Best of Glendale (Glendale Star): How Voting Works & How to Win

What is Best of Glendale and who runs it?

Best of Glendale is the community favorites ranking produced by The Glendale Star, the newspaper serving Glendale, Arizona, whose masthead lives at Glendalestar.com under the Times Media Group umbrella. The paper's own introduction sets the tone: the ballot is an opportunity to share your favorites with your neighbors, whether a restaurant, a business providing superior service or an organization doing good works in the community.

Supporters vote on a dedicated survey rather than inside a news article. The running ballot carries the title Best of Glendale 2026 and sits on SurveyMonkey at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BestofGlendale2026. Because each cycle receives its own form, the address changes from year to year, and an older link points at that year's edition alone.

What kind of contest this is

The vertical is a best-of ballot aimed at everyday local life: places to eat, businesses praised for service, and nonprofits or civic groups doing visible good. Three traits define it. Selections belong to the public, not to editors or judges. A write-in path exists by design, since the introduction directs readers to the Other space whenever a favorite is missing from the list. And the framing is neighbor-to-neighbor opinion, with the paper urging readers to cast their vote and let their voice be heard.

Those details matter for a practical reason: any campaign planning around this ballot should anchor on the 2026 address, because that is where the paper currently collects responses.

When has Best of Glendale run, and what dates are printed?

Two editions of the ranking are confirmed, 2025 and 2026, and the pairing deserves careful reading. The live form is titled Best of Glendale 2026, yet its welcome copy addresses the 2025 cycle, so a supporter skimming quickly can mistake which year's instructions apply. The most precise dated line comes from the printed rules block on the ballot: Voting starts on May 22, 2025 (starting at noon) and ends on June 19, 2025 (ending at noon). That gives the 2025 window a clean noon-to-noon shape across late spring.

The same rules block adds a structural restraint on entrants, limiting how many ballot categories a single Glendale favorite may span; its exact terms sit on the live form, so read them before entering one business across several fields at once. Beyond those printed lines the ballot stays quiet. Day-level dates for the running 2026 cycle do not appear in the page text, and the survey likewise omits the category roster, any per-supporter voting rule and the eligibility terms; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Round structure, if the paper ever splits the vote into stages, is undescribed as well.

Cadence is easier to pin down. Consecutive yearly ballots in 2025 and 2026 place Best of Glendale on the paper's calendar as an annual feature, and the 2026 form shows the series carried into a further documented year. Treat the printed 2025 span as the template and let the live form supply the current deadlines.

Voting timeline at a glance

How does a supporter cast a vote in the 2026 survey?

Casting a ballot takes minutes. A supporter opens the Best of Glendale 2026 survey, moves through the categories in order, and picks a favorite in each. The paper's invitation sits right on the page: Cast your vote and let your voice be heard!

The write-in path deserves the closest attention. The introduction states it outright: If your favorite doesn't appear on the list, please feel free to write it in on space for "Other". For a restaurant or a service business that missed the preset roster, that Other field becomes the whole campaign; every backer must type the same name, spelled identically, or the backing fragments into variants the survey tallies separately.

Access is uncomplicated. The form is a standard web survey, so a phone browser fills and submits it the same way a desktop does, with no app and no special portal in the path.

What the form does not announce is equally useful to know before rallying backers. It states no per-person voting frequency, no reminder system, and no published method for verifying entries, so anyone coordinating a push should read the live form top to bottom first and follow whatever prompts it shows at submission.

Notes for a first visit

Expect the survey to behave like any SurveyMonkey questionnaire: select, scroll, submit. If a confirmation screen appears, note what it says, because that is the feedback the tool gives. Where a category draws no opinion from you, leaving it blank is normally possible on a survey of this style, though the form itself remains the authority on required fields.

How does the Glendale ballot compare with other Arizona reader polls?

Glendale's ballot sits inside a wider Arizona family of reader-choice contests this site follows. Nearest by vertical are the 2025 MVDN Best of, the 2026 Best of Sedona Kudos, the 2026 Best of Verde Valley and the 2026 Prescott Readers' Choice, each a community favorites exercise in its own town or region. Two siblings differ in flavor: the 2025 Courier Cares Christmas Lighting Contest bends the format toward holiday displays, and the A Taste of AZ People's Choice Award leans into food and drink. The Prescott Readers' Choice page covers the closest structural cousin.

What marks the Glendale edition apart is scale and sponsor. It is a city-bound ballot, run by the municipality's own newspaper, and aimed squarely at businesses, restaurants and community organizations rather than at a single industry or a seasonal theme. The ranking also carries demonstrable civic weight: Glendale Community College has publicized that it was named number 1 in the Best College/Higher Education category in the Best of Glendale annual ranking, citing the paper directly.

For a supporter weighing where attention goes, the difference is mostly geographic loyalty. The Sedona, Verde Valley and Prescott ballots appeal to their own townsfolk; Glendale's asks Glendale residents to champion street-level favorites close to home, which concentrates support among businesses with a genuine neighborhood customer base.

How can a campaign strengthen its standing in the Best of Glendale vote?

Backing in this ballot compounds from three things the form itself rewards. Name consistency comes first: a business entered through the Other space gains only if every backer spells it identically, so circulate the exact wording before outreach begins. Timing comes second, because the printed noon-to-noon pattern means early momentum has weeks to build before the mid-June close in the patterned cycle. Reach comes third, and the general playbook for widening it lives on the get more votes guide.

A caution belongs here too. The paper has published no statement on bought or coordinated voting help for its favorites ranking, so any campaign weighing purchased assistance should read the ballot's own rules first and keep expectations anchored to what a popularity survey can actually deliver.