The Great Pumpkin Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

Sheridan, Wyoming's pumpkin-carving vote: who runs The Great Pumpkin Contest

Sheridan Press, the Sheridan, Wyoming newspaper, organizes The Great Pumpkin Contest and runs it as a public photo vote on Second Street's platform, at thesheridanpress.secondstreetapp.com. Entrants submit a photo of a carved or decorated pumpkin, and the public votes for a favorite among the submitted photos.

Sheridan Press runs other seasonal promotions on that same Second Street account, but The Great Pumpkin Contest itself is a standalone photo vote, not bundled with any of them.

The confirmed page identifies The Great Pumpkin Contest as a photo-voting promotion specifically, distinct from a written-nomination ballot: a pumpkin's photo, not a business's name, is what the public actually votes on. That format sets Sheridan, Wyoming's contest apart from a readers'-choice ballot built around nominating a favorite business or person, even though both shapes run on the same Second Street software.

A dated 2025 window, a 2026 return, and what Sheridan Press has not printed yet

Sheridan Press has confirmed The Great Pumpkin Contest for both 2025 and 2026. Only the 2025 window carries a full date range, October 10 through November 10, a month of voting on submitted pumpkin photos.

Sheridan Press confirmed The Great Pumpkin Contest returned for 2026 without printing that cycle's own opening and closing dates the way the 2025 run was dated; confirm on the live ballot each cycle for the exact 2026 window.

The Great Pumpkin Contest has never carried a published category list or a per-voter vote limit on Sheridan Press's own page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle for whichever rule actually governs entries once the 2026 window is dated.

Reading this in September 2026, the 2025 window is long past, and whether the 2026 edition follows the same October-to-November pattern is not something Sheridan Press has printed yet for this page to confirm. What the two confirmed years do establish is that Sheridan Press treats The Great Pumpkin Contest as a genuine return rather than a single trial run, even without a fixed calendar date attached to the 2026 edition.

How a supporter votes for a pumpkin photo today

The Great Pumpkin Contest works as a straightforward public photo vote: an entrant submits a photo of a carved or decorated pumpkin to Sheridan Press, and the public then votes for a favorite among the submitted photos at thesheridanpress.secondstreetapp.com.

Nothing on the confirmed page describes a separate nomination stage ahead of voting; The Great Pumpkin Contest, as Sheridan Press has published it, runs as a single photo-entry-and-vote process.

A supporter looking to back a specific entry searches thesheridanpress.secondstreetapp.com for the photo they want to support and casts a vote there. Nothing published fixes how many times one person may do that for a given entry, part of the per-voter gap noted above.

Whichever exact weeks the 2026 edition uses, the mechanic itself is unlikely to change from what the 2025 window already showed: a photo submitted, then a public vote among whichever entries Sheridan Press posted for that cycle. That consistency matters more here than on a ballot with a printed rulebook, since the mechanic itself, not a set of posted rules, is what a supporter actually has to go on.

Where The Great Pumpkin Contest sits among Wyoming's other best-of ballots

Sheridan Press is one of several Wyoming publishers running a public-vote program, and among this batch of six comparisons, The Great Pumpkin Contest is the sole entry built as a photo contest rather than a business or people ballot.

None of those six share a publisher or a results page with The Great Pumpkin Contest, and a strong showing in Sheridan Press's photo vote has no bearing on a Casper, Cheyenne, Jackson Hole or Gillette ballot built by a different outlet.

Sheridan Press's own account also runs seasonal, non-photo promotions the same way other Wyoming newspapers do, but The Great Pumpkin Contest specifically stays a photo-only format even where a sibling program elsewhere in the state runs a written business ballot instead.

Strengthening support for a Great Pumpkin Contest entry

The Great Pumpkin Contest runs entirely through thesheridanpress.secondstreetapp.com, so any push to support a submitted pumpkin photo has to work inside that Second Street vote rather than around it. The confirmed page does not print a policy on outside vote-support services, leaving Sheridan Press's own rules for the cycle in progress, whatever they turn out to be once the 2026 window is actually dated, as the real authority.

Because neither a per-voter limit nor a category structure is published, a supporter's steadiest approach is repeated visits to the specific photo being backed rather than assuming any particular daily allowance. Building real momentum for an online ballot covers that approach for a photo-vote format like this one, and buying contest votes explains what outside help typically involves for a public photo contest.