Convention & Expo Events

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58 days away

GameOn! Expo San Diego 2026

Aug 29 – Aug 30, 2026 San Diego, CA

GameOn! Expo brings retro gaming, classic arcade, and video game collecting culture to the San Diego area for a full weekend of gaming history, competitive play, and the specific joy of experiencing games in the context of the community that preserved and celebrates them. The expo features playable setups spanning console gaming from the Atari 2600 through the sixth-generation systems, a rare and collectible game marketplace where dealers bring their most significant finds, high-score competitions on classic arcade titles, speedrunning demonstrations with community commentary, and panel discussions on game preservation, game music, and the history of specific platforms and publishers. What distinguishes a gaming expo from a gaming convention is the depth of the collector dimension — dealers at GameOn! bring games, hardware, memorabilia, and items that don't exist in retail channels, and the conversations between collectors about condition, variant editions, and finding are as much of the event as the gaming itself. The San Diego area gaming community has significant depth — proximity to the military bases (which brought gaming hardware to the area in large quantities during the 1980s and 90s) and the general tech culture of the region means the local collector base is serious and well-established. Venue and dates for 2026 confirmed through the GameOn! Expo website and social media channels. All ages welcome. Both single-day and weekend passes available.

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🌎 Nation's Best 58 days away

Burning Man 2026 — Black Rock City, NV

Aug 30 – Sep 7, 2026 From $550 Black Rock Desert, Gerlach, NV 894…

Burning Man 2026 is a nine-day experiment in radical community, temporary city-building, and participatory art held in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, sixty miles north of Reno. It is not a festival in the conventional sense. There are no passive spectators. There are no vendors selling you experiences. What happens in Black Rock City — a city of 70,000 people that exists for one week each year and then disappears — is built, gifted, and maintained entirely by the people who show up. The physical reality of it arrives in stages. The playa is flat and white and enormous; the scale does not register until you are standing on it. Mutant vehicles — art cars the size of ships — drift past at night carrying sound systems and hundreds of people. Art installations rise fifty feet from the desert floor: lit, kinetic, interactive, often burning before the week ends. Themed camps — hundreds of them, some with twenty people, some with five hundred — each create their own environment, their own programming, their own gifts. The Burn itself, on Saturday night, when the wooden Man effigy goes up in flames, is one of the most viscerally communal experiences available to a human being in 2026. Is Burning Man worth it? The honest answer is: it depends entirely on what you bring to it. If you arrive expecting entertainment, you will be confused and uncomfortable. If you arrive expecting to participate — to build something, give something, create something — you will experience something that has no equivalent. The principles — radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, gifting, leaving no trace — are not slogans. They are the actual operating system. Before you go: Survival Guide is essential reading. The playa is an extreme environment — 100°F days, freezing nights, sudden whiteout dust storms (whiteouts). Pack more water than you think you need. All supplies must come in with you; nothing is sold on the playa except coffee and ice. Tickets range from $550 to $3,000 via lottery system. Vehicle pass required. MOOP (Matter Out Of Place) is taken seriously — you pack out what you pack in. Burning Man earns its Nation's Best designation because it is the closest thing American culture has produced to a temporary civilization built on different values. Black Rock City, Nevada. August 30–September 7, 2026. The Ten Principles — Radical Inclusion, Gifting, Decommodification, Radical Self-Reliance, Radical Self-Expression, Communal Effort, Civic Responsibility, Leaving No Trace, Participation, and Immediacy — were articulated by co-founder Larry Harvey and function as the operating system of the event. Understanding them before you arrive is the difference between someone who gets it on day one and someone who spends three days confused about why nobody will sell them anything.

Coming Soon

59 days away

RuPaul's Drag Race LIVE! Las Vegas

Aug 30, 2026 3555 Las Vegas Blvd, Flamingo Show…

Flamingo Showroom at Flamingo Las Vegas in Las Vegas on August 30, 2026: the kind of drag show where the performance is shaped by the audience response in real time, which means it exists exactly once. RuPaul's Drag Race LIVE! Las Vegas performs at Flamingo Showroom at Flamingo Las Vegas in Las Vegas on August 30, 2026. Drag performance is one of the few art forms that requires a live room to work — the energy between performer and crowd is the performance.

