Big Bear Community Scarecrow Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Big Bear Community Scarecrow Contest is and who runs it

The Big Bear Community Scarecrow Contest is a fall decorating competition and public-vote program run by Big Bear Valley communities. The ballot sits on bigbear.com, the event site the organizer maintains, on the events page dedicated to the contest. The program serves Big Bear Lake, California, where the organizer's listed address is 40824 Big Bear Blvd, Big Bear Lake, CA 92315.

Residents, homeowners and businesses are invited to take part in what the organizer calls the return of the Fall Scarecrow Competition. The program includes a Calacas and Ofrenda decorating contest alongside the traditional scarecrow displays. Participants build and decorate their entries, display them around the community, then the public votes for its favorites. Prizes are awarded based on popular vote.

On this site the contest sits in the best-of vertical, though it differs from a typical best-of ballot: instead of ranking local businesses across service categories, it asks supporters to choose among physical displays that participants have constructed and posted for the season. The ballot is open to anyone who wants to weigh in on which displays deserve recognition.

Here is the program at a glance:

The dated record for the Big Bear Scarecrow Contest

Confirmed editions of the Big Bear Community Scarecrow Contest ran in 2024, 2025 and 2026. The organizer describes the program as annual, and the 2026 page invites participants to what it calls the return of the Fall Scarecrow Competition. The first confirmed champions were announced in 2024, which marks the earliest edition the contest's own history reaches.

The 2026 cycle carries published dates for registration, voting and the prize announcement. Registration closed on September 23rd, 2026. Competition and voting run from September 30th through November 3rd, 2026. The prize announcement follows on November 6th, 2026. These dates come from the organizer's own event page at bigbear.com.

What the organizer has not published matters just as much for anyone planning a support push. The Big Bear contest page sets no ceiling on how many ballots a single supporter may submit across the window; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. No eligibility rule for who may cast a ballot appears alongside the voting instructions either.

For 2027, the organizer has not yet posted registration or voting dates. The program has run in consecutive years, and the event page remains live at the same address, but the next cycle's schedule is not listed there yet.

How a supporter votes in the Big Bear Scarecrow Contest

The mechanic is a ballot that supporters fill out themselves. The organizer states the rules plainly on the event page: each voter must submit their own ballot, and collecting, transporting, or turning in ballots on behalf of others is not allowed. These are the vote rules the organizer publishes for this contest.

Participants can vote for their favorite scarecrows by filling out a ballot and posting photos to social media. The social media step appears to be part of how the organizer amplifies the displays and drives traffic to the ballot, though the exact relationship between the social posts and the ballot count is not spelled out on the page.

The page names Best Scarecrow, Best Ofrenda, and Best Calacas as decorating tracks participants can enter. These phrases appear on the event page but the organizer has not published a full category roster beyond them.

Prizes are awarded based on popular vote, which means the displays that collect the most ballots win. There is no jury panel, no editorial pick, and no secondary judging round mentioned on the event page. The popular vote is the sole determinant of the outcome.

For a supporter who wants to participate, the sequence is straightforward: visit the event page during the voting window, review the displays, fill out your own ballot, and if you choose to, post photos of your favorites to your own social channels. The organizer handles the rest from there.

How the Big Bear ballot sits beside its California neighbours

The Big Bear Community Scarecrow Contest is among several California public-vote programs on this site. Its siblings include Best of Central Valley Business, Best of Marin, Best of Orange County, Best of San Diego & Best Restaurants, Best of Silicon Valley, and Best of North State Community's Choice Awards.

What separates the Big Bear contest from those siblings is its subject. Each of the programs above is a business or service ranking: it asks readers to vote for favorite restaurants, shops, professionals and brands in its respective market. The Big Bear ballot asks supporters to choose among physical displays that participants have built and posted around the community for the fall season.

The platform differs too. The sibling programs each run on a publisher's contest infrastructure with its own nomination round and ballot system. The Big Bear contest runs on bigbear.com itself, the event site Big Bear Valley communities maintain, with no outside contest platform standing between a supporter and the ballot.

The market differs as well. The sibling programs cover large metropolitan areas or broad regions of California. Big Bear Lake is a single community, and the contest is sized to it: residents, homeowners and businesses decorating for the season, with neighbors voting for the displays they encounter around town. That community scale shapes how support works here, because a display's visibility on the street and its visibility on the ballot are directly connected.

Strengthening support for a Big Bear Scarecrow Contest entry

The organizer's ballot rule is the binding constraint for anyone building support. Each ballot must come from an individual supporter acting on their own behalf, which means a display's votes have to come from people who visit the event page and fill out their own form.

What works within that structure is straightforward. A business or homeowner who wants more ballots can promote their entry to customers, guests and neighbors through their own channels, encouraging each person to visit the event page and fill out their own ballot before November 3rd. Posting photos to social media, as the organizer's own instructions suggest, extends the display's reach beyond the street corner.

For a broader look at what tends to move public-vote ballots, see our votes guide. The organizer's rule about individual ballots is the first thing to account for in any plan for this contest.