You know the type — keeps a separate folder for the cards they'll never sell, can tell you what a binder smells like, texts one friend the second a set drops. For a long time that person has had to drive to a different little shop for every game they love — Pokemon one weekend, One Piece the next, Lorcana somewhere across town. This is the weekend all of it lands in the same building. Pokemon, One Piece, Riftbound, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Lorcana and Magic: The Gathering share one convention floor in Anaheim — vendors deep enough to find the card you've been hunting for years, tables to trade and play, and the rare overlap where the competitive grinders and the vintage collectors finally walk the same aisles. It is part flea market, part reunion, part the dig you've been putting off. If you are the kind of person who already knows what a "good pull" feels like in your chest, you do not need to be talked into this room — you just need to know it exists. Held Saturday August 22 and Sunday August 23, 2026, 10AM to 6PM, at the Anaheim Convention Center, 800 West Katella Avenue, Anaheim, CA 92802. Tickets and full vendor list at the official site.
In 14 days· Aug 15
Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800…
Ventura County has spent years being the place you leave to find your people — an hour to San Diego, an hour to LA, a drive and a crowd on the other end. IchigoCon is the answer the community built for itself: proof that you don't need to be in a major metro to have a real fandom gathering, just people who care enough to make one.
It's run by the nonprofit behind the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, which gives it a genuine arts-and-culture weight most hotel-hall cons never get — a single, packed day of gaming tournaments, anime screenings, voice-actor guests, a vendor hall, and a cosplay competition, all tightly run. For fans from Ventura, Santa Barbara, and the western Valley, this is the home con, the place local fandom actually forms instead of just briefly gathering in someone else's crowd.
Oxnard Performing Arts Center, August 15 — a single-day pass, details and cosplay-contest registration at IchigoCon's page as the date nears. The show that deserves more attention than it gets, which is exactly the kind that grows.
In 7 days· Aug 8 – Aug 9
Disneyland Hotel Convention Center…
The room smells like fresh card sleeves and barely contained adrenaline. Every table is a quiet war between two people who've been thinking about this matchup since Tuesday. The SoCal Pokemon Regional Championship returns to the Disneyland Hotel Convention Center on August 8-9, 2026 — the largest competitive Pokemon TCG event in Southern California.
This isn't a casual league night. Regionals draw hundreds of players across Junior, Senior, and Master divisions, all competing for Championship Points, prize money, and the kind of bragging rights that only matter to people who understand why they matter. The side event schedule is stacked: open play, casual leagues, vendor floor access with Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, One Piece TCG, Disney Lorcana, and Dragon Ball Z Fusion World dealers.
If you've ever explained to someone that your deck isn't meta but it works — this is where you prove it or retire the line. Two days, hundreds of players, and the only convention center where you can buy a Charizard and ride Space Mountain in the same afternoon.
Registration through the official Play Pokemon event page. Spectator access included with event entry.
If a skull-shaped mug and a rum drink named after a deity have ever exerted a genuine pull on you, there is a five-day gathering in Mission Valley where several thousand people feel exactly the same way. Tiki Oasis is the world's largest tiki culture convention and one of the most coherent subcultures in American pop culture - a shared aesthetic vocabulary, a love of craftsmanship, and a real reverence for the mid-century obsession with tropical fantasy. Since 2001, it has drawn collectors, artists, musicians, bartenders, and fashion enthusiasts to the Town and Country Resort, all in full tiki regalia: vintage Hawaiian shirts, muumuus, leis, elaborate cosplay. Each year turns on a theme that shapes the art, entertainment, vendors, and fashion. Expect live exotica and tiki-adjacent performances, rum and cocktail seminars led by some of the country's top bartenders, an extensive marketplace of handmade ceramics and collectibles, and exhibitions from the best tiki artists working. Tiki Oasis 2026 runs August 5-9 at Town and Country Resort, 500 Hotel Circle North, San Diego. Individual-night and full-weekend passes at tikioasis.com. The pool parties and live band sets sell fastest - book early.