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🌎 Nation's Best 63 days away

Dragon Con 2026 — Atlanta, GA

Sep 3 – Sep 7, 2026 From $180 Marriott Marquis Atlanta, 265 Peac…

Dragon Con fills five hotels in downtown Atlanta simultaneously over Labor Day weekend. The Saturday parade shuts down streets. Ninety thousand people across five days — the largest multi-genre fan convention in the United States. The hotel structure is part of the experience. Dragon Con takes over the Marriott Marquis, Hilton, Hyatt, Westin, Sheraton, and AmericasMart simultaneously — connected by skywalks, each with its own programming and atmosphere. The Marriott atrium, famous for its multi-story interior balconies, fills with costumes and spectators until 4am. The Hyatt has the gaming rooms. The parade through downtown Atlanta on Saturday morning, 90,000 people in costume marching through the streets, is a public event that draws spectators who've never bought a badge. Dragon Con is worth it for science fiction and fantasy fans who want density over prestige. The programming is fan-driven and runs across 70+ tracks simultaneously: Star Trek, Star Wars, gaming, anime, horror, costuming, comics, tabletop RPG. You will not see the mainstream film studio Hall H style announcements that SDCC gets, but you will find panels and conversations led by creators and experts who are genuinely passionate rather than promotional. The celebrity guest list — actors, authors, musicians, artists — is extensive and accessible. Practical notes: Pre-register well before the event; badges for Labor Day weekend routinely sell out. The connected hotel system means everything is walkable in climate-controlled comfort — a feature in Atlanta in September. Book hotel rooms in the official block early; they sell in January. The Dragon Con parade requires no badge and is worth attending on its own. Dragon Con earns its Nation's Best position because it is proof that fan culture, when allowed to organize on its own terms, produces something no studio activation can replicate. Atlanta, Georgia. September 3–7, 2026. Dragon Con was founded in 1987 by a group of Atlanta gaming enthusiasts and has never been acquired or corporate-ized. That independence is visible in how it runs: the programming is fan-proposed and fan-led, the celebrity guest selection reflects genuine fan interest rather than studio promotion schedules, and the convention's identity is remarkably consistent despite 90,000 attendees. This is rare at events of this scale. Dragon Con remains, after nearly four decades, a fan convention that happens to be enormous.

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🌎 Nation's Best 63 days away

Dragon Con 2026 — Atlanta, GA

Sep 3 – Sep 7, 2026 Downtown Atlanta, GA

Dragon Con 2026 is one of America's largest and most beloved fan conventions â€” a five-day celebration of science fiction, fantasy, gaming, comics, horror, animation, and pop culture held in downtown Atlanta every Labor Day weekend. Drawing over 85,000 attendees from all 50 states and dozens of countries, Dragon Con has grown from a small gaming convention in 1987 into a cultural institution that transforms the heart of Atlanta into a living fantasy world. What does Dragon Con feel like? Imagine stepping off a hotel escalator and into a dimension where every hallway is a costume runway, every lobby is a gathering of the most creative people you have ever encountered, and every elevator has a 20-minute wait because it is packed with Jedi knights, Final Fantasy characters, and screen-accurate replicas of spacesuits. The energy is unlike any other convention on earth â€” it runs 24 hours a day across five host hotels connected by skywalks, meaning the party never stops and neither does the discovery. The parade on Saturday morning alone draws over 50,000 spectators along Peachtree Street. Panels, concerts, film premieres, cosplay competitions, gaming rooms, and dances fill every hour. Atlanta's August heat means nothing once you are inside this machine. Is Dragon Con worth it? If you have ever loved a fandom â€” any fandom â€” and felt the thrill of being surrounded by people who love it as much as you do, Dragon Con is worth every dollar and every hour of travel. This is not a family-friendly spectacle designed for casual tourists. It is for people who came to go deep. The attendees are the entertainment. The panels are smart. The guests are genuine legends. If you want a safe, predictable convention experience, there are better options. Dragon Con is for the ones who want the real thing. One specific highlight: Dragon Con Night at the Georgia Aquarium on September 5, 2026 — an after-hours private event inside one of the world’s largest aquariums, available exclusively to Dragon Con badge holders. Before you go: pre-register months in advance â€” badge lines for walk-ups are infamous. Book hotels in the host properties (Marriott Marquis, Hyatt Regency, Hilton, Westin, Sheraton) as soon as registration opens, because they sell out within hours. The convention does not have a centralized hall â€” programming spreads across all five hotels and the Hilton Americas ballrooms. Download the Dragon Con app before you arrive; it is the only reliable way to navigate. Bring comfortable shoes. Drink water. The Saturday parade is unmissable â€” stake out a spot on Peachtree by 9am. Dragon Con earns its place on Falkor's Nation's Best list because it represents something rare: a convention that has stayed genuinely weird, fan-driven, and independent. There is no corporate parent sanitizing the experience. Fans made it; fans run it; fans are the reason anyone comes back. Labor Day weekend 2026 â€” Atlanta, GA. Badges available at dragoncon.org.

