Monterey Bay Stars Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Monterey Bay Stars Awards is and who runs it

The Monterey Bay Stars Awards is the best-of program that What's Up Monterey? publishes for its own market. The outlet uses it to recognize outstanding businesses, individuals, and organizations in the Monterey Bay area, and the masthead on the ballot page carries the tagline Celebrating Best of Monterey Bay. Readers nominate and then vote for the favorites in their community, which places the program squarely in the best-of vertical rather than a judged or jury-selected award.

One structural fact separates this ballot from most of its California neighbours: it lives entirely on whatsupmonterey.com, the outlet's own domain. The ballot sits at whatsupmonterey.com/monterey-bay-stars-awards, and no outside contest platform is involved anywhere in the program. That matters for supporters because every step, from the nomination form to the results pages, carries the publication's branding, and the address to bookmark is the outlet's own path rather than a platform root.

The market is the Monterey Bay region of California, and the publisher What's Up Monterey? is a local publication covering that same area. The program's fixed details sit in the table underneath.

Everything a supporter needs routes through that single publisher-owned address, which is unusual among the California best-of contests and is the first thing to understand about this program.

Editions, window and what is unpublished

Four editions of the Monterey Bay Stars Awards have run: 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The earliest of those years is anchored by the publisher's winners pages, where a 2023 honoree is described as having been named Restaurateur of the Year by Monterey Bay Stars Awards 2023. That makes 2023 the earliest confirmed year and gives the program four straight cycles of published history, with the next edition, if the annual pattern holds, falling in 2027.

The cycle's shape comes from the published timing: the program runs between June and August, in a results phase. The publisher's own page adds one dated notice for the current cycle, stating that Journey Details for the 2026 cycle will be announced at the end of summer, with updates to follow as the outlet prepares its coverage. That notice is the freshest dated fact on the ballot page.

Several facts sit outside the published text. What's Up Monterey? has not printed exact nomination and voting dates for the current cycle, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The publisher also leaves the category lineup and the per-supporter voting rule off the page ahead of the round, and no separate platform schedule exists because the program runs on whatsupmonterey.com rather than a third-party contest service. Each of those gaps resolves only when the live ballot for the cycle appears.

How a supporter votes in the Stars Awards today

The mechanic on the Monterey Bay Stars Awards ballot is a nomination followed by a public vote, both carried on What's Up Monterey?'s own website. The publisher's invitation on the page reads as a direct call to action: nominate your favorites for the Stars Awards. That makes the nomination stage the entry point for the whole cycle, since the businesses, individuals and organizations that supporters put forward are the ones the ballot then carries into the voting round.

In practice a supporter opens whatsupmonterey.com/monterey-bay-stars-awards, reads the banner for the current cycle's status, and follows the form the page displays. Because the program lives on whatsupmonterey.com rather than an outside service, there is no separate ballot interface to learn; the instructions shown on the publication's page are the complete rulebook for that round. The page text leaves the per-supporter limit and the eligibility question unstated, so a supporter who wants to know how often they may return should read the instructions on the live form rather than assume a standard daily pattern.

After the round closes, results land on the publication's winners pages, the same pages that preserve the 2023 Restaurateur of the Year honor. Returning to the same address after the June-to-August span is therefore how a supporter follows the outcome, and the publisher's promised end-of-summer announcement for the 2026 cycle is the cue to watch for.

How this ballot sits beside its California neighbours

The Monterey Bay Stars Awards belongs to a family of California best-of ballots, but it is the odd one out in how it is hosted. Its six sibling programs on this site all answer to other publishers and structures: 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 makes the Stars Awards different is ownership of the whole pipeline. What's Up Monterey? runs the nomination form, the vote and the results on whatsupmonterey.com, so the program's identity is tied to one local publication rather than to a contest platform or a partner network. A supporter moving from, say, Best of Marin to this ballot will find a different publisher, a different domain and a different set of instructions, even though the underlying shape, nominate then vote, is the familiar best-of pattern shared across the state.

Geographically the program also holds a distinct lane. Its siblings cover the Central Valley, Marin, Orange County, San Diego, Silicon Valley and the North State, while the Stars Awards is the ballot that speaks for the Monterey Bay area specifically. For a business on the Central Coast, this is the community contest whose winners pages carry local weight, and support earned here does not transfer to any of the six programs listed above, since each of the six belongs to a separate publisher running a separate cycle.

Strengthening support for a Stars Awards nomination

Support in this program starts before the vote does. Because the ballot opens with a nomination stage on What's Up Monterey?'s own site, a business that wants a strong showing in the Monterey Bay Stars Awards should first make sure its customers actually nominate it; a favorite that nobody puts forward never reaches the voting round at all. The publisher's own call to nominate favorites for the Stars Awards is the invitation to act on, and the June-to-August span gives a business a defined season to plan around.

Once the voting round is live, the mechanics are plain: a public vote hosted on whatsupmonterey.com, with no published per-supporter rule to plan against. Asking customers in person, by email and at the point of sale is the tactic that fits this ballot's shape, and it costs nothing. For a wider set of approaches that work on public-vote ballots like this one, the votes guide covers the options in order of effort. What the publisher allows or disallows on outside help does not appear anywhere on the Stars Awards page, so the live instructions are the authority for the current cycle.