Relive Convention & Expo Events

175 convention & expo events the community showed up for — relive the night, then catch the next one.

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Interpol — North America Tour 2026 at The Rady Shell San Diego

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Interpol — North America Tour 2026 at The Rady Shell San Diego

Aug 15, 2026 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 200…

There's a sound that belongs to the moment when the streetlights come on and you're walking somewhere you shouldn't be going but can't stop yourself. Interpol has been making that sound for twenty-five years, and it hasn't lost a single watt of its pull. Interpol plays The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park in San Diego on Friday, August 15 at 7 PM, with julie opening. The Rady Shell is one of the most beautiful outdoor concert venues in Southern California — an open-air bandshell on the downtown waterfront with the harbor behind the stage and the skyline framing the whole production. Seeing a band this atmospheric in a venue this cinematic is the kind of alignment that only happens a few times a year. The Rady Shell's open seating and lawn sections mean the experience scales from front-row intensity to blanket-on-the-grass chill depending on where you plant yourself. The venue is at 200 Marina Park Way, walking distance from the Convention Center trolley stop and the Gaslamp Quarter. The kind of night where the venue and the artist are saying the same thing. Bring someone who understands why that matters.

California Extreme Pinball & Arcade Show 2026

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California Extreme Pinball & Arcade Show 2026

Aug 8 – Aug 10, 2026 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.

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DEF CON 34 2026 — Las Vegas, NV

Aug 6 – Aug 10, 2026 380 Las Vegas Convention Center, 3150 …

More critical infrastructure vulnerabilities have been disclosed at DEF CON than anywhere else on earth. The conference where that happens — 34 editions in now — is held in Las Vegas every August and draws the largest gathering of security researchers, hackers, and engineers in the world. DEF CON is unlike any conference you've attended. Walk in and you'll find badge puzzle hunts that thousands of people spend the entire conference solving; lock-picking villages where anyone can learn to pick a padlock in minutes; talks that expose critical vulnerabilities in systems we trust daily — power grids, voting machines, medical devices, cars. The crowd is a mix of 20-year-old prodigies, retired intelligence professionals, and corporate security teams sitting in the same row. There is no dress code except the absence of one. The culture rewards curiosity over credentials. DEF CON has the energy of a music festival crossed with a graduate thesis defense — and the hallway conversations may be more valuable than either. If you've ever wondered how systems get broken — and how they get fixed — DEF CON is worth the trip to Las Vegas. This is for technologists, security professionals, students, and curious people who want to understand the infrastructure of modern life by learning its failure modes. It is not for people who need structured agendas and sponsored lanyards. DEF CON is self-organized, intentionally weird, and deliberately unwelcoming to corporate gatekeeping. If you've ever googled "how does that hack actually work" — you belong here. Register early — badge prices increase at the door and can exceed $400. Cash is preferred and sometimes required. The badges themselves are puzzles; experienced attendees spend all four days cracking them. Bring comfortable shoes — the Las Vegas Convention Center spans multiple halls. DEF CON runs four specialized villages simultaneously (Wireless, AI, Hardware, Social Engineering) and you will miss most of them. That's part of the culture: nobody sees everything. Bring a way to share contact information — the hallway conversations at DEF CON have launched more security careers than any job board. The mainstream technology industry spends billions on security theater. DEF CON spends four days showing you exactly how it fails — and then showing you how to fix it. If you've ever felt that the systems you rely on are more fragile than anyone admits, you're right. DEF CON is the room where people say so. Tickets and registration at defcon.org. August 6–9, 2026, Las Vegas Convention Center.

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Midsummer Scream 2026: Horror Musicals

Aug 7 – Aug 9, 2026 35.0 Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …

Some people do not celebrate Halloween so much as survive the other eleven months. If you know who you are, this is the weekend that carries you across the summer. The Hall of Shadows is the reason. A blacked-out stretch of the convention center holding more than a dozen fully built haunts — not teasers, not previews, the real thing — running all three days and included with every badge, no upcharge, no separate line. It is the biggest indoor haunt zone in California outside of October itself. Past that: 350-plus vendors selling costumes, props, seasonal decor, original art, and the vintage pieces that make a stranger grab your arm. Panels on haunt design, practical effects, and cosplay construction, taught by the people who actually build the season. Long Beach Convention Center in August, with weekend and single-day passes online ahead of time. Send it to whoever puts their skeletons up in July. They already knew.

