This year’s Canadian Western Agribition recorded the highest attendance since 2005.

There were 142,807 people who came to the 2023 show, a 19 percent increase from 2022, and event CEO Shaun Kindopp is proud of that.

“The best part about our crowd is the positivity,” Kindopp said. “There’s times where it takes a bit of time waiting to get in but once people got in they were quite excited. I know our trade show vendors from the feedback we got were seeing great foot traffic as well which is important for us.”

Some new events introduced at this year’s Agribition include Miss Rodeo, Animal AgTech Awards and free-style bullfighting, and Kindopp says they played a part in the increased attendance.

“People have been really excited to get back out and experience Agribition; you wait all year for it,” he said. “We brought a lot of new initiatives and we even brought back some old ones – the return of live music everyday – but the new initiatives were fantastic paired with some great weather and we couldn’t have asked for a better week.”

Work on organizing next year’s event has already begun, and Kindopp hopes to top this year’s attendance numbers.

“We always want to continue to get bigger and better and that will be the goal for next year.” he said.

“Our team is already brain-storming on things for next year,” Kindopp added. “We’re ready for 2024 to come already.”

Next year’s event is set for November 25-30, 2024.