Best of the Best 2026 (russellvillecourier): How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in Best of the Best and why the Russellville Courier runs it

Best of the Best 2026 is a readers ballot run by the Russellville Courier, the daily newspaper serving Russellville and the Arkansas River Valley. Its audience is local in the plainest sense: people who eat, shop and do business around Russellville, Arkansas, and who are asked each summer which local businesses they rate highest. The program sits in the best-of vertical, the newspaper readers-poll format where categories group local businesses and the public picks favorites.

The Courier hosts the ballot on Second Street, a platform built for newspaper promotions, and the 2026 edition uses the Ballot/NominationAndVotingBallot type, meaning readers nominate and vote within one structure. The voting address for the 2026 round is russellvillecourier.secondstreetapp.com/Best-of-the-Best-2026, and the same domain has carried every edition since 2023.

For a local business, the value of the ballot is straightforward. A win or a strong placing is a public endorsement from the paper's own readership, and the Courier promotes the program to the same community the nominees serve. For voters, it is a low-effort way to back the shop, restaurant or service they already use. The table below collects the confirmed facts about the program in one place.

The dated history for Best of the Best, 2023 through 2026

Best of the Best has run in four summers so far: 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The program is annual, and the platform listing shows the earliest of those rounds opening on July 5, 2023. Every edition has lived on the Courier's Second Street domain, with a separate address per year, so each round's history can be checked at its own page.

The 2026 edition is the most precisely dated. It opened on July 1, 2026 and closed on August 26, 2026, running just under two months in the Ballot/NominationAndVotingBallot format. That window sits inside the same summer stretch the program has occupied throughout its run, which makes a July opening the sensible expectation for any 2027 edition.

What the published material does not carry matters just as much. The Courier publishes no category list for the program in its ballot summary, so nobody outside the newsroom can state from printed material how the groupings break down. The full roster appears on the ballot page each round; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The same gap covers the rules side. No published per-voter limit, no daily-return rule and no eligibility text exists for this program in any material the Courier has made public. A reader who needs those details must read them off the ballot itself when it opens, because the paper has not printed them anywhere else.

How a supporter votes on the Courier's Second Street ballot

The mechanic is a public vote in the literal sense: anyone with the ballot address can participate, and the format, Ballot/NominationAndVotingBallot, folds nomination and voting into a single Second Street flow. A supporter opens the year's page on russellvillecourier.secondstreetapp.com, works through the categories shown, picks a nominee in each and submits the form.

Practical details shape the experience. Second Street ballots frequently ask for an email address or registration before choices are accepted, so a first-time voter should expect a short setup step. The categories are presented on the page itself, and the Courier does not reproduce the roster elsewhere, which is why voting is best done from a device where the whole list can be read comfortably.

Because the 2026 round closed on August 26, a supporter arriving today sees a closed ballot rather than a live one. The action that matters now is different: watch for the Courier's announcement of the next edition, which by the pattern of 2023 through 2026 should open in July, and use the fresh address the paper publishes at that point.

For businesses hoping to be named, the work happens during the open window. Supporters who intend to vote daily, where the ballot allows returns, should confirm the return rule on the page rather than assume it, since no published text states how often one person may submit. The ballot's own instructions are the final word each round.

How this ballot sits among Arkansas best-of programs

Arkansas has a busy best-of calendar, and the Russellville Courier's program is the River Valley's entry in it. Other state-level titles run on separate publishers with their own ballots: Arkansas Business Best of Biz, Arkansas Money & Politics Best of AMP, and Arkansas Times Best of Arkansas each answer to a different publication.

Two more sit close to the Courier's format. ArkansasOnline Best of the Best shares the Best of the Best name but belongs to a different publisher entirely, and AY's Best of Arkansas covers the state from a magazine base. AY also runs AY's Best Realtors, a narrower vertical ballot. None of these interchangeable: a vote cast on one counts nowhere else.

What distinguishes the Russellville Courier's program is scale and geography. It is a community paper's poll, aimed at Russellville and the Arkansas River Valley rather than the whole state, so its categories reflect businesses local to that market. Its Second Street home is typical for newspaper ballots, and its summer window, July through August, keeps it clear of the fall and winter sweepstakes the Courier runs separately on the same domain.

For a business deciding where to focus, the practical test is where its customers actually read. A Russellville shop gains more from the Courier's ballot than from a statewide title whose audience barely overlaps its customer base, and the reverse holds for a business in another part of Arkansas.