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Let's KCON Day 2 — Fan Cupsleeve Meetup

Aug 9, 2026 Koreatown, Los Angeles, CA 90005

The cupsleeve is not the point and everyone there knows it. The point is that somebody sat down and designed one, printed it, and carried a box of them across town so that strangers who love the same people could hold the same object on the same afternoon. Koreatown does this before the convention center does anything. Fans organize it themselves — community-designed sleeves for the Day 2 lineup, fan goods, a few hours to find your people and then make the trip to the venue together instead of alone. The neighborhood that understands the culture hosts the culture before the arena gets to. Day 2 draws a different crowd than Day 1: same festival, different fandoms, same recognition on sight. HHD in Koreatown, free to attend. If you were going alone, this is how you stop going alone.

Geekin Out Pop Culture Convention — La Mirada August 2026

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Geekin Out Pop Culture Convention — La Mirada August 2026

Aug 8, 2026 Holiday Inn La Mirada, 14299 Fires…

Big conventions sell you an experience. Small ones sell you the thing you actually came for. Nobody drives two hours to stand in a line for a photo op — they drive because one dealer somewhere has the exact figure they have been hunting since the nineties, and in a room this size you can genuinely find it. That is the whole proposition. Focused enough that serious collectors turn up with deep inventory, small enough that a casual browser is not immediately overwhelmed and pushed back out the door. Vendors run from original eighties action figures and vintage board games to modern collectible lines and custom fan art, and Creator Alley gives independent artists their own space to sell original work directly to whoever is standing there. One day in La Mirada, family-friendly, free parking in the hotel lot, cheaper if you buy ahead. Bring the kid who has never seen a wall of loose figures before. Or just bring yourself, at whatever age you are now.

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Let's KCON Day 1 — Fan Cupsleeve Meetup

Aug 8, 2026 1960 N Tustin St, Orange, CA 92865

The convention does not start when the doors open downtown. For the people who have been planning this since spring, it starts in a boba shop in Orange County, hours earlier, over a table of paper cupsleeves somebody designed for a lineup they love. If you have never been to one: cupsleeve events are fan-made, fan-funded, and fan-run. Somebody commissions the art, somebody else covers the printing, and a room of strangers who until now only knew each other as usernames sits down together and hands it all out for free. The shop has hosted enough of these that the staff know to leave the tables alone. It is the pre-show that makes the show bigger, and it is why the arena later feels like a reunion instead of a crowd. A free afternoon in Orange on North Tustin Street, before the first night begins. Bring the friend who has never met anyone else who listens to this.

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Agenda Show Long Beach 2026

Aug 6 – Aug 7, 2026 Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …

The biggest booth on the floor is almost never where the conversation is. It is the small table in the corner, a brand on its second or third season, somebody who still has something to prove and forty minutes to explain it to you. Walking this show slowly is the entire skill. The fall edition carries different inventory than the January one. Brands come back from summer with lines that did not exist eight months ago, things that began as samples on a garage floor, collabs that read differently in August light than they ever will in a lookbook. If you work in this industry, this is where fourth-quarter decisions get made over a handshake. If you only orbit it, this is where you see what is coming before it lands anywhere else. Long Beach Convention Center on Ocean Boulevard, registration at agendashow.com. Be there the moment it opens, because the corner tables run out of attention first.

