The YETI Junior National Finals Rodeo is Turning 10!

To celebrate, more than 700 of the country’s best young cowboys and cowgirls (ages 8-19) will be in Las Vegas to compete for the Montana Silversmiths Championship Buckles. 

The contestants also get to compete in a larger venue than in years past. This year’s Junior NFR, which is still adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center, takes place inside a 65,000-square-foot tent set up in the Platinum parking lot across from University Drive. The venue is just a short walk from the South Hall of the LVCC.

The Junior NFR began in 2016 with youth participants competing in six events – bareback bronc riding, bull riding, tie-down roping, team roping, barrel racing and breakaway roping – with saddle bronc riding and steer wrestling added to the mix the following year and pole bending rounding out the list in 2019.

In other words, the YETI Junior NFR keeps getting bigger … and better.

The inaugural rodeo in 2016 was a six-day event before evolving into a 10-day affair in 2017 to mirror the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. Not only has the Junior NFR added events since its inception, but the number of contestants has more than doubled.

The Junior NFR runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. while the NFR begins at 5:45 p.m. at the Thomas & Mack Center, giving rodeo fans a full day of non-stop action.

After being held on the second floor of the LVCC the first four years – above The Cowboy Channel Cowboy Christmas – the Junior NFR was held in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2020 because of the pandemic. The following year it returned to Las Vegas, where it all began.

“I can’t cuss Texas because we did well down there,” Ote Berry, producer of Ote Berry Junior Steer Wrestling, said back in 2021, “but it just didn’t have the feel of Vegas.”

Berry has a natural affinity for Las Vegas. The ProRodeo Hall of Fame inductee won all four of his Wrangler NFR steer wrestling world titles (1985, 1990-91, ’95) at the Thomas & Mack Center.

Back home in Vegas, the Junior NFR returned to the LVCC through 2023 before moving outside last year, taking place inside a 52,000-square-foot tent located just East of the convention center.

While the venue might have changed over the years, the YETI Junior NFR still takes place in the Wrangler Rodeo Arena, where some of the world’s top cowboys and cowgirls got their first taste of Vegas. Two-time defending world tie-down champion Riley Webb, 2024 PRCA All Around World Champion Shad Mayfield and 2023 PRCA World Champion Bareback Rider Keenan Hayes are Junior NFR veterans; as are 2025 NFR qualifiers Bradlee Miller, Wacey Schalla, Bridger Anderson and Tayla Moeykens.

No doubt that list will continue to grow over the years.

After all, when you bring the nation’s best young cowboys and cowgirls to Las Vegas it’s only natural for them to want to come back. And what would a birthday party be without some friends?