Best of Montana: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of Montana is and who runs it

Best of Montana is a readers' choice award program in the best-of vertical, run by Distinctly Montana, a magazine covering food and fun, Montana history, news, outdoor recreation, people and place, wildlife and wild places across the state. The poll invites the public to vote for Montana's best restaurants, businesses, events, people and places, which makes it a statewide contest rather than a single-town ballot.

The ballot is published on the magazine's own domain. No external balloting platform is involved: the page sits at distinctlymontana.com/bom2026, on the publication's own site. That matters for a business nominated in the poll, because everything a supporter needs, from the category list to the entry draw, sits on the same publication that reports on Montana life year round.

The program sits inside a busy Montana best-of market. Distinctly Montana's poll is the statewide entry, while other publishers and organizers run their own ballots in specific cities, including Best of Whitefish and the Billings and Bozeman contests listed later on this page. A business can appear in several of these at once, but each ballot belongs to a different publisher and keeps its own calendar.

The dated history of Best of Montana

Best of Montana has run five times that can be confirmed: first in 2022, then again in 2023, in 2024, in 2025, and most recently in 2026, all published by Distinctly Montana. That makes this an annual fixture rather than a new experiment, and the magazine keeps its past ballots from 2022 onward visible on its own section pages.

The 2026 cycle ran in two phases. Nominations opened March 15 and ran through April 20, giving businesses and the public a spring window to put names on the ballot. Voting then opened June 15 and ran through July 20, and the organizer confirmed the close on July 20, 2026, with a thank-you post noting the size of the turnout.

Not everything about the cycle is published. Distinctly Montana has not printed the list of categories for the 2026 ballot on the page, nor any rule on how frequently a single voter may return to the ballot or who qualifies to take part; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The 2027 calendar is likewise unposted, though five straight years give a clear indication of when the nomination phase will appear.

For a nominated business, the practical takeaway is simple: the spring nomination window is when a name gets onto the ballot, and the June-to-July stretch is when the count actually happens. Missing the nomination phase means waiting a full year for the next chance.

How a supporter votes in Best of Montana today

Voting here is a plain public ballot on the publication's own domain. A supporter opens distinctlymontana.com/bom2026, looks through the categories on offer, and picks favourites among Montana's restaurants, businesses, events, people and places. Because the magazine hosts the ballot itself, no third-party account requirement is advertised, and the voting experience belongs to the publication.

Timing matters as much as the click. The 2026 voting phase ran from June 15 through July 20, so a visit outside that stretch would have landed on a closed cycle. Earlier in the year, nominations from March 15 through April 20 were when new names entered the running. A business that wants its customers to show up for it needs to confirm it is actually on the ballot before asking anyone to vote.

There is an incentive layer on top of the awards: the ballot page advertises a chance to win $500 cash for people who vote. The draw is run by Distinctly Montana as part of its promotion of the poll, and it gives ordinary supporters a reason beyond loyalty to complete a ballot. The page leaves unstated any per-person limit or eligibility condition, so a supporter with questions should read the rules printed on the ballot page during the voting window.

How Best of Montana sits beside its Montana neighbours

Montana has an unusually crowded best-of scene, and Best of Montana is the statewide entry in it. The nearest comparisons are city-level ballots run by other publishers: Best of Whitefish covers the Flathead Valley resort town, while Best of Billings is the newspaper-backed poll for Montana's largest city on the eastern side of the state.

Bozeman has two ballots of its own. Gallatin's Greatest is run by the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, and Bozeman's Choice is run by Bozeman Magazine. Both are city-scoped, which means a Gallatin County business competes against its immediate neighbours rather than against the whole state.

The Community Votes pair rounds out the market: Community Votes Billings and Community Votes Bozeman run on the communityvotes platform, where supporters nominate first and vote second. Those are platform-hosted contests, while Distinctly Montana keeps its ballot on its own domain, a difference visible in how each ballot looks and how its rules are presented.

What makes Best of Montana distinct is scope and heritage. It is the only program in this set that asks voters to name the state's best across restaurants, businesses, events, people and places all at once, and it has appeared every year from 2022 through 2026 under the same publisher. A business with customers across Montana has a reason to care about this ballot even if it also enters a city poll closer to home.

Strengthening support during the Best of Montana window

This ballot counts votes cast by real people at distinctlymontana.com/bom2026 during the June 15 to July 20 stretch, so support means turning customers into voters. The $500 cash draw attached to the ballot is a useful hook: telling customers that voting enters them in the draw gives them a personal reason to complete a ballot, not just a loyal one.

The nomination phase matters too. A business that misses March 15 through April 20 cannot be voted for in the summer phase, so the first job each year is confirming the name is on the ballot. After that, email lists, social posts and counter signage all work by pointing people to a single address during a defined window, which is easier to act on than an open-ended ask.

On outside help, the organizer has posted no rule about purchased participation or voting software, so the prudent course is to read the rules printed on the ballot page before relying on anything beyond organic outreach. General tactics that work across readers' polls, from reminder emails to deadline-day pushes, are gathered in our guide to getting more votes online.