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18 Gathering

63 days away

RuPaul's Drag Race LIVE! Las Vegas

Sep 3, 2026 3555 Las Vegas Blvd, Flamingo Show…

Flamingo Showroom at Flamingo Las Vegas in Las Vegas on September 3, 2026: the kind of drag show where the performance is shaped by the audience response in real time, which means it exists exactly once. RuPaul's Drag Race LIVE! Las Vegas performs at Flamingo Showroom at Flamingo Las Vegas in Las Vegas on September 3, 2026. Drag performance is one of the few art forms that requires a live room to work — the energy between performer and crowd is the performance.

DragonCon Watch Party — Los Angeles 2026

Coming Soon

63 days away

DragonCon Watch Party — Los Angeles 2026

Sep 3 – Sep 7, 2026 Los Angeles, CA

While DragonCon itself is held in Atlanta, Los Angeles has one of the strongest fan communities for the convention in the country — and every Labor Day weekend, that community gathers for local watch parties, cosplay meetups, and the shared experience of watching DragonCon programming online together rather than celebrating apart. The LA DragonCon Watch Party brings together fans of science fiction, fantasy, horror, gaming, anime, and genre entertainment who couldn't make the Atlanta trip — or who treat the Labor Day local event as a warm-up for planning next year's pilgrimage to the convention itself. The gathering typically happens at a nerd bar or geek-friendly event space in the Los Angeles area and combines DragonCon programming via livestream with local cosplay competitions, trivia, panel discussions, and the specific energy of a fan community that considers itself a genuine community. DragonCon programming streams publicly for some events through YouTube and official channels during Labor Day weekend — the watch party format provides a collective experience that watching alone at home can't replicate. Cosplay from DragonCon-adjacent properties is always present, from Tolkien to Star Trek to Critical Role to D&D. The specific venue varies annually — check Los Angeles genre fan groups on Facebook, the LA Geeks social networks, or r/losangeles for the organized 2026 watch party location. All ages at most venues; some locations are 21+ depending on the host bar.

Shakespeare Pub Quiz Night — September 03

Coming Soon

63 days away

Shakespeare Pub Quiz Night — September 03

Sep 3, 2026 Shakespeare Pub & Grille, 3701 Ind…

Shakespeare Pub Quiz Nights run every Thursday at 7 PM at the Shakespeare Pub & Grille in Mission Hills — San Diego's most consistent and longest-running pub quiz, drawing teams of up to six for a competitive general knowledge trivia night with themed rounds, cash prizes, and the kind of regular crowd that has been coming long enough to develop real rivalries. The format is structured: multiple rounds of general knowledge questions with themed rounds mixed in throughout the night. The host keeps the pace moving, the scoring is honest, and the prizes at the end are real — gift cards for first and second place, and the kind of bragging rights that a regular pub quiz crowd actually respects. Sign-ups start at 6 PM; the quiz kicks off at 7 PM sharp. Teams of one to six people. Shakespeare Pub & Grille, 3701 India St, San Diego, CA 92103. Mission Hills neighborhood, just north of Little Italy. Street parking on India St and surrounding streets. Free to play — just show up with your team. Prizes for first and second place. The regulars arrive early and take the same tables every week, which tells you something about what kind of room this is.

