Coolest Thing Made in Minnesota: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is Coolest Thing Made in Minnesota and who runs it?

Coolest Thing Made in Minnesota is a statewide contest that lets the public crown a standout product made in Minnesota, and it is organized by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. The chamber is a business association, and it runs the competition on its own website instead of outsourcing the ballot to a polling platform. Every stage, from nomination to the final round, lives under mnchamber.com, with the contest page at mnchamber.com/coolest-thing-made-minnesota acting as the voting address.

Who runs the ballot

The Minnesota Chamber of Commerce publishes the contest page, writes the voting rules and announces the result at its own Manufacturers' Summit event. Because the organizer and the host are the same party, supporters deal with one site throughout the cycle, and the rules printed beside the buttons come straight from chamber staff rather than a third-party operator.

Compared with the reader ballots Minnesotans are used to, this competition keeps a narrower and more industrial focus: what the public ranks here are things companies manufacture, not restaurants or shops. The 2026 page addresses visitors directly, telling them they now get to decide the winner of the 2026 contest, which puts the outcome in the hands of everyday supporters.

Which editions have run, and what does the 2026 schedule look like?

Chamber pages show the program running in 2025 and again in 2026, an annually recurring slot in the state's manufacturing calendar. Each cycle follows a printed sequence that starts with nominations in summer and finishes with a winner crowned at an industry event in October.

The 2026 schedule is laid out on the contest page itself. Nominations opened on July 6 and closed on August 14. The first bracket was announced on August 31, and public voting opened that same day, running through October 6. Inside that stretch, the final round began on Monday, September 28 and remains open until Tuesday, October 6 at 11:00 a.m.

Some details stay off the page. The Chamber publishes no category roster for the ballot, and the round dates printed there belong to the 2026 cycle alone. Dates for the 2027 nomination and voting stages have not yet been printed; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How do I cast a vote in the final round?

Voting happens on the contest page during a live round. The page tells supporters what to do in plain terms, and in the current final round it prints the instruction: "For this round, you will get to vote for ONE of the top FOUR products."

What the printed rules say

Beside that instruction the ballot lists its voting rules, and the opening line reads: "One vote per person." No account creation step, login screen or device limit is described anywhere on the contest page, so the practical route is simply to open mnchamber.com while a round is live, review the match up, pick a product and submit.

The bracket behind that final choice was built in earlier stages. After the pairings came out, products met head-to-head across five rounds of public voting, with supporters settling each match up, until the last stage presented the remaining contenders side by side.

Timing matters as much as mechanics. Every round ends on a printed deadline, and the final ballot's close leaves no slack for last-minute rallying, so anyone who wants to take part should reach the page well before the closing hour rather than trusting to the final morning.

How does this ballot sit beside Minnesota's other voted contests?

Minnesota readers have no shortage of vote-for-your-favorite ballots, and this program stands apart from each of them on organizer, subject and format. The state's general-interest polls include Minnesota's Best, the statewide Best of the Midwest ballot, and regional titles such as the Best of the Best Brainerd Lakes Area and the Duluth News Tribune's Best of the Best. City-scoped versions like CommunityVotes Duluth and CommunityVotes Rochester crowd the same calendar.

Several differences matter for anyone weighing where to spend support. The organizer is a business association rather than a media publisher, so the audience skews toward industry and economic-development circles. Eligibility stops at products manufactured in Minnesota, which excludes the restaurants, salons and service businesses that fill typical reader polls. And the format is a bracket of head-to-head rounds funneling toward a single finale at the Manufacturers' Summit, instead of a long open window spread over many categories.

For a company with a nominated product, that mix changes the calculus: a win here reads as a manufacturing credential celebrated at a chamber event, not merely a popularity trophy. Supporters choosing among ballots can treat this one as the manufacturing lane and the linked polls as the consumer lanes.

How can a nominated product rally more support?

The printed rule shapes any campaign: one vote per person means a nominated product grows its tally by reaching distinct supporters, not by asking the same fan repeatedly. Practical moves follow from that. Share the contest page link while the final round is open, ask employees, customers and trade partners to cast their ballot, and time reminders ahead of the printed close rather than after it. The Chamber's contest page publishes nothing further about outside help, promotions or voting tools, so treat the ballot itself as the authority on what is allowed. For techniques that carry across public-vote contests of this kind, see how to get more votes online.