Jan 7 – Jan 10, 2027
Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …
Some knowledge you cannot buy: which panels are worth lining up an hour early for, which guest signings empty out fast, which late-night rooms never make it onto the printed schedule. Regulars hand that down to each other here, and it is the real inheritance of a convention that has been meeting for over two decades.
The tradeoff for running smaller than Anime Expo is access. To the guests, who trend toward voice actors and fan creators who build their year around Southern California cons. To the programming, which you can actually get into. To each other — the dealer room and artist alley run at a scale where you can move without turning sideways.
Four days at the Long Beach Convention Center, January 7-10, 2027, and they open the convention calendar for the whole region.
Send this to whoever you stood next to in line last year. They are already planning.
Jan 16, 2027
✨ New
varies
Fairplex, 2118 N White Ave, Pomona…
You learned early to keep the volume down about it. The show that rearranged you at fourteen, the character you still think about on bad days — you mention it at work in a careful voice, already braced for the blank look.
Then you walk into a hall on the Pomona fairgrounds in January and the blank look never comes. Somebody clocks your jacket from thirty feet out. A stranger finishes a line you only started.
What surprises first-timers is how much of the floor is working artists rather than merch tables. The alley is where the real conversations happen, and whoever sells you a print stayed up arguing about that same ending you did.
It takes over the grounds that hold the county fair, so there is room to breathe between the cosplay and the cafe tables.
Two days, doors at ten, halls loud until seven. Everyone here got in through a different door.
There is a photograph you have seen without knowing where it came from: someone in an elaborate costume standing on a marble staircase under an eighteen-story glass atrium, winter light coming through, looking like a still from a film that was never made. That is Katsucon, and the building is most of the reason it has the reputation it does. Held every February at the Gaylord National Resort on the Potomac just outside Washington, it is among the most photographed anime conventions in the world, and the cosplay community treats a weekend there as something closer to a pilgrimage than a trip.
The atrium is the event. Other conventions have panels and dealers and artist alleys, and Katsucon has those too, but what actually happens is that thousands of people spend three days building and wearing things they worked on since summer, and then the building gives them the best backdrop in North America to be seen in. Photographers book months ahead. There are impromptu gatherings by series on the staircases at all hours. Because the whole thing is under one roof and the weather outside is February in Maryland, the convention never really stops — the hallways at three in the morning are as busy as the floor at noon.
Worth it? If you make things — sew, foam-smith, wig-style, prop-build — this is the room where that labor is understood without explanation, and there is no substitute for that. If you are coming to shop or to meet voice actors, other conventions do that better and cheaper. Katsucon is for the makers and the people who love watching them, and it is honest about that. First-timers who come without a costume routinely report it was still the best convention they had been to, because the spectacle is genuinely free to watch.
What to know: the host hotel sells out almost immediately, and staying on-site is materially different from staying off — the atrium at night is the whole point. Budget for that. Bring a repair kit; something will break. The convention center portion and the hotel portion are connected but the walk is longer than it looks in costume. And Friday is the quiet day worth arriving for.
It earns a place here because it is the clearest example in American fandom of a venue and a community finding each other perfectly, and because knowing it exists changes what you think a costume is for. Katsucon 2027 runs February 12–14, 2027 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.
Mar 13 – Mar 14, 2027
Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E …
The panels are the reason to go, which is not a sentence anyone gets to say honestly about most conventions. Blame the geography. This corner of the city sits within a few miles of Caltech, JPL, and the studios, which produces a fan base that reads closely, argues in specifics, and will not let a guest coast through a Q and A. The questions are better here. Everybody notices it eventually.
The rest is the good stuff done properly: voice actor panels and signings, a cosplay competition judged on actual craftsmanship, an artist alley of independent creators selling original work, a vendor hall, and a game room running open play all weekend.
Old Town is the other half of the argument — you walk out for real dinner instead of eating a pretzel over a trash can, and the Gold Line puts you a few blocks off.
Bring the friend who takes the craftsmanship judging personally. They will find their people inside of an hour.
The oldest and largest anime convention in the Pacific Northwest was started by a group of college students in the mid-nineties, back when liking this at all required explaining yourself, and it is still run entirely by volunteers. That fact shapes everything about the weekend. Nobody is extracting margin from you. The programming is built by people who wanted it to exist rather than by a department, which is why the schedule is full of things no commercial convention would ever green-light.