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Costume College 2026 — Los Angeles, CA

Jul 30 – Aug 4, 2026 6101 W Century Blvd, Los Angeles, …

Most people learn to sew a costume from YouTube tutorials and sheer stubbornness. The people who run Costume College decided that costuming deserved something more: an actual school. Costume College is an annual four-day educational convention produced by the Costumer's Guild West, dedicated to the craft of historical costuming, fantasy construction, and theatrical wear. Not a competition. Not a vendor hall. A conference where the sessions are taught by master costumers, the curriculum runs from corset-making to Regency silhouettes to full armor builds, and the attendees wear their finest work to a formal Gala on Saturday night. The Gala is the heart of it: hundreds of people in period and fantasy costumes, assembled in a hotel ballroom, celebrating what they have built with their hands. There is no red carpet. The craftsmanship is the event. Costume College draws serious makers — people who treat costuming as a discipline, not a hobby. If you have ever wanted to understand why a Victorian sleeve hangs the way it does, or how screen-accurate armor is fabricated from thermoplastics, this is the four days that will change how you make things. July 30 – August 3, 2026 · Sheraton Gateway Los Angeles Hotel, 6101 W Century Blvd, Los Angeles · Registration required

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Otakon 2026

Jul 31 – Aug 2, 2026 Walter E. Washington Convention Ct…

Some of the people in this hall have not missed a summer since 1994 — since before the shows they came for were streaming, before anyone called it content, when a fan-run convention in a hotel was the only place the community existed in the flesh. Three decades later, the first-timer and the person who's been coming since the Clinton administration walk the same corridors, and that unbroken thread is the whole thing. It's one of the oldest fan-run cons in the country, and it still runs on devotion: cosplay built to museum detail, English-language premieres you can't see anywhere else, and evening concerts by Japanese musicians who play Otakon and nowhere else on the American tour. Twenty-five, thirty thousand people make the trip from every state — big enough to feel monumental, still small enough that the community recognizes its own face in the crowd. Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington DC — July 31 through August 2, 2026. Come for the premieres and the concerts; stay for the strange comfort of a room that has quietly kept itself together for thirty years.

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Collect-A-Con Los Angeles 2026

Aug 1 – Aug 2, 2026 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.

Metrocon 2026 — Florida Anime Convention, Tampa

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Metrocon 2026 — Florida Anime Convention, Tampa

Jul 31 – Aug 2, 2026 Tampa Convention Center, 333 S Fra…

Florida's anime community has been meeting at Metrocon every summer since 2002. Three days at the Tampa Convention Center — the event that built anime fandom in this state. What it feels like: Metrocon runs hot on cosplay. Florida's anime community has produced some of the country's most technically impressive costume builds, and the convention center floor is a working gallery of that craft. The programming is community-forward — panels run by fans who actually know the material, not PR-approved talking points. The Artist Alley features Southeast creators who rarely appear at national conventions, making Metrocon a genuine discovery venue for independent anime art and merchandise. Worth it? Who it is for: Metrocon is for the Florida anime fan who has been told that the real conventions are all in California. They are not. Metrocon draws 20,000 attendees to Tampa every summer and has been doing so for over 20 years. It is also worth the flight for East Coast fans looking for a convention that combines quality programming with the natural draw of Tampa in late July — the city has invested heavily in its Riverwalk and Ybor City nightlife, making the convention weekend an actual trip. What to know before you go: Badge pickup moves quickly for pre-registered attendees. The Artist Alley opens a half-hour before the main floor — use this window if you want first access to independent vendors. The cosplay contest runs Saturday evening and draws the highest-production builds; arrive early for seating. Tampa in late July is genuinely hot — plan accordingly if you are wearing anything elaborate. The cultural moment: Metrocon has been running for over two decades, which means it has watched the anime fandom transform from a niche community to the mainstream cultural force it is today. It carries that history without being precious about it — the convention feels alive in a way that older events sometimes lose. Florida has an anime community that rivals California's at the neighborhood level. Metrocon is the annual proof.