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🌎 Nation's Best 64 days away

Tampa Bay Comic Con 2026 — Tampa, FL

Sep 4 – Sep 6, 2026 Tampa Convention Center, 333 S Fra…

Labor Day weekend in Tampa, 75,000 attendees, every comic and pop culture genre represented under one roof. For the Southeast, this is the one. What it feels like: The floor is enormous and overwhelming in the best possible way. The guest list runs three tiers — Hollywood actors from beloved properties, comic industry legends, and independent creators who set up Artist Alley as their primary annual market. The celebrity photo ops and autograph queues are well-organized (this is not always true at conventions this size). The cosplay is extraordinary: TBCC has developed a reputation as one of the premier cosplay destinations in the Southeast, and the Saturday costume contest is a legitimate event in its own right. Worth it? Who it is for: Tampa Bay Comic Con is for the fan who wants the full convention experience — celebrity access, comic industry presence, Artist Alley depth, panel programming — without flying to San Diego or navigating New York. If you are in Florida, the Southeast, or anywhere on the East Coast outside New York, TBCC is the answer to the annual SDCC envy. Labor Day weekend timing makes it a natural end-of-summer anchor. What to know before you go: Single-day tickets are available but weekend passes sell at significant discount and most guests who buy one-day wish they had bought three. The Convention Center is on the Tampa Riverwalk — easy ride from downtown Tampa hotels, difficult to park near, worth planning around. Saturday is the fullest day; Sunday is noticeably more relaxed with shorter autograph queues. Bring cash for Artist Alley — the independent creators who make the floor special tend to run cash-only or Square Reader setups. The cultural moment: Tampa Bay Comic Con has proved that the Southeast has a fan community that rivals any market in the country. The convention exists at a scale — 75,000 attendees — that should require a city like New York or Los Angeles, and it happens in Tampa every year. That is not a small thing. TBCC is the proof that the culture is everywhere, not just concentrated on the coasts.

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76 Gathering

64 days away

PAX West 2026

Sep 4 – Sep 7, 2026 Washington State Convention Center…

PAX was built on a belief: gaming is social. The room proves it every year. PAX West takes over Seattle September 4-7, 2026 — the Arch Building and the Convention Center connected by a convention floor that runs tabletop, video games, esports, and everything between them. This year's theme, PAXLand, shapes the programming and aesthetic. 60,000+ people across the weekend. The show floor runs publishers and independent developers side by side — the structure that made PAX different. Panels run all four days across multiple tracks: game development, culture, competitive play, community. The Expo Hall floor is where the major publisher demos live. The Tabletop area runs open gaming throughout. PAX East and PAX Unplugged cover the other coasts — West is the original, and the community treats it as the flagship. Four days, two venues, Seattle. The Pacific Northwest's premier gaming event. Badge types range from day pass to four-day — the four-day is the better value for anyone attending more than two days.

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23 Gathering

64 days away

Agenda Show Long Beach - September 2026

Sep 4 – Sep 5, 2026 Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …

Agenda Show returns to the Long Beach Convention Center September 4th through 6th, 2026 — three days on the floor of the building that essentially invented how streetwear, action sports, and lifestyle brands talk to each other in person. This is a trade show with a pulse. Fall Agenda is a different register than the January edition. The brands arrive back from summer with product lines that didn't exist eight months ago, concepts that started as samples in someone's garage, collabs that look different in September light than they will in any lookbook. The floor moves by reputation and word of mouth more than booth size — the small table in the corner sometimes draws the longest conversations. Buyers and collectors and people who just want to be in the room walk the same aisles, which is what makes Agenda work where other shows don't: the hierarchy is flatter than it pretends to be anywhere else. If you're in the industry, this is where Q4 decisions get made over a handshake. If you're adjacent to it, this is where you see what Q4 looks like before it does. Be on the floor when it opens.