What that produces is a convention with an unusually high proportion of actual content — panels running past midnight, a serious concert program, a masquerade that people prepare for over months, and a video programming track that still shows things on a screen in a dark room to whoever wanders in. There is a formal ball. There is a chess tournament. The dealer hall is large but is not the center of gravity, which at an anime convention in the current era is genuinely unusual. The crowd skews younger than the older-guard conventions and the atmosphere is closer to a very large school event than to a trade show, in the best possible way.
Worth it? If you want a convention where the programming rather than the shopping is the reason to be there, this is one of a handful left in the country, and it is the best of them on the West Coast outside of Los Angeles. If you are coming primarily for big-name industry announcements, the larger shows will serve you better. Sakura-Con is for people who want to spend three days inside the thing rather than adjacent to it.
What to know before you go: registration opens early and the price ladder rewards buying well ahead. Late March in Seattle means rain, and the walk between the convention center and most hotels is short but unsheltered. The concerts are included with a badge and fill up, so line early for the ones you care about. Bring cash for artist alley. And the volunteer staff will genuinely help you if you ask, because they are attendees too.
It belongs on this list because a thirty-year-old, volunteer-run, still-thriving convention is evidence that a community can build something durable without anyone monetizing it, and that is worth knowing exists. Sakura-Con 2027 runs March 26–28, 2027 at the Seattle Convention Center.
Every day· Next Apr 1
Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…
Fifty years ago a farm boy looked up at twin suns and a generation learned what longing sounds like.
Star Wars Celebration returns to Los Angeles on April 1–4, 2027, to mark the 50th anniversary of the film that changed everything. This is the gathering where Lucasfilm pulls back the curtain — world premieres of upcoming projects, panels with the creators who are building the next chapters, first looks at footage that won't exist anywhere else for months. The show floor spans the LA Convention Center with immersive exhibits, a cosplay showcase that draws the most ambitious builders on the planet, exclusive merchandise that sells out before lunch, and the collective energy of tens of thousands of people who all trace something essential about who they are back to that same opening crawl.
The 50th anniversary makes this one different. Half a century of stories, characters, music, and moments that shaped how an entire culture thinks about heroism, redemption, and the distance between who you are and who you could be. Whether you've been here since 1977 or discovered it last year, Celebration is the room where every version of that journey is valid.
What makes Star Wars Celebration unlike any other fan convention is that it is the only place where the future of the franchise is revealed first. Every major announcement — from The Mandalorian's debut trailer to Ahsoka's first footage to the reveal of new theatrical films — happened at Celebration before it happened anywhere else. The industry comes because Lucasfilm treats this room as the premiere venue. The fans come because they've been part of this story longer than most relationships in their lives.
Expect four full days of programming: the headline showcase at the Honda Center (separate ticket tier), hundreds of panels across multiple stages, the Fan Stage where cosplayers and community creators take the spotlight, interactive experiences that put you inside the worlds of the saga, and the Artist Alley where illustrators who shaped the visual language of Star Wars sell original work.
Four-day adult passes from $260.99. Children 4–12 from $105.99. Los Angeles Convention Center. April 1–4, 2027. Tickets via starwarscelebration.com.
Shinzo wo Sasageyo. If reading that raised something in your chest, you already know why this matters, and you can stop reading right here.
For everyone else: this score did an enormous amount of the emotional work in a story about impossible choices, and until now there has never been an officially licensed orchestral performance of it anywhere on earth. Hiroyuki Sawano and Kohta Yamamoto curated new symphonic arrangements for more than a hundred musicians and a full choir, with the series projected on a giant screen behind them, so the whole arc runs while the music that scored it fills a real room instead of your headphones.
There is a particular thing that happens when a live choir comes in on music you have only ever heard compressed through earbuds at one in the morning. It is not subtle.
Hollywood, a proper theater, one night only.
Dedicated to the hearts. Bring the person you watched the last season with — the one who still refuses to discuss the ending.
The first piano notes land and a theater full of strangers stops breathing at the same instant, because every one of them carried this story home years ago and never quite put it down.
This is the officially licensed orchestral concert, with new symphonic arrangements curated by the original composers, Hiroyuki Sawano and Kohta Yamamoto, played by more than a hundred musicians and a choir while projection scales the series up to the size it always deserved. Shinzo wo Sasageyo in a room like that stops being a song. It is a full theater offering up its hearts for a freedom none of them were ever sure existed, out loud, most of them in a language they do not speak.
The Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, with tickets through Ticketmaster. If you have been waiting for the day this music became something you could stand inside, it is finally on a calendar.
Video games are played alone in a room by almost everybody, almost all of the time, and once a year a few tens of thousands of people who do that go stand in a convention hall in Boston to be reminded it is not actually a solitary hobby. That is the whole emotional mechanism of PAX East and it is more powerful than the announcements and the demo queues suggest.
The floor is enormous and loud. Major publishers build elaborate booths for games nobody has played yet, and the lines for those can eat an afternoon — but the part regulars organize their weekend around is the indie section, where a person who spent four years making something is standing behind a folding table watching you play it. That interaction does not exist anywhere else. Elsewhere in the building there are freeplay areas with hundreds of consoles and PCs, a tabletop hall running around the clock, tournaments, concerts, and a handheld lounge where people simply sit on the floor together playing separately, which is somehow the most affecting room in the place. The Enforcers — volunteer staff in distinctive shirts — set a tone of aggressive friendliness that keeps a very large crowd unusually pleasant.
Worth it? If games are a real part of your identity rather than a way to pass time, yes, and specifically for the indie hall and the freeplay rooms rather than the big booths. If you only want to see trailers, they will be online within the hour and you can watch them from your couch. What you cannot get remotely is the experience of being one of thousands of people who all care about the same thing, in a city that has been overtaken by it for four days.
What to know: badges sell out months in advance and the four-day pass goes first. Wear real shoes; you will walk many miles on concrete. The convention center is a walk from most affordable hotels, and Boston in April can be anything from snow to seventy degrees. Eat before you get inside. And the queue room system means the smart move is picking two or three big demos and letting the rest go.
It is on this list because the annual gathering of a hobby that is otherwise entirely private is a genuinely interesting cultural event, whether or not you go. PAX East 2027 runs April 22–25, 2027 at the Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center in Boston.
Washington takes itself extremely seriously fifty-one weekends a year, and once each spring several tens of thousands of people in costume take over its convention center and the effect is genuinely restorative. Awesome Con is the capital's pop culture convention, and its particular character comes from the city it happens in: there is a substantial science track built with the Smithsonian and NASA sitting directly alongside the comics and the film guests, and it does not feel bolted on.
What that produces is a convention where a nine-year-old can go from a panel by an actual planetary scientist to a line for a voice actor without leaving the building, and where the crowd is noticeably more family-heavy and more racially mixed than most large cons. The Walter E. Washington Convention Center is enormous and easy to move around, which matters more than people expect — there is room to sit, room to eat, room for kids to melt down and recover. Artist alley is strong. The cosplay is competitive without being cliquish. And because it is April in Washington, the city outside is at its best; a lot of attendees build a weekend around the museums, which are free.
Worth it? If you have children who are into any of this, it is one of the best large conventions in the country for that, and the science programming is a genuine differentiator rather than a marketing line. If you are a hardcore collector chasing exclusives, the bigger coastal shows have deeper inventory. Awesome Con is broad rather than deep, and that breadth is the point.
What to know before you go: the convention center sits on top of a Metro station, so do not drive — parking downtown is punitive and the trains run late. Badges are cheaper in advance and children's pricing is generous. Saturday is by far the busiest day; Friday and Sunday are calmer and better for actually talking to artists. Bring a bag for prints. And if you are traveling in, the museums a few blocks away mean the non-convention hours are unusually well spent.
It is on this list because a convention that treats curiosity and fandom as the same impulse is a rarer thing than it should be, and because a weekend where the most self-serious city in America lets go is worth knowing about. Awesome Con 2027 runs April 23–25, 2027 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.
Chicago spent years being treated as a stop rather than a destination on the convention circuit, and the show that changed that did it by being unusually good at the unglamorous parts — floor layout, panel scheduling, actually letting people talk to creators. C2E2 has grown into the Midwest's flagship pop culture convention, held each spring at McCormick Place on the lakefront, and it now draws six figures of attendance across a weekend.
The experience is defined by scale plus air. McCormick Place is one of the largest convention buildings in North America, which means that even at peak Saturday the floor does not have the crushing quality that smaller venues develop. The artist alley and the comics guests are substantial, the anime and gaming presence has grown considerably, and the cosplay championship is a serious competitive event rather than a costume parade. What regulars single out is the programming: panels here are frequently craft-focused and long enough to get somewhere, and the moderators generally know the material. There is also a genuinely good kids' area, which makes it workable as a family weekend rather than a thing one parent does alone.