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Otakon 2026 — Washington, DC

Jul 31 – Aug 2, 2026 Walter E. Washington Convention Ce…

It started as 300 fans in a Baltimore hotel in 1994, and it has been running the whole time since, without interruption - which is why the 30th anniversary in 2024, drawing 46,000 to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, DC, felt less like a convention and more like a reunion. Otakon has a character that separates it from every other major anime convention. The DC location pulls a concentrated East Coast fan base - people who follow seasonal anime, collect physical media, and can place any character in their franchise context - and the programming reflects that, getting into the craft of animation, voice acting, and manga creation at a level that assumes real expertise from the room. The Friday night concert is the kind of thing attendees plan their whole weekend around, and the cosplay photography in the convention center's glass architecture, with DC landmarks nearby, produces an aesthetic that exists nowhere else on the circuit. This is a convention for anime fans who want more than a dealers hall and autograph lines - who want to understand how the work they love gets made, in a room with tens of thousands of people who love it as specifically as they do. The programming depth rewards multiple days; single-day is worthwhile for a specific guest or the concert, but the experience compounds over the full weekend. A few things worth knowing: Washington DC hotels near the convention center fill quickly after the con is announced, so book early or look at Metro-accessible neighborhoods like Shaw or Mount Vernon Triangle. The Walter E. Washington Convention Center is enormous - the map is essential - and it photographs extremely well, which matters when many attendees arrive in cosplay. Badge pickup lines move fastest early Friday morning. This year's theme is Swords and Sorcery, so programming skews toward fantasy-genre anime and epic storytelling, timed well with current momentum around Dungeon Meshi, Frieren, and Witch Hat Atelier. Otakon is operated by Otakorp Inc., a registered non-profit - 'By Fans, For Fans' is legally true, not marketing copy - and weekend badges run about 110 dollars with concerts included, where a convention like Anime Expo upcharges those separately. What Otakon really measures is longevity: a community that self-organized, refused to be dismissed as niche, and built institutions that outlasted the people who started them. That's what cultural endurance looks like from the inside. Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC. 2026.

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Gen Con 2026 — Indianapolis, IN

Jul 30 – Aug 2, 2026 Indianapolis Convention Center, 10…

Strangers sit down together at open gaming tables to learn a game from the person who designed it, freshly flown in from Germany or Japan — and the exhibit hall is so vast it takes twenty minutes to walk corner to corner. The world's largest tabletop gaming convention fills the Indiana Convention Center and Lucas Oil Stadium for four days in Indianapolis, and if it is played on a table, it is here. Walking into Gen Con for the first time is sensory overload in the best possible way: thousands of people carrying bags of dice, rulebooks, and game boxes, publishers debuting their most anticipated releases, announcements landing here before anywhere else. First-timers routinely describe the first afternoon as having their mind melted by the scale; veterans of fifteen years still find things they have never seen. This is not for people who play Monopoly at Christmas — it is for people for whom games are a world, not a hobby. If you have ever wanted to sit across from a designer and learn what they were trying to say, if discovering a game before it launches feels like finding something no one else knows yet, this is worth the flight. If none of that resonates, skip it. Register early — the 17,000-plus ticketed events open months in advance and popular sessions sell out within minutes. Saturday is the largest single day; Thursday and Sunday move at a more human pace. Wear the most comfortable shoes you own and expect to walk ten or more miles a day. Buy a four-day badge even if you plan only two days, as single-day badges are limited, and book downtown Indianapolis hotels the moment badges go on sale. Bring a large tote and loose plans — the best moments at Gen Con are the ones you did not schedule. People do not attend Gen Con. They go to Gen Con, the way you go somewhere that requires intention. The tabletop renaissance of the last decade produced a global community of people who take games seriously as an art form and a social infrastructure, and this is where that community assembles in full — the entire history of the medium, the present state of the art, and the first glimpses of what comes next, under one roof for four days every summer. Dates and badges at gencon.com.

