Relive Convention & Expo Events

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

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Fantastic Fest 2026 — Austin, TX

Sep 17 – Sep 24, 2026 Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar, 1120…

Winning Best Film here means your movie is genuinely, get-under-your-skin frightening -- because the whole point of this place is the horror, science fiction, and genre film that would never survive a studio committee. For eight days the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin turns into the strangest week of the year in a city that specializes in strange. The Drafthouse means dinner and drinks arrive at your seat during the film. The selection spans international premieres and US debuts under a curatorial ethos that prizes the weird over the safe and refuses to be rigid about genre -- the umbrella covers anything that warrants the word. Secret screenings are the festival's signature: you sit down not knowing what you are about to watch, and the audience often does not learn the title until moments before it starts. Between films there are trivia nights, drag shows, karaoke, live bands, and stunts that have included burying audience members alive and staging sideshow performances. If your opinions about horror and cult cinema run ahead of the mainstream, this is your event -- and this is the 21st edition, a scrappy Austin experiment that became the definitive American destination for genre film, the place where the most adventurous versions of these genres get their first real audience. Films that premiere here regularly go on to win awards and pull strong box office months later. Sitting in that auditorium surrounded by people who drove in from five states for this one week is the feeling that makes the badge worth every dollar. Send this to the friend who has watched everything and is still hunting for something that scares them. Fantastic Fest runs September 17 to 24. Fan Badges cover the full eight days; Second-Half Badges run September 21 to 24 and include parties and Highball access at the venue adjacent to the Drafthouse; Industry Badges cover daily press and industry screenings. The Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar runs multiple simultaneous screenings across several auditoriums, which gives you real choices when your schedule collides with itself. Badge categories sell out early and secret-screening seats fill fastest, so arrive early if you want one. Check fantasticfest.com for current availability.

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Golden State Tattoo Expo

Sep 18 – Sep 20, 2026 Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E …

Somewhere in your phone is a screenshot of an artist whose books close the hour they open, whose waitlist runs past next year, and who you have never once been in a room with. For three days they are standing at a booth with an open notebook, taking consultations. Several hundred of them come in from across the country. Flash and custom, traditional and neo-traditional, realism, Japanese, and work that refuses a category outright. The floor rewards the slow walk, because the artist you have not discovered yet is two aisles over, mid-piece, happy to talk about what they are chasing right now. Even if you are not getting tattooed, sitting in on the competition judging hands you the vocabulary for what separates technically clean from genuinely rare. Pasadena Convention Center, three days in September. If you have been sitting on a piece for years, this is the weekend it stops being a screenshot.

San Diego Symphony — Summer Pops at The Rady Shell 2026

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San Diego Symphony — Summer Pops at The Rady Shell 2026

Jun 5 – Sep 19, 2026 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222…

The San Diego Symphony's Summer Pops season at The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park brings world-class orchestral music to the San Diego waterfront for a series of outdoor concerts running June through September 2026. The Rady Shell — an acoustically engineered open-air performance venue on the waterfront at Jacobs Park — provides a stunning setting for the Symphony's summer season with San Diego Bay visible beyond the audience. The Summer Pops programming spans the full range from classical masterworks to pops concerts featuring Broadway music, film scores, jazz, and popular artists performing with orchestral accompaniment. The variety makes the summer season accessible to audiences who aren't regular classical concertgoers while delivering the full orchestral experience that the Symphony's musician quality supports. The Rady Shell's outdoor format is distinctly family-friendly — picnic blankets, lawn chairs, and the relaxed atmosphere of the waterfront park contrast with the formality of indoor concert halls. The adjacent Jacobs Park lawn allows families to spread out while the children remain within range of the music. Food and wine are available from vendors on-site. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park is located at 222 Park Blvd in downtown San Diego, walkable from the Embarcadero and accessible via MTS Trolley (Convention Center station). Parking in the downtown convention center structures. Individual concert tickets and season subscriptions available through the San Diego Symphony website.

The Sixties Show — A Tribute to the Music That Changed Everything at The Rady Shell

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The Sixties Show — A Tribute to the Music That Changed Everything at The Rady Shell

Sep 18, 2026 The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, 222…

Every member of The Sixties Show was hand-picked to perform and record with the artists they're celebrating — The Who, Paul McCartney, The Beach Boys, The Bee Gees, Steely Dan, Bruce Springsteen. This isn't karaoke in wigs. This is the session musicians who were in the room when those records were made, playing the songs the way they were meant to sound, on a waterfront stage with the San Diego skyline behind them. The Rady Shell in September is the kind of venue that turns a good concert into a memory. The harbor catches the last of the light. The breeze comes in around the second set. By the time they get to the Beatles medley the crowd has stopped pretending they're too cool to sing along. Friday, September 18, 2026. 7:30 PM. The Rady Shell at Jacobs Park, San Diego.

