Best & Worst 2026: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes in Best & Worst 2026 and why the survey matters in Richmond

Best & Worst 2026 is the reader survey that Richmond magazine runs each cycle for its home market in Richmond, Virginia. The publisher calls it the 39th annual survey, and the ballot page opens with a direct invitation: share your picks in the survey, naming who is best and letting loose with the worst. The audience is the magazine's own readership, which means the supporters a candidate rallies are Richmond locals who already follow the publication's food, news and features coverage.

This entry sits in the best-of vertical, the familiar readers-choice format in which a local publisher lists businesses, organizations and individuals and lets the public decide the winners. What distinguishes this one is the frank two-sided framing. Most reader ballots celebrate favorites only; this survey explicitly asks for the worst as well, which is why candidates in the Richmond market treat it with a mix of ambition and dread.

The ballot sits on richmondmagazine.com itself, with no outside balloting vendor between the supporter and the form. The publisher behind it is a print and online magazine owned by Target Communications Inc. Businesses that want to campaign are not left to improvise: the page offers a social media toolkit with graphics sized for Instagram and general posts, plus a poster for print. The table below pulls together the fixed facts about this cycle.

The dated facts: which editions are confirmed and when the window closes

The 2026 edition is the one live now, and its printed boundary is unambiguous: voting is open through April 27 at 11 p.m. That is the only dated fact the ballot page states about timing. It gives supporters a hard deadline but no opening day, and the publisher has not printed an exact start date anywhere on the page held here; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

The longer history is substantial. Confirmed edition years run from 2014 through 2026 with no gap, thirteen consecutive cycles, and the magazine's own pages describe the program as an annual survey that has run every year since 1987. The 39th annual label on the 2026 ballot matches that arithmetic exactly, which makes this one of the longest continuously running reader surveys in Virginia. The next cycle would be the 2026 edition's successor in 2027, though the publisher has not yet published anything about it.

Several facts sit outside that history. The category roster appears only on the live form, not as a published list. No per-supporter vote limit, daily return rule or eligibility text accompanies the ballot. And the magazine has not printed the date on which results will be announced, only that survey results will be announced after voting closes. Those gaps are worth knowing before planning a campaign, because they define what a supporter can rely on and what has to be read off the live page each spring.

How a supporter votes on the Best & Worst 2026 ballot today

The process asks little of the participant. A supporter opens the survey page on richmondmagazine.com, where a vote-now call to action sits near the top of the page, and works through the survey form. The page's own language sets the tone: tell us who's best and let loose with the worst. Supporters fill in their picks across the categories presented on the form and submit before the printed close of April 27 at 11 p.m.

Because the form is served from the magazine's own domain, there is no third-party platform layer to learn. No separate registration round, no external balloting vendor, no platform-branded interface. The form, the categories and the nominees are all presented in the publication's own environment, which keeps the experience consistent with the magazine's other coverage.

One published detail deserves attention from candidates rather than voters: the social media toolkit. The page invites businesses, organizations and individuals to use graphics sized for Instagram and other social platforms, profile pictures and general posts, plus a poster for print, to ask their followers to vote. That is the organizer's own endorsed promotion route, and it tells you something about how the magazine expects the survey to be won: by candidates mobilizing their existing Richmond audiences, not by anonymous traffic. Whether a supporter may come back to vote on additional days is not printed anywhere, so the safe assumption is to complete the form in one visit and let the live form enforce whatever limit applies.

How this ballot sits beside its Virginia neighbours

Virginia carries a crowded field of reader-vote programs, and Best & Worst 2026 holds a distinct position in it. Its closest relation is the magazine's own Best of Richmond program, which shares the same publisher and the same richmondmagazine.com home; the 2026 survey is that franchise's current ballot. Beyond the publisher's own family, the state's best-of landscape includes Best of Arlington serving the Arlington market, Best of Coastal Virginia Magazine from the Coastal Virginia publication, and Best of Charlottesville alongside the Daily Progress Charlottesville Readers' Choice in the Charlottesville market.

Two theatre-oriented programs round out the sibling set: the BroadwayWorld Central Virginia Awards and the BroadwayWorld NOVA Awards, which apply the public-vote format to stage rather than to local business.

What separates the Richmond survey from each of those neighbours is longevity and tone. None of the sibling programs claims a run reaching back to 1987, and none asks voters to name the worst alongside the best. The two-sided format gives the ballot a sharper edge in the Richmond market, and the magazine's own toolkit acknowledges it: a candidate who expects to appear on the worst side has as much reason to rally supporters as one chasing a best win. Each program, however, answers to a different publisher under different rules, so a strategy built for one Virginia ballot does not transfer automatically to another.

Strengthening support in the 39th annual survey

For a business, organization or individual named on this ballot, the organizer has already published the playbook: use the social media toolkit. The graphics are sized for Instagram and social profile pictures as well as general posts, and a poster version covers physical locations. Asking followers directly, in the magazine's own words, to vote for you is the promotion route Richmond magazine itself endorses, and it works because the survey's supporters are local readers with real opinions about the Richmond market.

Timing matters given the printed deadline. With voting open through April 27 at 11 p.m., a campaign that starts late compresses its own runway, so candidates should push early in the window rather than trusting a final-week scramble. The magazine prints no ceiling on repeat voting and no rule about coming back on later days, so a reminder cadence should be built around what the live form actually allows rather than an assumption. And because the survey names a worst as well as a best, an honest, likeable campaign tends to travel further than an aggressive one. For tactics that apply across public ballots, see our guide to getting more votes online.