2026 Louisville Community's Choice Awards - Noms: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Louisville Community's Choice Awards are and who runs them

Unlike Best in Kentucky, which competes for attention across the whole state, the Louisville Community's Choice Awards belong to a single publisher and a single market. Courier Journal, the daily newspaper of Louisville, Kentucky, runs the program so its readers can highlight the businesses they value and appreciate year-round. The ballot itself sits on Second Street, the platform that powers the courier-journal.gannettcontests.com domain, and the promotion is typed as a Ballot/NominationAndVotingBallot, which means nomination and voting are handled through one Second Street promotion rather than separate products.

The vertical is best-of, the same category of program as the other Kentucky ballots in this family, but the publisher relationship is what sets it apart. Where Best of Lexington KY answers to a Lexington publication, this ballot is Courier Journal's own readers' choice franchise for the Louisville market. The table below gathers the identifying details.

Everything a supporter needs to identify this ballot among Kentucky programs is in that block: a metro daily as organizer, a Second Street ballot as the vehicle, and a nomination stage as the current confirmed phase.

Dated facts for this program: editions, windows and gaps

Four editions of the Louisville Community's Choice Awards appear in the confirmed list: 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The earliest dated window in that run starts December 4, 2023, and the most recent nomination stage opened February 6, 2026 and ended May 21, 2026. That 2026 promotion is closed, and 2027 is the anticipated year for the next edition, though Courier Journal has not printed its opening date.

The 2024 edition left the clearest published detail about scale. A Courier Journal article dated April 15, 2024 announced that the ballot would go live that day at courier-journal.com/contests, organized into groups and categories that the article described at announcement time. That announcement is the only published description of the ballot's structure attached to this program.

Two things the organizer has not published with the listing are an eligibility rule and any overall cap on votes beyond the daily limit. The rules block that governs those questions appears on the live ballot itself, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

One structural note on the timeline: the promotion type is a NominationAndVotingBallot, so each edition moves through a nomination phase and a voting phase, and the URL for the 2026 page is the nomination stage. Past years also carried separate main and winners pages on the same host, which is how the cycle has been presented so far.

How a supporter votes on this ballot today

Voting here follows a plain sequence. A supporter opens the ballot at courier-journal.gannettcontests.com, and during an active round the Second Street form presents the categories for nomination or voting. The daily rule published for this program is one vote per person per category while the voting round is active, which means a supporter who wants to keep helping a business comes back each day of the round rather than trying to stack votes in one session.

Because the 2026 nomination stage ran February 6 through May 21 and is now closed, anyone arriving today sees the closed state of that promotion. There is no live form to fill in until Courier Journal publishes the 2027 cycle. When it appears, the sequence is: open the ballot page, choose a category, enter or select the Louisville business being supported, submit, and return the next day if the voting round is running.

The daily-return habit matters more on this ballot than on a vote-once contest, precisely because the organizer's stated rule permits a vote every day. A business with a supporter base that remembers the ballot each morning accumulates far more than one built on a single announcement. For a fuller walkthrough of that habit, see our votes guide, which covers daily-return campaigns in general terms.

How this ballot sits beside its Kentucky neighbours

Kentucky carries several best-of programs, and every one of them reports to its own publisher. The Community's Choice Awards are Courier Journal's, tied to Louisville and its readers. Best of Bowling Green serves that city's market, Best of Lexington KY and Chevy Chaser Best of Lex serve Lexington, and Best Places to Work in Kentucky is a workplace award rather than a general business ballot. BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards shares the city but covers theater, not local businesses.

What makes this one different within that set is the combination of a metro daily's readership, a nomination-and-voting structure on Second Street, and a category roster that Courier Journal announced with its April 15, 2024 article. A Louisville restaurant or salon nominated here is competing in a readers' choice program run by the city's own newspaper, not in a statewide or specialty ballot.

For a business weighing where to put supporter effort, the practical difference is scope and audience. This ballot reaches Courier Journal readers in the Louisville market; the statewide programs reach broader but less concentrated audiences. Support built on local customers, the people who already visit the business, is the support this program is designed to collect.

Strengthening support within this ballot's rules

This program rewards repetition, because the rule as published permits a single vote per person per category each day of an active voting round. A Louisville business that wants to finish high should build a daily reminder habit among its customers while the round runs, since a single announcement at the start of voting leaves most of the round unused. The nomination phase matters too: a business that is not nominated cannot appear on the voting roster, so early supporters carry extra weight in each cycle.

Courier Journal's own framing invites readers to highlight businesses they value year-round, which fits a steady, organic push rather than a last-minute spike. The organizer has not printed terms about outside assistance alongside the listing, so any campaign that goes beyond asking customers directly should be checked against the rules shown on the live ballot for that cycle. For a broader look at methods that stay inside a ballot's own mechanics, see our award-votes reference.