In 6 days· Aug 7 – Aug 16
Main Street, Sturgis, SD 57785
Ten days in August, and the small town of Sturgis, South Dakota — population 7,000 — becomes a city of half a million. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally has been doing this since 1938. Arrive in Sturgis on the first Friday of the rally and the sound alone tells you something is different. Main Street closes to cars and opens to motorcycles, and the flow of custom Harleys, touring bikes, and custom builds becomes a continuous parade. The surrounding Black Hills are the real draw for serious riders: Needles Highway is 14 miles of narrow tunnels and granite spire switchbacks that belong on every motorcyclist's bucket list. Iron Mountain Road corkscrews through South Dakota's most dramatic terrain. The rally itself spawns music stages, vendor villages, stunt shows, bike shows, and pop-up bars across a 50-mile radius — the Buffalo Chip alone hosts major touring acts nightly. The diversity of the crowd surprises first-timers: veterans and newcomers, engineers and mechanics, people who rode three states to get here and people who flew in and rented a bike. The common denominator is the machine. Sturgis is for anyone who rides or wants to understand what riding means to the people who live it. This is not for people looking for a sanitized festival experience with VIP sections and scheduled activities. It is for those who find meaning in the open road, want to ride some of the most dramatic terrain in the country, and are comfortable with ten days of organized chaos. If you are a motorcyclist who has never been, Sturgis before you die is not a cliche — it is a genuine recommendation. Book accommodations now. Not soon. Now. Hotels and campgrounds within 50 miles of Sturgis sell out months in advance, and the closer to Main Street, the earlier they go. The Buffalo Chip is the largest campground and hosts the best concerts — book a camping package directly with them. Bring rain gear: August in South Dakota includes afternoon thunderstorms that clear fast. Gas up before you reach Main Street — the lines at pumps on rally days are long. Parking on Main Street is motorcycle only, which means you park your bike among 50,000 others and walk the strip. That is the point. There is no corporate polish here, no influencer activations, no sponsored experiences. There is Needles Highway at sunrise, a custom build that took three years, and 450,000 people who made the same choice to show up. That kind of authenticity is increasingly rare. Sturgis 2026 runs August 7-16 in Sturgis, South Dakota. Event information at sturgis.com.
In 6 days· Aug 7 – Aug 9
35.0
Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …
There are people who live for the season all year, who treat October like a religion and spend the other eleven months in withdrawal. This is the weekend that carries them through summer. The signature draw is the Hall of Shadows - a massive darkened section of the convention center holding more than a dozen fully produced haunted experiences, all three days, included with every badge type, no separate ticket. It's the largest indoor haunt zone in California outside the October season itself. The show floor runs 350-plus vendors and artists selling horror costumes, seasonal decor, original artwork, vintage collectibles, props, and franchise merchandise. Celebrity guests for 2026 include Matthew Lillard, Barry Bostwick, and Jasmin Savoy Brown, plus a 20th anniversary celebration of Repo! The Genetic Opera with director Darren Lynn Bousman and actor Bill Moseley confirmed. Panels cover haunt design, genre cinema, practical effects, cosplay construction, and industry Q&As. Now in its tenth year and themed 'Horror Musicals,' Midsummer Scream is the West Coast's largest Halloween and horror convention. Long Beach Convention Center, 300 E Ocean Blvd, minutes from the waterfront. August 7-9, 2026. Weekend and single-day passes online in advance.
In 7 days· Aug 8
Holiday Inn La Mirada, 14299 Fires…
The specific joy of a small con is inventory - a dealer who has the exact 1980s action figure you've been chasing for a decade, with enough floor space that you can actually find it. Geekin Out is built for that: focused enough to draw serious collectors with deep inventory, accessible enough for a casual fan who just wants to browse.
Organized by Toy Depot, this one-day toy and pop culture convention takes over the Holiday Inn La Mirada on August 8, 2026. The floor features vendors specializing in everything from original 1980s action figures and vintage board games to modern collectible figures and custom fan art, with a Creator Alley giving independent artists and craftspeople dedicated space to sell original work directly to attendees. It's family-friendly, with free parking in the hotel lot.
The La Mirada location makes it a convenient option for collectors coming from the South Bay, Orange County, and the San Gabriel Valley. Doors open at 9am and the convention runs until 6pm. Advance ticket pricing is available through Eventbrite.
In 7 days· Aug 8 – Aug 10
Santa Clara Convention Center, 500…
You've been in rooms full of pinball machines before. Not like this.
Every July, collectors and operators bring their machines to Santa Clara — not for display, not behind velvet rope — but set up on free play for the entire weekend. Five hundred of them. The 1970s electromechanical tables that require a different kind of patience. The golden-age arcade cabinets. The obscure things from the late eighties that haven't been in a room together since the mall they lived in closed down. You pay once to get in, and then you just play.
This is California Extreme, July 17-19, 2026 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The people who go every year describe it the same way: they expected to spend an hour and stayed the whole weekend. The machines are part of it. The other people who showed up knowing exactly where they were going — those people are the rest of it.
