A fair is a gathering of people for entertainment or business related activities. A fair may last for one or several days or weeks and often happens every year at a specific place.

• Village fair, a festival, party or celebration that happens every year or every few years. Traditionally, they were held to celebrate a good harvest or as religious gatherings.
• Traveling funfair or carnival, an amusement show made up of amusement rides, food stalls, stalls selling things, games of "chance and skill", thrill acts and (now less often) animal acts.
• A town/city's street fair or market celebrates the character of a neighborhood and local merchants.
• County fair (USA) or county show (UK), a public event displaying the equipment, animals, like cattle or horses, sports and recreation associated with agriculture and animal breeding.
• Regional or state fair, an annual competition and recreation get-together. Including exhibits or competitors that have won a prize at the local fairs.
• Trade fair, an event held so that companies in an industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, study activities of rivals, and examine recent market trends and opportunities.
• Festival, an event with a theme e.g. music, art, season, tradition, history, ethnicity, religion, or a national holiday.

The Roman fairs were holidays on which work and court cases stopped. In the Roman provinces of Judea and Syria Palaestina, Jewish rabbis stopped Jews from taking part in fairs in certain towns because the religious nature of the fairs contravened the prescribed practice of Judaism.^[1]

In the Middle Ages, many fairs developed as short-lasting markets and were very important for long-distance and international trade. Traders travelled, sometimes for many days, to fairs where they could be sure to meet those they needed to buy from or sell to. Fairs were usually tied to special Christian religious events, such as the Saint's day of the local church. Stagshaw, in England, held annual fairs as early as 1293 consisting of the sales of animals. Along with the main fair held on 4 July, the city also hosted smaller fairs throughout the year where certain types of animals were sold, such as one for horses, one for lambs, and one for ewes.^[2]

The Kumbh Mela, held every twelve years, at Allahabad, Haridwar, Nashik, and Ujjain is one of the largest fairs in India, where more than 60 million people gathered in January 2001, making it the largest gathering anywhere in the world.^[3][4][5] Kumbha means a pitcher and Mela means fair in Sanskrit.

In the United States, fairs draw in as many as 150 million people each summer.^[6] Children's competitions at an American fair range from breeding small animals to robotics, whilst the organization 4-H has become a traditional association.^[6]

• "Fair" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 10 (11th ed.). 1911.