The Wairarapa A&P Show returns to the Clareville Showgrounds near Carterton on 31 October – 1 November 2026, the long-running agricultural and pastoral show run by the Wairarapa Agricultural & Pastoral Society.
The Wairarapa A&P Show runs across Saturday 31 October and Sunday 1 November 2026 at the Wairarapa Showgrounds (the Clareville Complex) just north of Carterton, with gates listed from 8:00am to 5:00pm according to the Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand's event listing. It is the region's annual agricultural and pastoral show, a public exhibition of livestock, equestrian and rural competition wrapped around family entertainment.
The show has deep roots. According to the Wairarapa A&P Society, the organisation has been operating for more than 143 years and has staged its show at the Clareville site since the 1970s, after outgrowing its original ground in Carterton township. The 2025 edition was publicly billed as the 146th show, placing the 2026 event among the oldest continuously run shows in the lower North Island.
The show is organised by the Wairarapa Agricultural & Pastoral Society (Wairarapa A&P Society), a membership body that describes its purpose as bridging the rural-urban divide and giving visitors "a taste of the country." The Society lists office@waiaps.org.nz as its contact, and the RAS listing names Margaret France as the event contact. Membership, the Society says, costs an annual fee and includes show entry and year-round privileges.
The programme is a traditional A&P mix. Per the Wairarapa A&P Society and the regional tourism body WairarapaNZ, the show features equestrian and livestock competitions, wood chopping, trade and exhibitor stalls, carnival rides and amusements, food vendors, and children's activities such as a scavenger hunt, lawnmower racing and a pet corner. It is pitched as a family day out that also serves the farming community through its competitive animal classes, drawing crowds the local Wairarapa Times-Age has described as running into the tens of thousands.
The Wairarapa Showgrounds sit at 2-12 Chester Road, Clareville, which the Society places about 3km north of Carterton on State Highway 2, on an 85-acre site that was formerly a racecourse. The location is roughly central to the Wairarapa's main towns: Carterton is the nearest service town, with Masterton a short drive further north and Greytown and Martinborough to the south, so delegate and visitor accommodation is typically spread across Masterton and Carterton. The site is reached off SH2 via Chester Road and has on-grounds space for show parking. Wairarapa is connected to Wellington by the Wairarapa Line rail service and SH2 over the Remutaka Hill, the usual approach for visitors travelling from the capital.
As a RAS-affiliated show with a century-plus history and a two-day, tens-of-thousands footprint, the Wairarapa A&P Show is one of the anchor seasonal events for the Wairarapa, concentrating regional tourism, trade exhibition and rural competition into a single weekend. For the NZ events sector it is a recurring, venue-fixed public exhibition of genuine scale rather than a one-off, making it a dependable fixture in the spring show circuit alongside the larger Canterbury, Hawke's Bay and Manawatu shows.
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