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🌎 Nation's Best 64 days away

PAX West 2026 -- Seattle, WA

Sep 4 – Sep 7, 2026 Washington State Convention Center…

Seattle in September. The Washington State Convention Center fills with 70,000 people who came specifically to play games — every game, every genre, every platform, four days. The PAX West experience is organized chaos at its most delightful. The main expo floor features playable demos from major publishers (Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox) alongside indie developers showing their first title from a 10-foot booth. The tabletop library loans board games for free — you can sit down with a game you have never heard of and spend four hours discovering your new favorite thing. Panels run from developer postmortems to game design theory to speedrunning showcases. The crowds are intense but remarkably welcoming. Gaming culture in Seattle has a particular earnestness to it. PAX West is worth attending if gaming is more than a hobby for you — if it is the lens through which you experience culture, make friends, and understand narrative. For parents: PAX is one of the genuinely inclusive gaming spaces with family areas and content for younger players. For hardcore gamers: hands-on time with unreleased titles three to six months before launch is the core draw. For developers: PAX is where careers begin. PAX West tips: Four-day badges sell out within hours of going on sale — set a calendar reminder for when they drop, typically early 2026. Single-day Saturday and Sunday badges are harder to get than Thursday or Friday. The free tabletop library operates on a first-come basis. Seattle hotel prices within walking distance spike 400 percent for PAX weekend — book immediately after badge purchase. Budget an extra night to explore the city's excellent food scene. PAX West earns a place on Falkor's Nation's Best because gaming is the defining cultural medium of the generation now coming of age, and PAX is its annual congress. The gaming-circuit-sd and pokemon-culture taste graph nodes both trace their edges back to PAX-format conventions. PAX West is the peak expression of what those nodes are about: the belief that games are worth gathering for, worth traveling for, and worth talking about for months before and after. Badges on the PAX West website — they sell out early.

Apex Legends Global Series Major — Anaheim

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64 days away

Apex Legends Global Series Major — Anaheim

Sep 4 – Sep 6, 2026 Anaheim Convention Center, 800 W K…

The Apex Legends Global Series North American Major takes the Anaheim Convention Center in September — three days of professional battle royale at the level where teams have practiced for thousands of hours and individual plays happen faster than casual players can fully process in real time. ALGS is the circuit that defines professional Apex. The North American Major is the regional peak — teams earn points that determine World Championship seeding, which means every match, every placement, every clutch play in Anaheim carries consequences that run forward through the rest of the season. The stakes are not abstract. You can see them in how the teams play, how they rotate, what they're willing to risk and what they're not. Free to attend on competition days. Anaheim Convention Center, 800 W Katella Ave, Anaheim. ea.com/games/apex-legends/algs for schedule and match times. The main stage runs broadcast-quality production — the same coverage you'd watch from home, except you're in the room when it happens and the crowd response is yours to contribute. This is what professional Apex looks like from the inside.

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23 Gathering

64 days away

SacAnime Summer 2026 – Sacramento

Sep 4 – Sep 6, 2026 SAFE Credit Union Convention Cente…

SacAnime Summer 2026 runs September 4–6 at the SAFE Credit Union Convention Center in Sacramento, California. One of the most consistently well-organized regional anime conventions on the West Coast, SacAnime has built a reputation for accessible, community-first programming that draws fans from across Northern and Central California — and regularly attracts Southern California con-goers who want a fall convention between Anime Expo in July and the fall circuit in October. Programming spans three days across multiple convention spaces including the main convention hall, Memorial Auditorium, and the Hyatt Ballroom. Expect guest panels, voice actor signings, cosplay competitions, gaming rooms, a dealer hall, an artist alley, and late-night programming that runs well past midnight. Guest lineups typically include English and Japanese voice actors, animation industry professionals, and cosplay celebrities. Sacramento is approximately six hours from San Diego and five and a half hours from Los Angeles — a realistic Labor Day weekend road trip for dedicated convention fans. The convention center sits in downtown Sacramento, walkable from hotels along the K Street corridor. For SoCal fans who attend Anime Expo and FanimeCon, SacAnime Summer fills the September gap in the West Coast con calendar and typically offers more accessible crowds and shorter signing lines than the larger cons.