Street Food Cinema: Cars 20th Anniversary — The Autry Museum, Griffith Park

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Street Food Cinema: Cars 20th Anniversary — The Autry Museum, Griffith Park

Aug 1, 2026 The Autry Museum, 4700 Western Her…

Twenty years since Lightning McQueen first rolled into Radiator Springs, and somehow the ache of that little Route 66 town still lands — the idea that the best things in life are the ones you find when you’re lost on the way to somewhere else. Street Food Cinema is screening Cars for its 20th anniversary on the lawn of the Autry Museum, and in partnership with D23, the evening turns into something richer than a regular outdoor movie night. Doors open at 6pm with a live band, a curated spread of LA’s best food trucks, and that particular Griffith Park golden hour that makes everything feel like it was designed by a production designer who actually cares. The movie rolls at 8:15pm on a massive outdoor screen. Bring a blanket, bring a date, bring the kid who memorized every car’s name and still does the voice. This is the kind of night LA does better than anywhere: outdoor cinema, good food, good light, good company. General admission $23. The Autry Museum, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Griffith Park. Dog-friendly. Bar on site. Free parking.

Crunchyroll Anime FanFest 2026 — San Diego

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Crunchyroll Anime FanFest 2026 — San Diego

Jul 25 – Jul 27, 2026 222 Marina Park Way, San Diego, CA…

This is what it sounds like when 10,000 anime fans hear the opening notes of something they have been listening to alone for years. The Rady Shell sits on San Diego Bay directly behind the Convention Center, and for two days during Comic-Con it belongs to the music anime made famous. No badge, no wristband, no cost — which means the crowd is half convention-goers and half people who came for this and nothing else. The 2025 edition put SPYAIR, yama, ASH DA HERO and Denzel Curry on the same stage and it did not read as a novelty. It read as a playlist. The 2026 lineup is announced closer to the date. Gates Saturday July 25 at 1 PM. Sunday July 26 continues. 222 Marina Park Way, San Diego. Free. You know which friend has been playing these songs in the car since high school.

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Anime Matsuri 2026

Jul 23 – Jul 26, 2026 Paid - $40-$120 George R. Brown Convention Center,…

Everybody knows the LA and New York conventions. Almost nobody outside the Gulf Coast talks about the one the entire South actually organizes its summer around — and that's exactly why it hits different once you're inside it. For nearly two decades, Houston's anime community has poured itself into these four days, and the room has the specific warmth of a scene that built its own home instead of driving to somebody else's. Thirty thousand people fill the George R. Brown for it — a convention center big enough that the panels don't feel like fire hazards and the exhibit hall has room to actually move. The guest roster runs international, Japanese voice actors and manga artists alongside the English-dub names, and the cosplay competition is one of the most serious in the South: people who spent six months on a build come here to be seen by a crowd that knows exactly what they're looking at. You come for the guests and stay for the feeling that Houston has quietly been doing this at a level the coasts never bothered to notice. George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston — July 23–26, 2026. Badge info and the guest list build as the date nears.

Ryoko Kui Exhibition & Delicious in Dungeon Exhibition — Los Angeles

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Ryoko Kui Exhibition & Delicious in Dungeon Exhibition — Los Angeles

Jul 2 – Jul 26, 2026 20 Art Share LA, 801 E 4th Place, Los…

Ryoko Kui's original artwork travels from Tokyo to Los Angeles for the only confirmed North American stop of the Delicious in Dungeon exhibition, opening at Art Share LA on July 2 — the same week as Anime Expo 2026. Two of the most significant anime events of the summer share a city. The exhibition traces Kui's creative process from rough sketches through finished panels, with sections dedicated to dungeon ecology (food replicas and monster photo spots are the signature draw), plus artwork from The Dragon's School Is Atop the Mountain and Seven Little Sons of the Dragon. An in-depth interview and time-lapse drawing videos fill in the craft story behind one of the most technically obsessive manga series of this decade. The timing matters: Delicious in Dungeon Season 2 returns in July 2026 on Netflix, meaning the community that spent last year eating dungeon creatures alongside Laios and Marcille comes back exactly when the exhibition opens. The room is going to know the material. Anime Expo runs July 2-5 — same opening week. For anyone attending both, this is the natural second stop. Tickets are timed entry during AX week (July 2-5) and open daily-entry slots from July 6-26. Adults 0. Located in the Arts District, a short drive from the convention center.

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