress after one unlucky spin. Use smaller repeated wagers instead.
FAQ
Here are quick answers to the most common questions about the Stardew Valley Fair, Grange Display, Star Tokens, and winning strategies.
The Stardew Valley fair takes place every year on Fall 16. You can enter Pelican Town between 9 AM and 3 PM.
For players asking how to win Stardew Valley Fair, reach at least 90 Grange Display points. Use nine items, prioritize quality and value, and represent at least six categories.
The best items for Stardew Valley Fair combine high quality, strong sell prices, and category diversity. Valuable fish, artisan goods, fruits, vegetables, animal products, and forage items are excellent choices.
Choose green. The Stardew Valley Fair wheel lands on green about 73.3% of the time without Luck modifiers, compared with roughly 26.6% for orange.
Bring nine items. Filling all nine spaces gives the maximum item-count contribution to your score.
Yes. A Stardew Valley Fair calculator can estimate the score of your chosen products, but you can usually build a winning display by filling nine spaces, using six categories, and choosing valuable high-quality items.
Yes. Ridgeside Village can add its NPCs and an additional area to the vanilla festival. It also has a separate Ridgeside Gathering festival on Fall 20.
Win the Stardew Valley Fair and Enjoy a Smoother Game With ExitLag
Stardew Valley Fair becomes much easier once you understand that the Grange Display rewards quality, value, diversity, and all nine occupied slots. Prepare several categories before Fall 16, target at least 90 points, and use the green side of the spinning wheel carefully when you need additional Star Tokens.
For Stardew Valley multiplayer sessions on supported platforms, ExitLag can help optimize network routes and reduce problems associated with unstable routing, packet loss, or high latency when network conditions are affecting your connection.
Try ExitLag and enjoy a more optimized connection during your Stardew Valley multiplayer adventures!
Got questions or want to connect with other players? Join the conversation at the ExitLag Forum!
