There’s a particular kind of Wyoming evening that this festival was built for. The sun is still up at seven, the wind has finally laid down, and the old sandstone face of the Cheyenne Depot glows orange while a few hundred people stand around in the plaza holding tiny mugs of beer and arguing happily about which IPA is better. That’s the Wyoming Brewers Festival, and this June it turns 30. We’ve been looking forward to this one since the lineup got announced — partly because we love a good beer, partly because it’s the kind of event that quietly proves a point we keep making on this blog: there’s a real food-and-drink culture up here, and it doesn’t have a thing to do with Yellowstone.
The festival runs Friday, June 19 and Saturday, June 20, 2026, on the plaza at the historic Cheyenne Depot. Three decades in, it’s one of the longest-running events of its kind in the state, and the whole thing exists to support the restoration of that gorgeous old Union Pacific depot it’s named for. So you’re drinking Wyoming beer, eating Wyoming food, and propping up a piece of Wyoming history all at once. Hard to argue with the math on that.
This is our first real event preview on Wyo Food, so we’re going to do it the way we’d actually want one done for us: less press-release, more “here’s how to eat and drink your way through the weekend without regretting it on Sunday.” Let’s get into it.
The basics: dates, hours, and what a ticket gets you
Here’s the part you need to plan around. The General Admission Pour runs Friday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Saturday from 3 to 7 p.m.. One important wrinkle: a general admission ticket is good for either Friday or Saturday, not both. So pick your night. (More on how to choose below.)
As of when we’re writing this, tickets run $45 in advance, $50 the day of, and that gets you a 5-ounce sample mug, a voting token for the People’s Choice, and a responsible number of pours from the breweries on the plaza. There’s also a First Pour VIP add-on (Saturday, 2 to 3 p.m.) that buys you an extra hour of early access before the gates open to everyone, time to talk to the brewers directly, a bigger VIP-only mug, and a commemorative ball cap. If you’re the type who likes to beat the crowd and actually have a conversation with the person who made your beer, the VIP hour is worth it — Saturday afternoon gets busy.
One more thing worth knowing for a 30th-anniversary year: keep an eye on the festival’s “Triple Decade Deal” — they’ve been dropping a small batch of $30 tickets around the 30th of each month leading up to the event. If one of those drops lines up with your planning, grab it.
The beer: dozens of Wyoming and regional breweries in one plaza
This is the main event, obviously. The festival pours from more than 40 breweries across Wyoming, Colorado, and beyond — which, if you’ve ever tried to do a proper Wyoming brewery tour by car, you know would otherwise eat up about three tanks of gas and a long weekend. Here, it’s all in one plaza.
The lineup shifts year to year, but the Wyoming names that tend to show up are a good roll call of what the state is brewing right now. In past years you’ve been able to find pours from Cheyenne’s own Accomplice and Freedom’s Edge, Sheridan’s Black Tooth, Casper’s Gruner Brothers, Jackson’s Snake River and Roadhouse, plus Wind River, Blue Raven, and Wyoming Ole West. Add in the Colorado Front Range heavyweights that always make the trip up I-25, and you’ve got a glass that genuinely tells you what the Mountain West tastes like in summer.
A few tasting notes from people who’ve done this a few times: start light and work toward dark. Hit the hazy IPAs and pilsners early while your palate is fresh, save the imperial stouts and barrel-aged stuff for the back half, and use that voting token wisely — taste broadly before you commit. And do not sleep on the small Wyoming breweries you’ve never heard of. The festival is genuinely the best place in the state to stumble onto a one-barrel operation making something weird and wonderful that you’ll then spend a year trying to find again.
If craft spirits are more your speed, this festival is a great gateway into the rest of Wyoming’s drinks scene. We’ve already written about Wyoming Whiskey down in Kirby, and if you find yourself wanting a cocktail after a weekend of beer, our Wyoming honey whiskey lemonade is exactly the kind of thing to make at home once the festival’s behind you.
The food: come hungry, plan to buy
Here’s the single most important piece of advice in this whole post: your ticket does not include food. It covers beer samples and nothing else. The festival brings in food vendors and there’s plenty available for purchase on the plaza, but you’ll want cash and an appetite, because eating is not optional at an event like this — it’s strategy.
The festival doesn’t publish its full vendor list far in advance, so we’re not going to name trucks we can’t confirm. But if it runs like most Wyoming summer festivals — and like the food scene we covered at Funky Junk in Casper — expect the dependable plaza-festival rotation: smashed burgers, brisket and pulled pork, street tacos, loaded fries, kettle corn, maybe a wood-fired pizza setup and something on a stick. Keep an eye on the festival’s Instagram in the week before; that’s where the vendor lineup usually surfaces.
