2026 Community's Choice Awards Showcase: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes and why this ballot exists

The Community's Choice Awards Showcase is Phillyburbs.com's readers-choice program for its own coverage area. The publisher describes its audience as readers in Bucks County and Eastern Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and the ballot is built for exactly that community: local people naming the local businesses they consider the best at what they do. The publisher's headquarters sits in Levittown, and the newsroom behind the program is the Bucks County Courier Times operation, part of the Gannett newspaper group.

That community framing matters for anyone entering or supporting a nominee. Votes on this ballot come from readers who already know the market, so a business's realistic base of support is its own customer base in the counties the publisher serves. A diner in Levittown, a plumber in Lower Bucks, a salon over the line in Eastern Montgomery County: these are the kinds of nominees the Showcase exists to celebrate, and the people voting for them are the publisher's own audience.

The Showcase belongs to the best-of format, the same broad structure used by readers-choice ballots across the country: the publisher opens a ballot, readers pick favorites, and the results become a guide the publisher can point to for the rest of the year. On this page the format runs as a public vote on the Second Street platform, meaning anyone who reaches the ballot page can participate in the selections it presents.

Key facts at a glance

The dated history of the Showcase

The Showcase has a complete recent history. The ballot has run as an annual program, and each edition has its own page on the publisher's contest domain, with the year built into the address. The pattern holds across every cycle so far, which makes it easy to tell editions apart and easy to confirm which cycle you are looking at before you enter a selection.

The 2026 edition is the most precisely dated. Its voting window opened in February 2026 and closed at the end of that month, a stretch in late winter. The ballot is now closed, and the Second Street listing lists the program as a Ballot/VotingBallot under the organizer name Phillyburbs.com. Earlier editions ran on the same platform, with the earliest platform dates for the series reaching back to mid June at the start of the program's run.

What the publisher has not put out is the shape of the next cycle. No opening date for a 2027 edition is published, and the category roster for any given year is not carried in the listing this page is built from. The publisher also has not published a per-supporter voting limit or an eligibility rule for nominees. Those gaps are normal for a program at this scale, but only the ballot page itself carries authoritative details for a current cycle.

How a supporter votes on the ballot today

Voting happens on the publisher's official contest domain, phillyburbs.gannettcontests.com. A supporter who wants to back a local business opens the ballot page for the current year, browses the categories presented there, and selects a favorite in each group they care about. The ballot is a Second Street VotingBallot, so the mechanics are the familiar ones: pick, submit, and the platform saves it. No purchase is involved in taking part, and the ballot is open to the public rather than restricted to subscribers.

Timing is the detail that trips people up. The 2026 window closed at the end of February 2026, and that ballot is now finished. A supporter arriving now would be looking at a completed edition, so the practical step is to watch for the next year's page on the same domain. Because each edition carries its year in the address, checking whether the current year's ballot is live takes seconds: open the publisher's contest site and look for the address matching this year.

For a business owner, the same mechanics define the campaign. Every vote is a reader reaching the ballot and choosing your name, so the work is getting your customers to the page during the open window and making the pick obvious. The publisher has not published rules on voting frequency, so any reminder cadence a business sets should stay conservative and should defer to whatever the live ballot states when the next edition opens.

How this ballot sits beside its Pennsylvania neighbours

Pennsylvania has a crowded best-of scene, and the Showcase occupies a specific corner of it. Its publisher, Phillyburbs.com, serves Bucks County and Eastern Montgomery County, which puts it in the Philadelphia suburbs rather than the city itself. Best of Philly from Philadelphia Magazine covers the city proper, and the two programs answer to different newsrooms with different audiences. A nominee in Levittown or Doylestown territory is playing in the Showcase's market, not the city magazine's.

Other neighbours are just as distinct. Best of Berks runs under Berks County Living Magazine to the west, Best of the Lehigh Valley runs under Lehigh Valley Style further north, and Best of the 'Burgh serves Pittsburgh, far away in the western part of Pennsylvania. Erie Reader Best of Erie covers the northwest corner. Closer to home, the readers' choice ballot run by suburban newspapers across Bucks and Chester counties is the nearest cousin in format and geography, though it answers to a different ownership group.

What separates the Showcase within this crowded scene is its publisher's reach and its platform. It is the Gannett-affiliated ballot for its counties, built on Second Street like many newspaper readers-choice programs, with a confirmed annual run through 2026. For a business deciding where to focus a voting push, the practical test is audience fit: the Showcase's voters are the publisher's readers in its home counties, and that is where its results carry weight.