Gaming & Esports Events

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Coming Soon

50 Gathering

18 days away

Strategicon Gateway 2026

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

You grab a game you have never played, find people to learn it with, and four hours later you are still at the table because nobody in the building has anywhere else to be. That is the entire physics of Strategicon Gateway - the hotel format that lets board gaming in Southern California come to play at maximum density for three straight days. Hundreds of games are available to check out and play. Tournaments run across every major competitive title, and the dealer hall is stocked with publishers and designers who made the games people are sitting down to play in the next room. The open gaming library is the entry point; the tournaments are the depth, with a bracket for anyone who plays competitively; the dealer hall is the discovery layer, where publishers demo things not yet in stores and designers sit at their games and explain the design. The gaming community that mostly operates online gets to be in the same room and stay that way. Plan to play more than you expect. LAX Hilton, September 4-6, 2026. Registration and full schedule at strategicon.net.

Coming Soon

10 Gathering

19 days away

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.

Cars and Coffee Classics — Downtown Anaheim

Monthly

20 days away

Cars and Coffee Classics — Downtown Anaheim

Monthly · Next Sep 6 Center Street Promenade, 201 W Cen…

You learned these cars from a video game before you ever saw one move. The boxy Skyline. The first-gen NSX. The Datsun somebody's uncle still talks about selling. One morning a month, on the first Sunday, the Center Street Promenade belongs entirely to that generation of machine, and unlike the everything-welcome mega-meets this one leans hard and lovingly vintage: nineties and earlier Japanese iron, Toyota and Nissan and Honda and Subaru and Mitsubishi, the imports a whole cohort of kids grew up worshipping through a screen. There is a DJ, a vendor market, a Best of Show, and the unhurried pleasure of holding a coffee while you walk rows of machinery people kept alive out of pure stubborn devotion. Free to walk in. Come if you can date a car by its headlights. Then bring the friend who can date it by the taillights and let the two of you argue about it all morning.

Long Beach Expo — The Collectibles Show 2026

Coming Soon

23 days away

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, 2026. Long Beach Convention Center, Hall C, 300 E Ocean Blvd, Long Beach, CA 90802. Public hours start Wednesday. Details at longbeachexpo.com.

Coming Soon

44 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 25 days away

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.

Coming Soon

11 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 25 days away

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.

Festival of Philippine Arts and Culture 2026

Coming Soon

21 Gathering

26 days away

Festival of Philippine Arts and Culture 2026

Sep 12 – Sep 13, 2026 Point Fermin Park, 807 Paseo Del M…

Ask how anyone found the food section and you get the same answer three times over: somebody told them. Not a listing, not an ad — a cousin, a coworker, a person who went once and could not shut up about it afterward. Pancit, lumpia, lechon, sinigang, halo-halo, and the regional dishes that shift from one island province to the next. Four decades in, this is among the largest gatherings of Filipino and Filipino American art and community anywhere in the country, and it is free, outdoors, and organized by the people it is for rather than by an outside producer who studied the market. That distinction shows up everywhere. Folk dance companies and Kulintang ensembles share the main stage with Fil-Am songwriters, original theater, and film, putting the generation that arrived and the generation born here into the same afternoon on purpose. Two days in September, tens of thousands of people, no ticket. Send it to the friend whose lola's cooking you have heard about for years.

BlizzCon 2026 — Anaheim Convention Center

Daily

26 days away

BlizzCon 2026 — Anaheim Convention Center

Every day · Next Sep 12 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.

Weekly

27 days away

Board Game Night — Meeples Games SD

Every Saturday · Next Sep 12 Meeples Games, 3821 Ray St, San Di…

You can walk in alone, knowing nobody, owning nothing, and be three moves into a game you have never heard of before you finish taking off your jacket. That is the actual promise here, and it holds up. The library is why. Thousands of titles on the shelves — heavy strategy, light fillers, co-ops, dexterity games, deck builders, tile layers, the hidden-role ones that ruin friendships — and staff who have played most of them and will hand you the right box based on how many people you brought and how much of the evening you are willing to lose. Big tables, good light, coffee running all night, and a floor that mixes established groups with solo players who got folded into somebody else's table before they realized it was happening. Bring your own game if you want. No fee at all to play from the shelves. Text the friend who says they are bad at board games. That is not a real thing, and this is the room where they find that out.

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

Daily

27 days away

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

Every day · Next Sep 12 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.

Pokemon TCG City Championship — San Diego Fall

Coming Soon

79 Gathering

27 days away

Pokemon TCG City Championship — San Diego Fall

Sep 13, 2026 $20 7626 Miramar Rd Suite 3900, San Di…

By the time fall comes around, the format has stopped being a mystery — the new sets have been picked apart, the regional results already told everyone what's good, and the only question left is whether you can pilot your deck better than the person across the table who prepared just as hard. A City Championship is where you find out, and there's a specific tension to a room full of people who all did their homework. Fall Cities carry a different weight than the spring events. The game's had time to breathe, the tier-one decks are known, and every round becomes a read — not just of the sixty cards opposite you but of the person shuffling them. TCS Rockets runs it with the infrastructure that makes the day feel like the event it is: organized rounds, real judges, a side-event area that keeps the day alive after you've finished your bracket. Large enough to be real, local enough to be yours. TCS Rockets, 7626 Miramar Road, San Diego — September 13, $20 to enter. Register at play.pokemon.com or at the door. If you've been building around the fall format, this is the room to test it in.