What to eat with what you’re drinking
Since this is a food blog first, let’s actually talk pairings. You don’t need to be precious about it, but a little intention makes a $50 ticket taste like a $100 one.
- Hoppy IPAs and pale ales want fat and salt to push against. A smashburger or loaded fries is the move — the bitterness cuts the grease and resets your palate for the next pour.
- Crisp pilsners, lagers, and Kölsch-style beers are your hot-afternoon friends. Pair them with anything fried or with street tacos. Light beer, bright food.
- Stouts and porters love smoke and char. If there’s brisket or pulled pork on the plaza, that’s where your darker pours belong — the roasty malt and the bark were made for each other.
- Sours and fruited ales are dessert. Save them for the kettle corn or anything with a little sweetness, and let them be the last thing before you head out.
And eat before you start, not after. A real meal going in does more for your evening than any amount of strategy once the samples are flowing.
Practical tips: parking, designated drivers, and getting home safe
The Depot sits right in downtown Cheyenne, which is great for walkability and less great for parking on a busy festival night. Plan to park a few blocks out and walk in, or skip the car entirely if you can — downtown Cheyenne has enough within walking distance that a lot of folks make a full evening of it.
On the designated-driver front, the festival does this right: if you’re the DD and not drinking the festival beer, you don’t need a ticket. You can come hang out with your group for free. (Just don’t sneak a pour, or security will, fairly, ask you to buy in or head out.) And if everyone in your group is drinking, the festival runs a Safe Ride Home program — in past years that’s meant ride credits and a trolley option to get you home. Look it up on their site before the night of, because some of it requires a code or a reservation in advance.
A few more things from the festival’s own rules and our hard-won experience: no glass on the plaza (city rule), no dogs (too tight a crowd), and last call is at 9:30 on Friday with the plaza clearing at 10. Bring a layer — even in late June, Cheyenne evenings turn after the sun drops, and standing around for four hours gets chilly. Sunscreen and a refillable water bottle for the daytime Saturday session aren’t a bad idea either; hydrating between pours is the difference between a great night and a rough morning.
If you’re driving in from out of town and want to keep your own cooler of water and snacks in the car for before and after, a soft cooler that actually holds ice all day is one of those things you don’t think about until you need it. We keep a leakproof soft cooler in the truck for exactly this kind of summer-festival day, and a good insulated water bottle earns its keep when it’s 85 and you’re nine breweries deep.
Friday or Saturday? How to pick your night
Since your ticket only covers one day, this matters. Friday (5-10 p.m.) is the evening session — golden-hour light, cooler temperatures, more of an after-work, kick-off-the-weekend energy. Saturday (3-7 p.m.) is the afternoon session, which means more sun, a bigger crowd, and the option to tack on that First Pour VIP hour and the morning disc golf tournament if you want to make a whole day of it.
Our take: if you want the prettier, mellower version, go Friday. If you want the full anniversary-party atmosphere with the most people and the most energy, go Saturday. We’re planning on Saturday this year — it’s the 30th, and we want the loud version.
Why this one matters for Wyoming food culture
Thirty years is a long time for anything to survive in a state this size, and the fact that a craft beer festival has not just survived but grown into a 40-plus-brewery event tells you something about where Wyoming’s food and drink scene actually is. When we moved here in 2022, a lot of people assumed — like we half did — that “Wyoming food” started and stopped at steak and ended somewhere near a national park gift shop. Events like this are the rebuttal. They’re proof of a real, homegrown, slightly stubborn craft culture: small breweries in towns most people can’t find on a map, doing genuinely good work and dragging the whole state’s palate up with them.
It also sits right in the sweet spot of what we love about Wyoming summer — the same season that gives us festivals like Old West Days up in Jackson. For a few months the whole state comes outside, sets up tents, fires up the grills, and remembers it’s a community. The Brewers Festival is one of the best versions of that, and the fact that it’s a fundraiser for a historic landmark just makes the beer go down easier.
Come find us on the plaza
We’ll be there Saturday, mug in hand, almost certainly with a brisket sandwich in the other and a strong opinion forming about somebody’s hazy IPA. If you’re heading to Cheyenne for the 30th too, come say hi — we’d genuinely love to swap brewery recommendations and find out what we’re missing. Tag us in your photos or send us your favorite pour over on Instagram or Facebook (@wyofood on both). And if you’ve been to past years’ festivals, drop us a note on which Wyoming brewery we absolutely cannot skip. See you on the Depot plaza.
— Sean