In a livestream video hosted earlier this evening, the KansasFest committee announced that the annual Apple II convention will return to the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS), site of KansasFest 2024, this coming July 13–19.

The venue was chosen by popular vote, with past, future, and potential attendees having one week to choose from among three American Midwest colleges that had been proposed by the community. Had no one venue gotten a majority of the 105 votes, ranked-choice voting (RCV) would’ve been used to declare a winner.

In the end, UIS won by a landslide, with 2.4 times more first-place votes than the second choice, the University of Missouri St. Louis.

First ChoiceSecond ChoiceThird Choice
University of Illinois Springfield652218
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville137319
University of Missouri St. Louis271064*
* Four votes were excluded due to specific request.

The committee has received a draft of a contract from UIS and will now sign and submit it for approval. If no further changes are requested or required by either party, then the next annual KansasFest will be held at UIS this July 13–19, 2026. The committee expects to confirm and announce these dates within the next two weeks. (If, for any reason, UIS falls through, then RCV dictates that Southern Illinois University Edwardsville will be the backup option.)

For more insight into the venue selection process, including the anonymized final votes with qualitative comments, please visit the KansasFest website.

Editor & publisher of Juiced.GS, the Apple II community's longest-running print publication dedicated to the Apple II; co-host of the Star Trek podcast Transporter Lock; digital nomad at Roadbits.