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19 Gathering

64 days away

Strategicon Gateway 2026

Sep 4 – Sep 7, 2026 LAX Hilton, 5711 W Century Blvd, L…

LAX Hilton, September 4-6, 2026. Strategicon Gateway — three days at the convention hotel where board gaming in Southern California comes to play at maximum density. Hundreds of games available to check out and play. Tournaments running across every major competitive title. A dealer hall with publishers and designers who made the games people are sitting down to play in the next room. Gateway is where the gaming community that operates mostly online gets to be in the same room and stay that way for three days. The hotel format creates the right conditions: you don't leave, you move from table to table, you start a four-hour game at 10 PM because nobody has anywhere else to be. The people who run these events care about the games in a way that makes a room feel serious and welcoming at the same time. The open gaming library is the entry point — grab something you haven't played and find people to learn it with. The tournaments are the depth — if you play competitively, Gateway has your bracket. The dealer hall is the discovery layer — publishers demo things that aren't in stores yet, and designers sit at their games and explain the design. Three days. strategicon.net for registration and the full schedule. Plan to play more than you expect.

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35 Gathering

65 days away

Long Beach Comic Con 2026

Sep 5 – Sep 6, 2026 From $34 Long Beach Convention Center, Long…

Long Beach Comic Con returns to the Long Beach Convention Center September 5-6, 2026 — two days, the more intimate sibling of San Diego Comic-Con, with celebrity guests, comics, collectibles, and a crowd size that makes the whole thing feel accessible. Tickets from $34. LBCC is what SDCC used to feel like before it became a media industry event. The Long Beach version is still primarily about comics — the publisher rows, artist alley, the writers and artists who show up specifically because this audience is there for the work. Celebrity guests do panels and signings at tables you can actually reach without a lottery system. The cosplay is excellent because the Long Beach community takes it seriously and the convention is the right size to see it properly. Two days. The Long Beach Convention Center is right off the water — good lunch options in the Pike and along the waterfront within walking distance. Saturday is the busier day; Sunday is the quieter version with the same floor and shorter lines. Single-day tickets available at longbeachcomiccon.com. Parking in the convention center structure. This is the one that actually feels like a convention.

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29 Gathering

65 days away

Anime San Diego 2026

Sep 5 – Sep 6, 2026 San Diego Convention Center, 111 W…

Anime San Diego takes the San Diego Convention Center for the first time September 5-6, 2026 — a new convention for a city that already has Anime Expo three hours up the freeway, building something that belongs to San Diego specifically. Two days, panels, cosplay, vendors, and the community that shows up for the first edition of something they want to exist. First editions have their own energy. The people who come to a convention's inaugural year are not the ones who show up when it's already established — they're the believers, the ones who want to be part of something before it grows into what it will become. That makes the floor different. The vendors who exhibit at a first-year show chose to be there specifically. That enthusiasm travels. The San Diego Convention Center is a world-class facility that handles events with experience and scale. Having it for a first-year anime convention is a statement. Tickets at animesandiego.com. September in San Diego produces some of the best weather the city offers. Come on Saturday if you can only make one day — the second day of a two-day con is where the floor really opens up.

Coming Soon

65 days away

Long Beach Comic Con 2026

Sep 5 – Sep 6, 2026 Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …

Long Beach Comic Con returns to the Long Beach Convention Center for its 2026 edition, one of Southern California's most respected regional comic and pop culture conventions. Running Saturday and Sunday September 5 and 6, LBCC brings together professional comic book artists, writers, collectors, and fans for a weekend of panels, signings, an exhibit hall, and an artist alley that consistently features some of the best independent comics talent on the West Coast. Unlike the massive scale of San Diego Comic-Con, Long Beach Comic Con is designed to be intimate enough to actually have real conversations with the creators whose work you love. The convention hall features original artwork, back-issue comics, collectibles, vinyl figures, and merchandise from across the comics and pop culture spectrum. Panels cover topics from creator craft to industry trends to fandom culture. Long Beach Comic Con has built a reputation for genuine quality and a welcoming atmosphere that makes it a favorite for both hardcore collectors and people bringing kids to their first convention. The Long Beach Convention Center is accessible by Metro Blue Line and is walking distance from the waterfront. Discount codes are currently active on the official website.

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