Springfield Community's Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

Springfield's own ballot: four confirmed editions behind the News-Leader's Community's Choice Awards

The Springfield News-Leader organizes the Community's Choice Awards for Springfield, Missouri, hosted on news-leader.gannettcontests.com under Gannett's Second Street ballot platform. Four editions are now confirmed for this exact ballot: 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The most recent, the 2026 ballot, opened July 6 and closed July 21.

Springfield, Missouri is this ballot's home market, and the News-Leader organizes the Community's Choice Awards for the businesses that serve it. The Community's Choice Awards sits inside the best-of readers'-choice vertical: a public nomination-and-voting format rather than a juried competition, run once a year on the News-Leader's own schedule.

That last pair of rows matters more than it looks. A fourth-edition ballot has settled into an annual rhythm, but the category roster and the per-voter rule stay off the page every year regardless. The ballot page lists no category roster and no per-supporter limit; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

A closed July window, and what comes next

As of September 2026, the 2026 Community's Choice Awards ballot is closed. Its window opened July 6 and ran through July 21, a stretch now behind it. Nothing published yet points to an exact 2027 date, though four straight confirmed editions, 2023 through 2026, suggest the News-Leader keeps running this ballot annually rather than skipping years.

A business checking this page after July 21 is looking at a closed cycle, not an open one. news-leader.gannettcontests.com is the only place that will show the next opening date once the News-Leader sets it; that date has shifted before and is not guessable from this page alone.

Missouri runs several other best-of ballots with no connection to the News-Leader's own results, and mixing one of them up with this exact ballot is an easy mistake for anyone searching for "Springfield readers choice" or a similar phrase.

Not the same ballot as St. Louis, Best of KC, Columbia or the Ozarks' other polls

Missouri has no shortage of towns running their own version of a best-of poll, and Springfield's own version answers only to the News-Leader. A fast way to test any similarly-named program: does it point to its own separate web address, apart from news-leader.gannettcontests.com? If so, it settles nothing about this exact ballot.

A-List St. Louis Magazine and Best of KC each cover a metro area well away from Springfield, put out by publications that have never touched the News-Leader's own tally. Columbia's pair, the Missourian's Reader's Choice Awards and Columbia MO CommunityVotes, both belong to a separate university town north of Springfield. Feast Magazine's FEAST 50 narrows further still, scoring St. Louis restaurants only. Best of Southwest Missouri sits closest on a map, yet its own publisher counts its own votes, entirely apart from whatever the News-Leader tallies here.

Why the mix-up happens anyway

A phrase like "best of Springfield" pulls in whichever program currently ranks best in a general search, not necessarily the News-Leader's own. news-leader.gannettcontests.com stays the one address tied to this exact ballot; everything else sharing a similar name answers to a different publisher entirely.

Building support around a ballot that opens and closes on its own schedule

Four straight editions still don't fix an exact month on the calendar, so the practical move is treating news-leader.gannettcontests.com as the source to check rather than working from memory of last summer's window. Once the page reopens, support tends to build fastest for businesses that reach real customers early rather than the ones who wait until the final days.

Gannett runs the same Second Street software across dozens of markets, and its checks against irregular activity apply the same way to a four-edition ballot as to a brand-new one. A list of people who actually use the business, contacted more than once across the window, holds up better under that kind of review than any shortcut does.

A nomination and a win are two separate outcomes, and only the News-Leader decides the second one. is buying votes legal walks through where a legitimate push stops and a riskier one starts, worth a look before Springfield's next cycle opens. Buying votes online covers what paid outside help typically involves for an entry-and-vote format like this one, and award-vote campaign planning is built specifically around a readers'-choice structure like the News-Leader's own.