The Pilot Star of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

The single most useful fact here: a nine-day voting window, twice confirmed

Nine days. That's how long voting stayed open on the 2026 Pilot Star of the Year ballot, May 23 through May 29, 2026, before the page closed. It's the second time that window has run; the first came in 2025, giving the program exactly two confirmed editions to date.

The Pilot Star of the Year is organized by The Pilot Promotions and hosted on Second Street at pilot.secondstreetapp.com. The listing itself carries the platform's own year tag, Star of the Year '26, matching how the address is built. Past the confirmed voting dates, what's published goes quiet: no category roster, no per-voter limit, no separate nomination-stage schedule sits anywhere on the account for this ballot.

No published roster of categories and no daily-vote rule exist on that page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle rather than assuming a rule that hasn't actually been posted.

One ballot on an account that carries hundreds of others

The Pilot Promotions runs its Second Street account well beyond this single ballot. Roughly 500 promotions sit on that account network-wide, sweepstakes, raffles, and a text-message opt-in survey among them, alongside the Star of the Year voting ballot this page tracks.

That volume matters for one practical reason: a supporter searching loosely for a Pilot-branded vote or contest is as likely to land on an unrelated raffle or sweepstakes listing as on the actual Star of the Year ballot. The address pilot.secondstreetapp.com/Star-of-the-Year-26 is specific to this program and this cycle; the 2025 edition lived at its own separate address, Star-of-the-Year-2025.

What that means once the 2026 window closes

Nothing on the confirmed listing spells out what happens between one Star of the Year cycle and the next. The Pilot Promotions' own account, checked directly, is the place a 2027 date would first show up, not a general search that could just as easily surface one of the account's other few hundred promotions.

Southern Pines named, nothing wider assumed

Southern Pines, North Carolina is the city tied to this ballot's organizer. The confirmed listing draws no boundary beyond that: no neighboring-town note, no county line, and no readership radius appear anywhere on the page for Star of the Year.

A nominee or supporter should read the program's reach the way the platform itself states it, tied to The Pilot Promotions and its Southern Pines base, rather than assuming a wider North Carolina audience the account hasn't actually published.

That matters because "star of the year" is a generic enough phrase that other cities, other Second Street accounts, and even other years of this same program can surface in a loose search. Southern Pines, tied specifically to The Pilot Promotions, is the only place-name this particular listing actually carries; treat any wider claim about the program's audience as unconfirmed until the account itself says otherwise.

Building a push around two confirmed cycles, not a settled annual calendar

Two editions isn't much history yet, but it is enough to know the shape of the ballot: a short voting window, no published categories, and an account that runs plenty of other promotions besides this one. The practical move is acting inside whatever window is actually open, May 23 through May 29 for 2026, since Star of the Year simply hasn't been around long enough to offer a fallback plan beyond that.

Two confirmed cycles is not much runway, yet the shape of Star of the Year is already clear: a nine-day window, no printed categories, and an account that mostly does other things. A Southern Pines supporter's best move is showing up during that exact window, more than once, using an ordinary browser rather than a script or an automated tool. is buying votes legal covers where a supporter push turns risky under Second Street's own terms. buying votes online covers how a legitimate push actually gets organized for a voting-only ballot like this one, and since Star of the Year is a readers'-choice contest at heart, award-vote strategy is the closer match for planning around its nine-day shape.