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

What Best of the Best 2026 is and who runs it

Best of the Best 2026 is the readers-choice awards ballot published by the West Central Tribune, a newspaper based in Willmar, Minnesota. The paper appears twice weekly, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and serves the west-central part of the state. Its Best of the Best series follows the familiar readers-choice pattern used by local newspapers across the country: area businesses are nominated by readers, then voted on, and the paper publishes the winners as a community guide.

The 2026 edition runs on Second Street, the platform behind a large share of American newspaper readers-choice programs. The ballot is a NominationAndVotingBallot, meaning the same page handles both the nomination stage and the voting stage rather than splitting them into two separate rounds. The program name carries the year in its address, wctrib.secondstreetapp.com/Best-of-the-Best-2026, which is the ballot page for this edition.

The West Central Tribune runs several other promotions alongside it on Second Street, including an Athlete of the Week series, a From Our Kitchens recipe vote, a Heroes Among Us recognition ballot and periodic sweepstakes. Best of the Best is its best-of vertical, and it is the program among these that asks readers to name and support local businesses. The table underneath lists the facts that stay fixed.

The dated history of the wctrib Best of the Best

Five editions are confirmed: 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Each round has had its own Second Street ballot address ending in the edition year, and the addresses for all five are known, including variants such as Best-of-the-Best-2024-2 and Best-Of-the-Best-2023-2 alongside their plainer twins. One edition per year across those five years is what marks the program as annual.

The 2026 edition is the most precisely dated. It opened on April 10, 2026 and closed on May 16, 2026, a window of a little over five weeks in spring. The status is closed, so the page at the 2026 address no longer accepts entries. Because every prior round has landed in the same April-to-May stretch, spring is the reasonable expectation for the 2027 window, though the paper has not printed that date yet.

Two things the organizer has not put into any published page are the ballot's category roster and its voting rules, such as a per-supporter limit or eligibility terms; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The 2026 page itself now works as a results display, so a reader looking for either of those facts should wait for the 2027 ballot to open, when the West Central Tribune will present both on the live form.

How a supporter votes on this ballot today

During an open round, the sequence starts with the address. Typing wctrib.secondstreetapp.com/Best-of-the-Best-2026 took supporters straight to the 2026 ballot, and the same pattern with a new year will reach the next edition. Second Street ballots generally begin with an email registration step, so a supporter should expect to hand over an address and complete any confirmation the form requests before entries count.

After that, the nomination-and-voting format shapes what happens. In a combined ballot of this type, the page usually asks the supporter to write in a business name under each category, confirm the write-in, and the entry then counts as the vote. That makes accuracy matter: a business spelled the way its customers spell it is easier for the ballot to match, and a write-in under the wrong heading may not register where the supporter intended. The categories themselves are set by the West Central Tribune per round, so the live page, not a summary like this one, is the list to work from.

Once the ballot is submitted, Second Street pages often mention whether a supporter can return on later days. For this program, the paper's own configuration decides that, and no published rule states it. Following the instructions printed on the live form is the only reliable path, and the daily return habit, where the page allows it, is how steady supporters accumulate entries.

How this ballot sits beside its Minnesota neighbours

Minnesota has an unusually crowded best-of field, and the West Central Tribune's program is one of several in the state covered on this site. Best of the Midwest and Minnesota's Best are the two other statewide or regional titles nearby in the index, while Best of the Best Brainerd Lakes Area and Best of the Best (Duluth News Tribune) are sibling newspaper ballots from other Minnesota mastheads. Two community-vote programs round out the group: CommunityVotes Duluth and CommunityVotes Rochester.

What separates the wctrib ballot is its home turf and its format. Willmar sits in west-central Minnesota, a market none of the siblings covers, since Duluth, Rochester and the Brainerd Lakes Area each anchor a different part of the state. The program is also a combined nomination-and-voting ballot, so a supporter's write-in does double duty in a way some separate-stage contests do not ask of them.

That matters for a business owner choosing where to invest effort. A local restaurant in Willmar competes only against its own community here, while the same business name in a statewide program would sit beside entries from the Twin Cities. The five-year run from 2022 through 2026 also gives the wctrib ballot one of the longer confirmed histories among these Minnesota programs, which suggests a stable annual slot each spring.

Strengthening support in the wctrib Best of the Best

Because this ballot combines nomination and voting, the single highest-value move for a business is being written in early and often by the customers who already come through the door. A counter sign, a receipt note or a short email to your list during the April 10 opening week puts the write-in habit in motion while the round is fresh, and the West Central Tribune's audience is the pool every vote comes from.

On outside help, the honest position is that the paper has not published rules wording for this ballot, so what it permits is an open question to settle from the live page before spending anything. For context on the whole topic, our award-votes page explains how bought support works for readers-choice ballots in general, and the main service overview covers the mechanics without promising any outcome. No purchase changes what the ballot's rules allow, and an organizer can void entries it considers improper.