Fort Lauderdale Magazine Best of Fort Lauderdale: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the Best of Fort Lauderdale, and who runs it?

Best of Fort Lauderdale is the readers' choice franchise of Fort Lauderdale Magazine, a city publication whose footer carries the copyright line of PD Strategic Media. Each cycle the magazine asks people across Fort Lauderdale and Broward County to name the local businesses they rate highest, then turns the tallies into a special themed issue devoted entirely to the results. As a best-of format it belongs to the readers'-survey tradition common among city magazines, where the audience rather than a judging panel decides the outcome.

Coverage follows everyday spending rather than a single niche: food and drink sit on the same ballot as shopping, places, health, people, services and motors. The magazine runs the entire program on its own website, with no external polling vendor between the reader and the form; the ballot address is https://fortlauderdalemagazine.com/the-best-of-fort-lauderdale-2025/, published under the same domain that carries the magazine's regular editorial coverage. Recapping a past edition, the magazine told readers they would discover "over 200 Best of Fort Lauderdale categories" in the winners issue, a span that runs from Greek kitchens and waterfront dining rooms to doughnut shops and dessert counters.

That concentration of publisher, platform and market under a single roof matters for anyone researching the ballot. Dates, limits and eligibility all trace back to the same source, the magazine's own pages, and anything those pages leave unsaid simply stays unsaid until the next cycle opens.

When does Best of Fort Lauderdale voting run, and which editions have taken place?

Fort Lauderdale Magazine treats the ballot as an annual fixture. Winners pages for every edition from 2020 through 2026 remain listed in the site's navigation, each grouped under the same category families, and the magazine's own recap greets the results with the line "always one of our most popular and eagerly anticipated annual issues".

The live 2026 window occupied the whole of March: voting opened on March 1, 2026 and closed on March 31, 2026, the closing day the magazine itself noted. Because the window sits wholly inside March, a campaign built around this ballot has a natural month-long runway instead of a rolling year-round schedule. Once the counting finished, the outcome moved into the August Best of Fort Lauderdale issue, the summer edition where the winning businesses appear.

Plenty about the machinery stays off the page. The magazine has printed no per-person vote cap, no eligibility wording and no sign of a nomination round ahead of voting; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Going by the annual rhythm, the next ballot is expected in 2027, and the magazine has not yet posted dates for it.

How does a supporter actually vote in the Best of Fort Lauderdale ballot?

All voting happens on fortlauderdalemagazine.com itself. During an open window the ballot presents its categories under the headings Food & Drink, Shopping, Places, Health, People, Services and Motors, and each heading unfolds into individual Best-of line items, from Best Restaurant to Best Waterfront Dining to Best Gourmet Doughnuts. A supporter moves through the groups, picks a favorite in the categories that matter and submits the form on the same page.

Between cycles the same address doubles as the results listing: right now the URL carries the 2025 winners header, so a visitor arriving outside March sees the last edition's outcome rather than a live form. The pairings below, drawn from the 2025 results pages, show how specific the categories get:

These pairings are printed on the 2025 results pages as illustrations of the ballot's grain; they are not the complete category list. Details such as whether the form requests an email address, whether any confirmation screen appears and how the magazine handles duplicate participation are likewise not laid out in advance.

How does this Fort Lauderdale vote compare with other Florida reader ballots?

Florida sustains a dense cluster of reader-driven contests, and this ballot's nearest relatives are easy to name. The Best of Florida Awards sweep statewide instead of concentrating on a single municipality, while the Best of Miami Readers' Poll, Best of Orlando, Best of Tallahassee and Best of the Bay each anchor to their own metro. A sixth relation, the "BEST BUDS" Pin Up Paws Calendar Contest at its program page, borrows the same open-voting spirit for a pet calendar rather than business rankings.

Against that field, the Fort Lauderdale ballot's character comes from depth inside a single city's economy. Where a statewide award spreads attention thin across regions, this program drills from brunch spots through bagel shops to motor services, all within Broward County's commercial map. Its audience arrives already primed to think locally about dinner reservations, haircuts and contractors, which is exactly the mindset a best-of ballot needs. For a business weighing where to invest effort, the choice among these siblings is less about format than about whose readers it wants to reach.

How can a supporter strengthen a favorite's chances in this ballot?

A placing in Best of Fort Lauderdale pays off concretely: winning businesses fill the August issue, the edition the magazine itself greets as a perennial favorite, and past results stay visible year-round. During the March window the levers available to a supporter are the familiar ones: emailing customers, posting the ballot link across social channels and asking loyal regulars to pass it along. The magazine posts no guidance on its ballot about outside assistance, so any supplementary effort rests on the general norms that govern reader surveys.

Before committing time it is worth reading two backgrounds: the outreach guide covers building support methodically, while the award-votes page describes what a paid-support route involves for ballots of this sort. Neither substitutes for knowing the magazine's own expectations, which surface only when the form goes live.