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High Fantasy / Dark Dungeon

Sep 12 – Sep 13, 2026 $40 1965 S Los Angeles St, Los Angeles…

Superchief Gallery and Titmouse present a massive two-day Ren Faire and art show. Features a group exhibition with over 50 artists, live wrestling presented by MCDeathBear and Casanova Valentine hosted by John Goblikon, and armored knight duels by The Armored League. Includes an artisan market, an indoor RPG gaming arena for MTG and Realm Runners, femme faerie dancers, food vendors, mead, and a $250 costume contest. Featured artists include Skinner, Wizard of Barge, Parker Day, Robin Eisenberg, Arik Roper, and many others. Events run throughout the weekend of September 12th and 13th.

BlizzCon 2026 — Anaheim Convention Center

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BlizzCon 2026 — Anaheim Convention Center

Sep 13, 2026 Anaheim Convention Center, 800 W K…

You have friends whose real names you do not know. You have played with them for years, you would notice within a day if they went quiet, and you have never seen their face. That is a real relationship, and the world keeps insisting it is not. This is the weekend it becomes physical. World premieres, developers who actually wrote the code walking through what they built, esports played live in a room that shakes, hands-on demos of games that will not ship for months, and an opening ceremony that gets you even when you knew it was coming. The floor fills with playable stations, artist signings, cosplay contests, and meetups where a guild finally stands in one place at one time. Anaheim Convention Center, doors at 10 AM both days, passes through Tixr, cosplay encouraged. Send it to the guild. Watch how fast that channel lights up, and how quickly somebody starts pricing flights.

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Rose City Comic Con 2026 — Portland, OR

Sep 11 – Sep 13, 2026 Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE M…

You can spend hours in artist alley here just talking with independent creators - not waiting in a celebrity autograph line, actually talking - and that is the tell about what kind of convention this is. Three days at the Oregon Convention Center of floor, panels, and programming, built for people who care about comics as an art form: the creators and the medium, not only the IP franchises. Celebrity guests span comics, film, and television, with signing and photo opportunities throughout the weekend, but the heart of the show is the alley and the cosplay, which is one of the strongest scenes on the West Coast - the hall dense with elaborate builds and the crowd treating it as a showcase rather than a costume contest. Gaming rooms, tabletop areas, and panel programming round out a schedule that can run ten hours a day for serious attendees. What makes Rose City hold together is that it is built for people who love comics as a medium and stays genuinely accessible while doing it: the scale is manageable, the crowd is easy, and tickets run $17-$105 depending on day and package. For cosplayers, the Portland fanbase means extraordinary hall costumes without the New York or San Diego Comic-Con crowds. If the bigger conventions have priced or exhausted you out, this delivers the best of what those events promise at a fraction of the friction. It has quietly become the essential West Coast convention for independent comics, occupying the space between the industry-scale San Diego Comic-Con and the grassroots spirit of smaller regional shows. Portland's identity as a creative, DIY city gives it an energy distinct from LA or Bay Area equivalents - this is where you find what is coming in comics before it reaches mass-market shelves. A few practical notes. Friday hours are 1 to 8 PM, Saturday 10 AM to 7 PM, Sunday 10 AM to 5 PM; Saturday crowds are significantly denser, which makes Sunday the calmer entry point for first-timers. Artist Alley is the heart of the show, so budget both time and money for it. The Oregon Convention Center is served by Portland MAX light rail, and the Convention Center stop drops you right at the door, so a car is unnecessary if you are staying downtown. Rose City Comic Con 2026, Portland, OR, in September.

