August at the Big A is peak Southern California baseball: warm nights, the halo glowing over the outfield, cheap seats close to the grass, and the easy, unhurried pleasure of a summer ballgame in Anaheim. The Angels host the Milwaukee Brewers to open the month, a fun interleague matchup against one of the National League's scrappiest teams. Saturday, August 1, 2026, Angel Stadium of Anaheim. Grab a spot on the field level, get a Big A dog, and let the kids chase foul balls dreams all night. Angel Stadium remains one of the most laid-back, affordable, genuinely pleasant places to watch a game in the region, and a Saturday in August is exactly when it shines. Come make a summer night of it under the Anaheim lights.
The magic of an open gaming convention is that no one is running a side event for you. You walk in, you find a table, and you play what you want with whoever wants to play it.
LFG CON is four days of that. Los Angeles' dedicated tabletop gaming convention — board games, tabletop RPGs, miniatures, trading card games, and everything in between. The 2026 edition runs August 13-16 at the Marriott Burbank. Community-run and designed for the players who know what they want to play before they arrive.
The game library is available throughout: check out a game, find a table, play. Organized tournaments run alongside the open gaming. The RPG schedule runs multi-session campaigns across all four days — pre-registration available for the longer formats.
This is not a show floor with demos. It is a room full of tables where gaming is the whole point. No spectators. Just games.
Marriott Burbank, August 13-16, 2026.
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 8 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.
The whole point of MondoCon is the table itself - small enough that you'll actually know the person sitting across from you, large enough to field a full tournament bracket in three different game systems at the same time. This is the room dedicated tabletop hobbyists build for each other, not a trade show that happens to have games.
Organized by PacifiConQuest, MondoCon SoCal returns for its seventh year, July 31 through August 2, 2026, at the Channel Islands Masonic Lodge in Ventura. The three days cover the full breadth of tabletop culture: board game open play, RPG campaigns, miniature wargaming tournaments, historical wargame demos, and pick-up games across every genre. Structured tournaments run Friday through Sunday with prizes across multiple systems, and the open game library is available for checkout all weekend - bring nothing and still play everything.
The Lodge provides multiple dedicated play rooms with tables purpose-set for miniature terrain, RPG sessions, and high-stakes board game finals. A badge covers access to all event programming, with single-day and weekend passes available. Families are welcome, and junior gaming events are scheduled for Saturday afternoon. Ventura is 60 miles north of Los Angeles via US-101.
Every Saturday· Next Aug 1
$5 entry
5005 Shawline St Suite B, San Dieg…
The list you have been refining since the Regional, the matchups you have been grinding, the card choices you made after reading the top-eight lists from the last major - all of it arrives at the same table in August, against players who did exactly the same preparation. That is what makes a mid-summer League Challenge worth showing up for: the bracket reveals what the practice actually produced. This is the appointment on the San Diego Pokemon scene's calendar, the point where the summer's progression gets measured against a local field that has been adapting right alongside you. Artificer runs a well-organized event with prize support for the players who perform, and the scene shows up because this is where the work gets counted. Come with your best list. See where August puts you. Artificer San Diego, 5005 Shawline St Suite B, San Diego, August 1st. $5 entry. Registration and format details at artificersd.com.
Every Saturday· Next Aug 1
$5 entry
7052 Miramar Rd, San Diego, CA 921…
What happens at Game Empire on a Saturday morning shows up later in the standings that decide who goes to Worlds - and that is why the Miramar competitive scene keeps coming back every month. League Challenges are the grassroots floor of competitive Pokemon: local enough to reach every week, structured enough to matter to the season, real enough that the Championship Points you earn here follow you toward a World Championship invite. Three divisions run at once - Masters, Seniors, Juniors - in 60-card Standard, Swiss rounds into a top cut, with prize support for the top finishers. The room is competitive without being hostile, and the player base is consistent enough that you will watch the same opponents get better month over month, right alongside you. Know your list. Know your matchups. This field comes prepared. Game Empire San Diego, 7052 Miramar Rd, San Diego. Registration at 10 AM, rounds at 11 AM. Details at gameempire.com.
Every Saturday· Next Aug 1
$5 entry
7626 Miramar Rd Suite 3900, San Di…
The deck you bring in August is a diary. Every card in it is a decision you made because of something that happened in April — a set release, a regional result, a matchup that beat you for months until you finally found the answer. By late summer the San Diego scene has adapted and re-adapted so many times that a League Challenge stops being a casual afternoon and becomes an honest accounting of the work.
That is what this is. The August meta has settled and unsettled itself enough that the players who kept grinding all summer have something real to show, and this is where they show it. Come with the list you have been building toward since spring and find out where it puts you in the standings. The San Diego competitive Pokemon community gathers for these, and the room reads the same every time — trades between rounds, quiet workshopping, someone explaining why a tech choice is correct.
$5 entry. August 1st at TCS Rockets, 7626 Miramar Rd, San Diego. See tcsrockets.com for the format and registration.
Tomorrow· Aug 1 – Aug 2
Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…
Somewhere in that hall is a holographic Charizard, and the only way to know if today is the day you find it is to walk the walls of long boxes yourself. With over 900 dealer tables across West Hall A, this is the trading card, anime, and pop culture floor experience that turns casual fans into lifelong collectors: Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, One Piece, and sports cards alongside anime merchandise, Funko POPs, vintage toys, comics, and rare video games. Whether you're hunting that Charizard, completing a One Piece set, or just browsing walls of nostalgia, the day is built for the hunt - live box break events, trading sessions, celebrity guest appearances, and convention-only merchandise drops. The Los Angeles Convention Center West Hall A offers easy parking and sits centrally for collectors from across Southern California - LA, Orange County, the Inland Empire, and San Diego all have strong collector communities that converge here. Collect-A-Con Los Angeles 2026, August 1-2, doors at 10am both days. Two-day passes and general admission via Ticketmaster, with VIP early entry options. Come ready to trade, hunt, and discover.