Is it worth it? If you live anywhere in the middle of the country, this is your show and there is no real competitor — the alternative is flying to a coast. If you already attend two or three large conventions a year on the coasts, C2E2 will feel familiar rather than revelatory, though the artist lineup is consistently strong. It is best understood as the most complete general-purpose fan convention between the coasts.
What to know: McCormick Place is not downtown and the walk from most hotels is longer than the map suggests; use the shuttles or plan for a train. Chicago in late April can be forty degrees and windy off the lake regardless of what the forecast promised. Food inside is expensive and mediocre — eat before or walk to the south loop. Buy exclusives Friday morning or accept you will not get them. And the smaller press tables at the back of artist alley are where the finds are.
It belongs here because a healthy convention in the middle of the country is a real indicator about where fandom lives, and it is not only on the coasts. C2E2 2027 runs April 30 – May 2, 2027 at McCormick Place.
Before anime was something you could explain at work, a few thousand people started meeting once a year in a suburb next to O'Hare airport to watch subtitled tapes and argue about them. Three decades on, Anime Central is the largest anime convention in the Midwest, still in Rosemont, still fundamentally shaped by having been built by fans rather than by a company.
The thing that makes it distinctive is the hotel geography. The convention center connects by covered walkway to several large hotels, and because Rosemont is a small municipality that exists mostly to serve the airport, the convention effectively takes over the entire area for a weekend. That produces the phenomenon regulars talk about most: the con does not close. Room parties, hallway gatherings, impromptu dance circles, people in costume getting food at two in the morning at the same handful of restaurants. The formal programming is strong — a large dealers hall, a serious artist alley, concerts, a masquerade that people train for — but the actual memory people carry out is of the hours between the scheduled things.
Worth it? If you want a large anime convention with a genuine all-night social culture, this is one of the best in the country and the walkway layout is a real structural advantage over conventions where you have to cross a city at midnight. If you want polished, corporate-run programming and major industry announcements, the coastal shows are bigger. ACen is scrappier and warmer.
What to know before you go: book a connected hotel the moment rooms open, because being on the walkway versus off it changes the entire weekend. Rosemont has its own train stop on the blue line, so you can fly in and never rent a car. May in Chicago is unpredictable and the walkways mean you may never need a coat. Bring cash for artist alley. And the panel rooms fill fast for anything popular, so queue rather than wander.
It is on this list because a thirty-year-old fan-built institution that still runs on its own social energy is a genuinely interesting thing to know exists, whether or not you ever fly to Illinois for it. Anime Central 2027 runs May 14–16, 2027 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont.
The largest fan convention in the southeastern United States happens in a city already built entirely around manufactured wonder, which could have made it redundant and instead makes it a useful contrast — this is the weekend when Orlando's fantasy is assembled by the people attending rather than sold to them. MEGACON has grown into a four-day event at the Orange County Convention Center drawing well over a hundred thousand people.
What it is, practically, is enormous and unusually broad. Comics, anime, gaming, horror, science fiction and a large celebrity guest roster all sit under one roof, and the show has leaned hard into fan-built spectacle: costume contests with real production value, a substantial number of large-scale prop and vehicle builds, and an artist alley that has become one of the bigger ones in the country. Because Florida draws attendees from across the Southeast and the Caribbean, the crowd composition is different from the coastal shows — younger on average, more family groups, and noticeably more first-timers, which gives the floor an enthusiasm that jaded convention veterans find slightly startling.
Worth it? If you live anywhere in the Southeast, this is the show, and the guest list alone usually justifies it. If you are traveling from far away specifically for it, the honest answer is that the convention is excellent but the surrounding city will absorb your budget fast, so plan for that deliberately rather than accidentally. It is not the show for deep comics scholarship; it is the show for scale, spectacle and meeting people whose work you know from a screen.
What to know: the Orange County Convention Center is vast and the two buildings are a real walk apart, so check your hall. Autograph and photo op tickets sell separately and the popular ones go early. Florida in May is hot and the walk from parking is unshaded. Bring water; there are refill stations. And the Thursday preview day is significantly calmer if your badge covers it.
It sits on this list because a hundred thousand people building their own spectacle in the shadow of the world's most engineered one is a genuinely interesting thing to know is happening. MEGACON Orlando 2027 runs May 20–23, 2027 at the Orange County Convention Center.