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FAN EXPO Dallas 2026 — Dallas, TX

Sep 11 – Sep 13, 2026 Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Ce…

Walk onto the floor on Saturday morning and the whole logic of the place clicks: this is a convention built to hold the entire range of fan culture under one roof without splitting anyone off from anyone else. Anime, gaming, horror, comics - all of it, 65,000 people, three days in Dallas. The anime wing runs voice actor signings and screening rooms. The gaming section has playable demos and tournament brackets. The horror area draws cult actors and practical-effects artists. The comics floor features creators behind titles both mainstream and independent. Celebrity photo ops and autograph lines run all weekend, and FAN EXPO's booking operation is one of the most reliable in the industry - the guests announced are the guests who actually show. The Cosplay Red Carpet on Saturday is a highlight, with contestants from across Texas and the surrounding region bringing builds that rival anything at the coastal mega-cons. The crowd energy skews genuinely enthusiastic rather than industry-transactional, and first-timers frequently note how manageable the floor layout is despite the scale. This is for anyone who has wanted to see their favorite franchise represented at scale - not just as merchandise, but as community. It's family-accessible without being dumbed down, competitive without being exclusionary, and large enough to spend a full day discovering things you didn't plan for. The Friday preview session runs 4-9 PM and is notably less crowded than the weekend, so with a three-day pass, Friday evening is the best time to cover artist alley. Celebrity photo ops sell out weeks before the event - book through the FAN EXPO app as soon as your guests are announced. The convention center is accessible from the Dallas Convention Center DART station, the practical choice on Saturday when surrounding parking fills. Bring a battery pack; you'll live on your phone for the app schedule and maps. Saturday afternoon is peak crowd; Sunday morning is the quietest slot. The Dallas edition has grown into the defining fan event for the entire South-Central region - the convention people in Houston, Austin, Oklahoma City, and beyond mark on their calendars. September 11-13 at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, Dallas. Tickets at fanexpohq.com/fanexpodallas.

Anime Night Mart — Free Anime Market at Moreno Valley Mall (September 2026)

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Anime Night Mart — Free Anime Market at Moreno Valley Mall (September 2026)

Sep 12, 2026 Moreno Valley Mall, 22500 Town Cir…

The artist alley table has prints of your exact comfort character. The vendor next to it is selling enamel pins you didn't know existed but now can't leave without. This isn't a mall event — it's a gathering. Anime Night Mart takes over Moreno Valley Mall for two days of vendor booths, cosplay meetups, gaming stations, live performances, and raffles — all free, all ages. This is the Inland Empire's own anime night market, built for the crowd that knows their way around a convention floor but doesn't need one to have a good time. The vendors bring fan art, plushies, wall scrolls, and treasures from corners of fandom you forgot you loved. The cosplay corner fills with people who spent weeks building something they'll wear for six hours and cherish every second of it. The energy is warm and nerdy and specific. You'll recognize people by their shirts before you know their names. You'll leave with a bag full of things you'll never explain to anyone who wasn't there — and that's exactly how it's supposed to work. September 12-13, 2026. Moreno Valley Mall. Free admission. All ages.

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Idyllwild Renaissance Faire

Sep 12, 2026 $15+ Hurkey Creek Park, 56375 CA-74, Mo…

Two hours up a winding mountain road, in a pine-forested park a mile above the desert, a whole village of people in doublets and corsets gathers each fall to pretend it is 16th-century Spain, and it is absolutely delightful. The Idyllwild Renaissance Faire is the charming, homemade, mountain-air antidote to the giant corporate faires: jousting knights, wandering minstrels, artisans hammering real steel, turkey legs the size of your forearm, and a crowd of gleeful anachronists who take their make-believe joyfully seriously. Saturday and Sunday, September 12 and 13, 2026, at Hurkey Creek Park near Idyllwild. Come in costume or come in shorts, drink from a horn, heckle the joust, and let the cool pines and earnest weirdness win you over. Bring the friend who secretly wants to be a bard. Huzzah, up in the clouds.

Long Beach Expo — The Collectibles Show 2026

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Long Beach Expo — The Collectibles Show 2026

Sep 9, 2026 Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …

In a closet, in a binder with plastic sleeves, you have something worth more than you think. And in Long Beach Convention Center Hall C, someone has been waiting since 1964 to tell you exactly how much. The Long Beach Expo is the West Coast's longest-running collectibles show — over 400 dealers filling a convention hall with coins, banknotes, sports cards, stamps, antique jewelry, and precious metals. PCGS sets up on site to grade and authenticate. Heritage Auctions runs lot viewings. The floor is a living marketplace where a 1909 penny and a 1952 Mickey Mantle share shelf space with ancient Roman coins and vintage watches. This is the show that serious collectors build their calendar around. But it's also where newcomers walk in with a bag of grandpa's old coins and walk out understanding that they've been sitting on a story worth telling. Meet the Expert sessions run daily. Giveaways pull you in. The conversation at every table is the same: the thing is worth what someone will pay for it, and there are 400 someones here who agree. September 9–11. Long Beach Convention Center, Hall C. longbeachexpo.com.

