Best Of Readers' Choice Awards: How Voting Works & How to Win

What sets the Virginia Media Best Of apart from other Virginia ballots

Most readers-choice ballots in Virginia sit on an outside voting platform, but the Best Of Readers' Choice Awards does not. Virginia Media hosts the entire contest on its own domain at virginiamedia.com/bestof, which means the ballot, the rules and the Winners Edition all live where the publisher's news brands already live. That is the first thing that separates this program from its neighbours: a Hampton Roads supporter never leaves the publisher's site to cast a choice.

The second difference is scale. Virginia Media is not a single masthead. Its brands include The Virginian-Pilot, Daily Press, Virginia Gazette, Tidewater Review and Inside Business, and the publisher states it has spent 30 years showcasing the region through this work. A business that wins a Best Of title is being endorsed by a reader base that spans the whole Hampton Roads market, not one town's circulation area.

The program is a best-of vertical contest with a public-vote mechanic, aimed at local businesses. Its market is Hampton Roads, Virginia, and its organizer is the publisher itself, Virginia Media. The table below collects the confirmed facts.

The dated record for the Best Of Readers' Choice Awards

Three editions of the Best Of Readers' Choice Awards are confirmed: 2023, 2024 and 2026. The program is annual, and Virginia Media's own text says it has been showcasing Hampton Roads for 30 years, so the 2026 cycle sits inside a long publishing tradition rather than a new experiment. The next cycle would be expected in 2027.

Each confirmed edition has its own window. The 2023 voting period ran May 28 through June 27, 2023. The 2024 vote opened June 1st at 8 AM. The 2026 cycle runs June 1 through June 30, 2026, and voting ends Tuesday, June 30, 2026, at 11:59pm. Across the confirmed years the window always falls in late May or June, which gives businesses a predictable season to plan around.

After voting closes, Virginia Media publishes a Winners Edition. The current page points to a 2026 Best Of Winners Edition and congratulates the 2024 winners, so the result of each June ballot becomes part of the publisher's own output.

Not everything is printed. Virginia Media publishes no per-supporter vote cap, no rule about returning on consecutive days, and no eligibility text for the Best Of Readers' Choice Awards; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The full category roster is likewise not printed as a complete list on the material at hand, so businesses should read the live ballot in June rather than assume last year's structure.

How a supporter votes on the Virginia Media Best Of ballot

Voting on this ballot takes little explanation. To back a favorite Hampton Roads business, a supporter opens the Best Of page at virginiamedia.com/bestof during the June window, finds that business among the listings, and submits a choice. Because the vote is hosted on Virginia Media's own site, the same domain that carries The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press, the supporter is working with a familiar publisher rather than learning a third-party balloting interface.

Timing matters more than anything else on this ballot. The 2026 window runs June 1 through June 30, closing at 11:59pm on June 30. A business with supporters who wait until the final week compresses its whole campaign into a few days, while one that points customers at the ballot early in June spreads the same effort across a full month. The 2024 edition opened at 8 AM on June 1, so early participation has been a published feature of this contest before.

What the ballot does not print is any per-person limit or account requirement. Neither a rule about coming back on later days nor a login requirement for the Best Of Readers' Choice Awards appears in the published material, so a supporter's safest course is to visit the live page, follow whatever instructions appear beside the business they want to support, and return before the June 30 close. The Winners Edition that follows voting is the published outcome every supporter's choice feeds into.

How this ballot sits beside its Virginia neighbours

Virginia carries several readers-choice and best-of ballots, and the Best Of Readers' Choice Awards holds a distinct position among them: it is the only one in this group run by a multi-brand Hampton Roads publisher on its own domain. Six sibling programs cover other parts of the state or other verticals, and each answers to a different organizer.

Best of Arlington serves the Arlington suburb across the state from Hampton Roads. The BroadwayWorld Central Virginia Awards and the BroadwayWorld NOVA Awards cover theatre rather than businesses, run by the BroadwayWorld network for their respective Virginia theatre scenes. The Best of Coastal Virginia Magazine is the closest geographic neighbour, since Coastal Virginia Magazine also publishes for the Hampton Roads region. The Best of Charlottesville and the Daily Progress Charlottesville Readers' Choice both serve the Charlottesville market.

For a Hampton Roads business, the practical difference is audience overlap. Virginia Media's brands reach readers who also see Coastal Virginia Magazine, so a business competing in June should know that its customers may hold opinions in both contests. What makes the Best Of Readers' Choice Awards distinctive is the 30-year publishing tradition behind it and the Winners Edition that turns each June result into lasting coverage across The Virginian-Pilot, Daily Press and the rest of the Virginia Media family.

Strengthening support in the Best Of Readers' Choice Awards

Because this ballot is a plain public vote on Virginia Media's own site, the support a Hampton Roads business can gather is bounded by the June 1 through June 30 window and by whatever participation rules the live page prints. The publisher has not stated a position on outside help for this contest, so any business weighing purchased support should read our legality overview and the ballot's own terms before acting. The confirmed mechanics, an open June ballot at virginiamedia.com/bestof and a Winners Edition after the close, reward steady participation across the month rather than a single late push, since early June is when the 2024 edition opened at 8 AM.