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2025 record; 2026 season
The zoo's year: The Potawatomi Zoo's latest published attendance is another record: 409,776 visitors in 2025, the highest in the zoo's history, at the end of a series that runs 316,030 in 2022, 351,628 in 2023, and 361,626 in 2024 — with the Zoo Luminate lantern season bringing, by the director's figure, more than 80,000 additional visitors besides. The zoo's two foundings, its 1987 accreditation renewed again on 17 September 2025, and the society's operation of it since 1 January 2014 stand in the Zoo section; what is being built there stands in the next-but-one entry of this section.
The calendar: The city's recurring calendar ran on schedule through 2026 as the Events section verifies it: the 23rd annual Art Beat filled downtown on 15 August 2026 — in the rain, the Tribune's account notes, with hundreds attending — and the monthly First Fridays series continued, its 3 July 2026 edition documented in the same record. On the west side, the Memorial Day parade turned one hundred in May 2026, a centenary the Veterans section keeps. The calendar prints here at pointer size by design: the verified, dated list is the Events section's, and this portrait does not build a second one beside it.
Sources:
- Potawatomi Zoo — attendance as published in the Zoo section's record (2025: 409,776, all-time record; the 2022–2024 series; Zoo Luminate's 80,000-plus by the director's figure; AZA accreditation renewed 17 September 2025).
- South Bend Tribune — the 23rd annual Art Beat, 15 August 2026; the Events and Veterans sections of this history (First Fridays, 3 July 2026; the West Side Memorial Day Parade's centenary, May 2026).