Kraken Karaoke at Harvelle's — Long Beach Tuesday Night

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Kraken Karaoke at Harvelle's — Long Beach Tuesday Night

Every Tuesday · Next Oct 6 Harvelle's Long Beach, 201 E Broad…

Somewhere between the second drink and the third song on the list, the performance stops and the meaning starts. The strangers at the bar who were ignoring you a minute ago are screaming the chorus back, and for three minutes nothing in your life needs fixing. Kraken Karaoke runs every Tuesday night at Harvelle's on East Broadway — one of the last real music venues in Long Beach, the kind of room where sound bounces off exposed brick and the bartenders have seen better singers and worse singers and none of it matters. Doors at 8 PM, karaoke at 9. The song list is deep. The regulars are generous with applause. Nobody is here to judge your Fleetwood Mac or your Selena. Harvelle's is not a karaoke bar. It is a live music venue that hands the mic to the audience one night a week, and the difference is everything — the sound system is real, the stage is real, and the room that has hosted actual headliners now belongs to whoever signs up first. Every Tuesday, doors at 8 PM. 201 East Broadway, Long Beach. Bring your courage and your worst song choice — the room will carry you.

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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 biggest gaming weekend. 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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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. 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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SacAnime Summer 2026 – Sacramento

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

Between Anime Expo in July and the fall circuit in October, there is a gap in the West Coast calendar - and this is the con that fills it, the reason SoCal fans make the road trip north over Labor Day weekend. Consistently one of the best-organized regional anime conventions on the coast, it has built its name on accessible, community-first programming. It runs three days across multiple spaces including the main convention hall, Memorial Auditorium, and the Hyatt Ballroom: 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 about six hours from San Diego and five and a half from Los Angeles - a realistic Labor Day road trip. The convention center sits downtown, walkable from hotels along the K Street corridor, and for SoCal fans who already do Anime Expo and FanimeCon, this typically offers more accessible crowds and shorter signing lines than the larger cons. SAFE Credit Union Convention Center, Sacramento, September 4-6, 2026.

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Anime San Diego 2026

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

Nobody wanders into a convention's first year. The people who show up are believers — the ones who wanted in before anyone could tell them what it would become — and that is why a first edition feels different from the inside than an established show ever will. San Diego is getting an anime convention that belongs to this city specifically, three hours down the freeway from the one everybody already knows. Two days of panels, cosplay, and a vendor floor set differently, because the exhibitors who booked a first-year show chose it on purpose. That choice travels. You can hear it in how people talk to each other in line. The Convention Center on Harbor Drive, in September, when the weather here is at its best. Saturday is the day to pick if you can only make one, and tickets are at animesandiego.com. Text this to whoever you would have gone to your first con with.

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Long Beach Comic Con 2026

Sep 5 – Sep 6, 2026 From $20 Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …

Somewhere along the way the big conventions stopped being about comics and started being about movie trailers. This is the one that didn't drift. Two days built around the actual thing — the pencilers and writers and colorists and letterers who came precisely because the people in this room came for the work, not the IP announcement. That focus changes the whole texture of it. The dealer room is back issues and original art and independent publishers you won't find at the mega-shows. The artist alley is close enough to reach without a strategy. The panels are about craft — how the page gets made — instead of a studio sizzle reel. If the bigger cons priced you out or wore you down, this is the one that kept faith with the reason you started reading in the first place. Long Beach Convention Center, 300 E Ocean Blvd — October 17–18, 2026, from $20 at longbeachcomicexpo.com. It's right on the water with the Pike a short walk for lunch. Pick your anchors and let the floor fill in the rest.

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Front Row Card Show Pasadena 2026

Sep 5 – Sep 6, 2026 10.0 Pasadena Convention Center, 300 E …

Somewhere on this floor is the sealed product you have been hunting, and three tables over sits a vintage sports card graded PSA 8 from 1985. Same room, same afternoon, no relationship to each other whatsoever. That is what 770 tables buys you: enough scale that serendipity stops being luck and becomes the actual reason to go. Pokémon, Magic, sports cards, comics, and collectibles across two full days at the convention center, with professional grading services set up right on the floor and real trades happening at the tables instead of in a parking lot afterward. The tell that this is a community event and not a vendor event is Saturday Trade Night, free to enter, built entirely for the people who come back after dinner to finish negotiations they started at noon. No celebrity booths. No influencer stage. Just the show serious collectors quietly tell each other about, which is precisely why the inventory turns up. Bring the binder you never let anybody touch.

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Relive Convention & Expo Events

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