The calendar.

Vardaman, MS. The town that calls itself the Sweet Potato Capital of the World holds a recipe contest with a separate pie category. The festival site gives different dates: 7 November for the festival day, 14 November for the cooking contest and harvest banquet on the home page, and “Saturday, November 8th” for contest entries on the contest page. 8 November falls on a Sunday in 2026. All three are shown as published.

Nationwide. The fourth Thursday of November is a federal holiday. It falls on Thursday 26 November in 2026, per the Office of Personnel Management schedule.

Nationwide. Accounts of the day’s origin differ. John Lehndorff writes that Charlie Papazian, a Boulder, Colorado schoolteacher, declared his birthday, 23 January, National Pie Day after telling his students he preferred birthday pie to cake, and registered it with Chase’s Calendar of Events under an organization he named the American Pie Council. Lehndorff’s 2016 account places this in the 1970s, and his 2019 post gives the year as 1975. He writes that he later turned the council into a working organization, and his Boulder Reporting Lab author biography describes him as a former executive director of the American Pie Council. The council’s own account says it was born in 1995 from a friendly neighborhood rivalry and grew under Rick and Linda Hoskins; it does not mention Papazian.

Nationwide. The date reads 3/14, the first three digits of pi. Larry Shaw started the celebration at the Exploratorium in San Francisco in 1988. On 12 March 2009 the House agreed to H.Res. 224, introduced by Rep. Bart Gordon of Tennessee, which supports the designation of a Pi Day, by a recorded vote of 391 to 10 (Roll no. 124). The resolution concerns mathematics education. Its text does not mention pie.

Orlando, FL. Held at the Caribe Royale Hotel and open to commercial, independent, professional and amateur bakers from across North America. The 29th championships took place there on 8 and 9 April 2026. The council’s championships page announces the 30th for April 12 and 13, 2027.

Key West, FL. Five days of key lime pie tastings, competitions and events in Key West, established 2012. The festival benefits a Monroe County organization serving adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

Traverse City, MI. The cherry festival of northern Michigan. Its queens presented cherry pies to the White House in the 1930s, and on 25 July 1987 festival participants baked a cherry pie 17 ft 6 in across, entered in Guinness as the world’s largest; it was superseded in 1990.

Columbus, OH. Judges taste pies of every kind in the fair’s baking competitions, filmed for WOSU’s Columbus Neighborhoods. Pie classes and entry deadlines for 2027 are not yet published.

West Allis, WI. The fair’s culinary competitions include a pie baking championship; Milwaukee Magazine and Isthmus have reported on its entrants and winners.

Braham, MN. Gov. Rudy Perpich named Braham the Homemade Pie Capital of Minnesota in 1990. MPR’s 2024 introduction says Pie Day began that year; Pie Day entertainment coordinator Marie Grundberg told MPR that the gathering in Freedom Park was already called Pie Day and drew 200 to 300 people by 1990, and that Perpich came to see it before naming the town. Volunteers serve around 700 homemade pies (MPR, 2024) in Freedom Park on Main Street, with pie baking and pie-eating contests.

Des Moines, IA. The fair holds a public pie-eating contest, and its Food Department runs baking competitions. The 2027 pie classes have not been published, and the fair’s 2025 pie results pages are no longer online.

Palmer, AK. The fair holds a pie contest among its kitchen competitions, run with the UAF Cooperative Extension Service and the Mat-Su Council for Family and Community Education. The 2026 edition was a Red, White & Blue Pie Contest on 30 August.

Falcon Heights, MN. Pies are among the baked goods judged in the Creative Activities competition, which the fair introduces with “Pies and jams and quilts”. The 2027 premium list is not yet published.

Grand Island, NE. Rural Radio Network called the pie baking contest one of the fair’s most traditional. Every crust must be homemade, and cream pies must be made the day of the contest.

Pie Town, NM. New Mexico Tourism Department pages give two names for the man behind the town’s name. Its Pie Town ghost-town page, cited by KRQE, says the name comes from a bakery for dried-apple pies established by Clyde Norman in the early 1920s; its Pie Town cuisine page says the town “legendarily owes its name to Norman Smith,” a miner and general store owner who baked pies for westbound travelers. The festival has a pie baking competition, a pie-eating contest, a Pi-K fun run and the crowning of a Pie King and Pie Queen; the department’s 2017 release counted that year’s festival, on 9 September, as the 37th.

Dallas, TX. The Creative Arts department runs pie contests, among them a pecan pie contest and the Battle for the Blue Ribbons, which drew some 240 pies in its 2024 bakeoff.

Circleville, OH. Organizers state that about 23,000 pumpkin pies and more than 100,000 pumpkin doughnuts are sold during the four days. Home arts, crafts and baked goods are exhibited.

Nationwide. The fourth Thursday of November, listed on OPM’s 2027 federal holiday schedule.