A convention that started as a one-day free event on a college campus and grew into a four-day gathering of tens of thousands keeps something from that origin that money cannot buy: it is still noticeably run by people who are the audience. MomoCon happens each Memorial Day weekend at the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta, and it covers anime, gaming, animation and comics with an unusually strong emphasis on the industry side of animation.
The distinguishing feature is the volume of actual working professionals — animators, voice actors, studio staff — doing panels that are about how the work gets made rather than about promoting a release. Atlanta has become a genuine production city, and the convention benefits from that proximity. Alongside it sits one of the larger convention gaming setups in the country: a tabletop hall, a big freeplay arcade and console area, and esports tournaments running the whole weekend. Cosplay is central and the crowd skews young, energetic and heavily costumed. Memorial Day weekend means an extra day, and the extra day changes the pace considerably — there is time to do things properly rather than sprinting.
Worth it? If you are interested in animation as a craft and a career, this is one of the best conventions in the country for that specific reason, and the access to working professionals is unusually good. If you are primarily a collector, the dealer hall is solid but not a destination. It is a maker's and a player's convention more than a buyer's.
What to know: downtown Atlanta hotels connected to or near the convention center fill first and the walk matters in May humidity. The badge covers the gaming halls, which many first-timers do not realize until Sunday. Panels about breaking into animation fill up an hour early. Parking downtown is expensive; the MARTA station is close. And the four-day format means Thursday is genuinely worth arriving for.
It is here because a convention where the people who make the thing talk honestly about making it is rarer than it should be, and knowing that room exists is useful whether or not you ever sit in it. MomoCon 2027 runs May 27–30, 2027 at the Georgia World Congress Center.
Everyone at your table is painting the same scene and every canvas is going to come out different, and at some point somebody will say it's over nine thousand and the whole room will groan and not one person will actually be annoyed.
That is the appeal. A fan-organized paint night with an instructor walking the room, a predetermined anime subject, and every material handed to you, so the barrier is zero — you do not need to be able to draw, and nobody is judging the proportions on your Goku. What you leave with is a thing you made and a table of people who needed none of it explained.
The brewery in Long Beach keeps the beer and the food coming, cosplay is fair game, and these sell through ahead of time.
Bring the friend who insists they cannot draw. That is precisely the person this was built for.
May 29 – May 31, 2027
Riverside Convention Center, 3637 …
An hour to Los Angeles for the big convention, an hour back at one in the morning — that is what being an anime fan out here has always meant. This is the year that stopped. There is a real pride in a room full of people from Riverside, San Bernardino, Temecula and Redlands who finally did not have to leave home to find each other. It is the whole format at a scale you can actually walk: panels, an exhibit hall, artist alley, gaming rooms, and a cosplay contest judged by a crowd that recognizes the characters without being told. No airport-terminal sprawl. That trade was made on purpose — less distance between you and the thing you came for. The convention takes over the Riverside Convention Center downtown, with dates confirming at animeriverside.com. Bring the friends who made that drive with you one too many times.
Jul 1 – Jul 4, 2027
Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…
You will be tired in a way that feels earned. Four days, a hundred thousand people, and not one of them needs you to explain what you are talking about.
The largest anime convention in North America takes the Los Angeles Convention Center over Fourth of July weekend and spills into the JW Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton beside it. Industry panels, screening rooms, autograph sessions with voice actors and composers, concerts that sell out weeks ahead. Studios from Japan use this as their main North American announcement stage — if a sequel or adaptation is being revealed, it often happens in a room you could be standing in.
The exhibit hall carries imported merchandise and collaboration exclusives that surface nowhere else on the continent.
Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S Figueroa St. Thursday through Sunday. Badges run from top-tier early-access down to single-day passes.
Book the connected hotel corridor months out. Everyone who tells you that learned it the hard way.
The announcement you will see trending worldwide by dinner happens in a room you could be standing in at lunch. That is the entire case for showing up on the first full public day instead of easing in over the weekend.
This is when the building finally hits capacity and the studio panels start dropping licensing reveals and surprise first episodes. Anisong sets bring Japanese recording artists who almost never play the States. Voice actors and creators sign all afternoon. The floor and Artist Alley run flat out from open to close — hundreds of independent artists selling prints, charms, and original work — and the sweet spot for actually shopping it is early afternoon, before the prime-time panels pull the crowd away.
The Metro drops you a short walk from the doors. A main badge covers daytime programming, panels, the floor, and the alley; the big concerts ticket separately.
Send it to the friend with a simulcast tab open right now. They will not need convincing.
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