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

What the Poconos Community's Choice Awards is and who runs it

The Poconos Community's Choice Awards celebrates the Pocono area's favorite businesses and organizations across Pennsylvania. It is organized by a Gannett / USA TODAY Network local paper, with the market anchored on Stroudsburg, and the ballot itself lives at yourchoiceawards.com/poconos/ on the Your Choice Awards host. The program's own site describes it in simple terms: a community vote that recognizes more than 510 businesses and organizations each year, and one that, in its words, could not run without community members taking part.

The structure is a classic best-of contest. A nomination round gathers entries from the public, the leading companies in every category advance, and a voting round decides the winners. The 2026 cycle spans a wide slate of categories, which makes this one of the broader local ballots in the state, and the site's navigation points to a How It Works guide, a Categories page, an Awards Gala, a Winners Section and Business Resources for entrants.

Key facts at a glance

Because the organizer is a Gannett / USA TODAY Network outlet, the program sits inside a large family of community choice and best-of ballots that network papers run across the country. The Pocono edition is the local expression of that format, built for the businesses and organizations of the Pocono area rather than a single town or a single industry.

The dated record: 2025 and 2026 editions and the 2026 calendar

Two editions of the Poconos Community's Choice Awards are confirmed: 2025 and 2026, both on the Your Choice Awards host. That pair of edition years is what establishes the program's annual rhythm, and the organizer's own text backs it up, saying that each year the program recognizes more than 510 businesses and organizations. On that rhythm, a 2027 cycle is the natural expectation.

The 2026 calendar is published in full on the ballot. The nomination round ran May 1-22, 2026, under the banner that it all begins with nominations. The voting round followed, open July 1-15, 2026, and the page explains that after nominations, the leading companies in every category advance to that voting stage. Once voting ends, winners are announced on September 17, 2026, with the site noting that excitement builds as the organizers prepare to reveal them.

The nomination round also carries its own incentive: entrants who nominate are entered to win a $250 prize. That detail matters for businesses planning their year, because the May window is where a place on the July ballot is won.

Not every detail of the cycle is published. No roster of the businesses behind each category appears on the ballot itself, so which names sit where should be confirmed on the live ballot each cycle. The same caution extends to the exact shape of future cycles beyond the confirmed 2025 and 2026 editions.

How a supporter votes in the Poconos Community's Choice Awards today

Taking part is a straightforward public tally on the Your Choice Awards host. During the voting round, July 1-15, 2026, a supporter opens the ballot at yourchoiceawards.com/poconos/, moves through the category slate, and picks the Pocono area business or organization they want to recognize in each one. The published frequency limit gives each person a single daily vote in every category for as long as the round runs.

That daily limit is the single most important fact for anyone campaigning in this program. A customer who votes once contributes a single tally; a customer who returns on each of the fifteen days of the July window contributes fifteen. Businesses that understand this tend to frame their asks accordingly, inviting people to come back daily rather than treating the ballot as a one-time click.

Before voting even begins, the nomination round from May 1-22, 2026 decides who appears on the ballot. The leading companies in every category advance to the voting round, so a business that wants July support first needs May nominations. The $250 prize drawing attached to nominations gives supporters an extra reason to put a favorite forward early.

After the round closes on July 15, the organizers prepare the September 17, 2026 winners announcement, and results land in the program's Winners Section alongside its Awards Gala coverage. Whether the ballot asks for a login or email verification before a tally counts is something the organizers leave unstated, so a supporter encountering any such step should simply follow the instructions shown on the live form.

How this ballot sits beside its Pennsylvania neighbours

Pennsylvania runs a crowded field of best-of and readers-choice ballots, and the Poconos Community's Choice Awards occupies a distinct corner of it. Where most of the state's programs are tied to a magazine, an alt-weekly or a suburban newspaper group, this one belongs to the Gannett / USA TODAY Network's local paper operation and runs on the network's own Your Choice Awards host, the same system that carries its other community choice markets.

Several companion programs from the same state share this page's shelf, each with a different publisher and host. Best of Berks (Berks County Living Magazine) serves the Reading area, Best of Philly (Philadelphia Magazine) covers the state's largest city, and Best of the 'Burgh does the same for Pittsburgh. Each answers to its own publisher, so a rule or a window that holds in one says nothing about the others.

Two more round out the in-state set: Best of the Lehigh Valley (Lehigh Valley Style), geographically the nearest of the group to the Pocono market, and Bucks County & Chester County Readers' Choice in the Philadelphia suburbs, plus Erie Reader Best of Erie in the state's northwest.

What separates the Poconos program is scale and host. Its wide category slate and its more than 510 recognized businesses and organizations put it among the broader ballots in the state, and its placement on the Your Choice Awards system means its cycle shape, nomination incentive and daily vote limit are set by the Gannett / USA TODAY Network operation rather than by an independent magazine. Anyone moving between these programs should read each ballot's rules on its own terms rather than assuming the Pocono rules travel.

Strengthening support in the Poconos Community's Choice Awards

Two levers drive support in this ballot, and both come from the program's own design. The first is the May nomination round, May 1-22, 2026, which decides which leading companies in every category reach the July ballot, and which carries the $250 prize drawing for entrants. A business that treats nominations as its main campaign has already done the hardest part.

The second lever is the daily limit. Because each supporter may cast one vote per day in every category across the July 1-15, 2026 voting round, the winning approach is repetition by real customers: a counter sign, a register mention, a short email reminder on the first of July and again mid-window. Fifteen days of daily votes from a loyal base outweighs any single burst, and it stays entirely inside the organizer's published rule.

The organizers have not published a rulebook on outside assistance for this program, so the prudent reading is the conservative one: mobilize genuine community participation and keep every action within the stated daily limit. For a wider view of how supporters grow a tally in contests like this, see our guide to getting more votes online, and for the service questions behind that topic, our award votes page is the starting point.