All-weekend pass recommended. You cannot see five hundred machines in a day. Advance tickets at caextreme.org. Santa Clara Convention Center, 5001 Great America Pkwy, Santa Clara, CA.
Every card in this set reads at two levels at once - the mechanical function, and the character or moment from the books it was pulled from - so opening a favorite is not just a good draw, it is Middle-earth arriving in your hand. Magic: The Gathering's The Hobbit set brings Tolkien's foundational fantasy into Magic's card frame, and the lore is built straight into the design: Gandalf, Bilbo, the dragon, the dwarves. Release Day is the Friday the shelves open and the sealed product is finally there to crack, and the first weekend of a new set is when the community gathers to figure out what everything actually does at the table - the theory meeting the card for the first time. Bring your deck-building instincts and expect the set to surprise you. Find your local SoCal game store and its Release Day events at magic.wizards.com. Local game shops across SoCal, August 14th - the Unexpected Journey begins for real.
In 14 days· Aug 15
$15-25
Oxnard Performing Arts Center, 800…
IchigoCon returns to the Oxnard Performing Arts Center on August 15, 2026 — Ventura County's own gaming and anime convention, $15-25 entry, one day packed with tournaments, screenings, voice actor guests, cosplay, and vendors.
Ventura County has needed this event. The nearest alternatives are San Diego and Los Angeles, which means a drive and a crowd. IchigoCon is the version that belongs to the community that built it: smaller, more personal, run by people who actually care about the fandoms on the floor. The voice actor guests do signing tables you can reach without a three-hour wait. The gaming tournament bracket is competitive but accessible — register at the door. The vendor section mixes anime merch with local artist prints and handmade goods.
The Oxnard Performing Arts Center handles the event well — good parking, air conditioning, a layout that keeps the different program tracks from colliding. Day pass $15-25 at the door. This is the local show that deserves more attention than it gets, which is exactly the kind of event that tends to grow year by year.
Aug 16, 2026
From $75
Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Av…
You've been following YOASOBI since before 'Idol' turned into the Oshi no Ko opening theme and became one of the most talked-about anime songs in years - or you found them through that exact moment - and either way, this is the Los Angeles chapter of a tour that doesn't come through often. The project was built on a genuinely strange premise: adapting novels into pop songs, one book per track. The catalog runs deeper than the one breakthrough - 'Yoru ni Kakeru,' 'Gunjo,' 'Biri-Biri,' the songs that built the international following are all in this set, performed live in a room that handles production at this scale. YouTube Theater in Inglewood has the sound and the sightlines to hold a show like this correctly. YouTube Theater, 1011 S Prairie Ave, Inglewood. July 20th. From $75 at yoasobi-music.jp/en. Get your ticket before the floor sections close.
Aug 16 – Aug 17, 2026
The Compound by Dirt Dog, 6540 E W…
Luffy finds a new island and the entire crew loses their minds. That is the energy in this room at midnight.
COSRAVES brings One Piece Rave back to Los Angeles for another night of anime-meets-dance-floor chaos at The Compound in Commerce. DJs spin remixes of One Piece OSTs alongside house, bass, and whatever else makes a room full of cosplaying pirates lose control. The visual projections are anime clips synced to drops. The crowd is split between people who can name every Straw Hat and people who came because their friend said trust me.
This is the intersection of two obsessions that should not work together but absolutely do — anime fandom and rave culture. The cosplay is encouraged and wild. The bass hits like a Gear 5 punch. You will leave at 2 AM with ringing ears and the conviction that you belong to something.
August 15-16, 2026. Doors at 11 PM. 18+. Tickets at cosraves.com.
Aug 19, 2026
$25+
Echoplex, 1154 Glendale Blvd, Los …
Down a ramp beneath Echo Park, a sound system has been shaking the walls every week since the year 2000, and Dub Club remains the beating heart of LA's reggae underground, a room where the bass is felt in the sternum and the crowd knows every riddim by heart. This night brings Jah9, the Jamaican singer whose jazz-inflected, deeply spiritual roots music has made her one of the most revered voices of the new reggae generation, with Rik Jam and the Dub Club DJs holding it down. Wednesday, August 19, 2026, 9 PM, the Echoplex in Echo Park, 21+. Come for the sound-system culture done exactly right, the outdoor bleachers, the deep vibes, and a crowd that treats this as church. Bring the friend who lives for bass. This is the good, hidden LA that tourists never find.