Monthly

633 Gathering

27 days away

633

GameSync Monthly Tabletop Open — San Diego

Every 2nd Sunday · Next Sep 13 GameSync Esports Center, 3519 El C…

There is a specific pleasure in showing up somewhere without a plan and finding out what everyone else is already playing. This is game night that does not end at midnight because somebody decided to keep the doors open. A real gaming space with a library covering more ground than any one group's shelf — competitive titles, co-ops, deck-builders, and the heavy strategy games that eat a full table and a full evening. Staff know the games and will teach anything on the floor, so arriving as a beginner is the assumption rather than the exception. Monthly means regulars. Regulars means people who will remember you next month, which is the difference between a community and an event. GameSync Esports Center, 3519 El Cajon Blvd, San Diego. Details at gamesync.us. Come early enough to settle in before the tables fill. The best conversations happen two hours into a game that was supposed to take ninety minutes.

Monthly

2979 Gathering

27 days away

2979

Los Angeles Pinball League — Monthly Tournament

Monthly · Next Sep 13 Various venues, Los Angeles, CA

Somewhere in this city tonight there is a back room where the pinball never stopped — machines everyone assumed died with the arcades, lined up, lit up, and played for blood by people who know each ruleset cold. You thought it was nostalgia. They kept it a sport. Once a month the league runs a real tournament: matchplay, a new opponent and a random machine every round, points stacking across the night. It is IFPA-sanctioned, but that is not why the regulars come. A good table is the most honest machine there is. It does not care who you are, only whether you can read the ball. Here is what outsiders never expect: this crowd wants you to get good. Show up knowing only how to keep a ball alive and someone ranked will lean over between rounds and show you where the safe nudge is, when to let it drain on purpose. Venues rotate. Check the league's Facebook group and the IFPA calendar for this month's location. All-ages at most stops, 21+ at the bars.

Coming Soon

19 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 31 days away

Tokyo Game Show 2026

Sep 17 – Sep 21, 2026 Makuhari Messe, 2-1 Nakase, Mihama…

Before a trailer hits YouTube, before Western press conferences catch up, before the internet has told you what to feel about it - Japanese publishers stand on a stage in Chiba and reveal what the next twelve months of gaming looks like. Tokyo Game Show is the annual announcement moment for the global games industry, and the announcements land before the rest of the world is paying attention. TGS operates at a scale that requires Makuhari Messe to hold it, filling four days with playable demos of unreleased titles, publisher stage shows, and the specific atmosphere of watching a game played in front of you by someone who made it and is watching your reaction. The public days run September 19-20 and stream internationally, with the full broadcast and stream schedule at tgs.cesa.or.jp. If you follow development from any major Japanese studio, this is where you find out what the next year holds. Watch parties and viewing events run at gaming venues across San Diego and Los Angeles during the major stage shows - check Eventbrite and gamesync.us for local viewing events as the dates approach. The stream hits fastest with the right crowd around you. Makuhari Messe, Chiba, Japan, September 17-20, 2026.

Coming Soon

🌎 Nation's Best 32 days away

Pacific Pinball Expo 2026 — Alameda

Sep 18 – Sep 20, 2026 Alameda, CA 94501

Pay once at the door and every machine in the hall is yours for the weekend - hundreds of them, on free play, from the clacking electromechanicals your grandparents fed dimes into to the newest Sterns still smelling of factory. The Pacific Pinball Expo in Alameda is one of the largest pinball collector and player events in the Western United States, drawing machines and enthusiasts from throughout California and beyond for a full weekend of free-play games, collector seminars, restoration workshops, and the competitive play that has made it a pilgrimage for the serious pinball community. The Pacific Pinball Museum operates year-round in Alameda as the primary public pinball collection on the West Coast, and the Expo amplifies that with additional machines collectors bring specifically for the event. The machine selection emphasizes historical breadth: electromechanicals from the 1950s and 60s sit alongside solid-state classics from the late 1970s through the Williams and Bally golden era of the 1990s, on through modern machines from Stern and Spooky. Restoration seminars by experienced collectors cover electrical troubleshooting, playfield restoration, and parts sourcing - practical knowledge the machine-owning community struggles to find in any other format. The Expo is held at a venue in or near Alameda, roughly 45 minutes north of San Jose and 20 minutes from Oakland, with shuttle service from BART typically organized during the event. Full weekend passes and single-day admission available.

Coming Soon

33 days away

Front Row Card Show San Diego 2026

Sep 19 – Sep 20, 2026 10.0 500 Hotel Circle North, San Diego,…

Every collector remembers the table. Not the card — the table, the guy behind it, the ten minutes of negotiation, and the walk back to the car afterward doing math you had already decided not to do. Four hundred and twenty-five tables of exactly that, across two days. Raw cards and graded slabs, vintage comics and modern sets, memorabilia stacked beside new releases, dealers running the full range from serious slab hunters to weekend box-breakers who just want to move product. CGC grades on-site and JSA authenticates autographs on the floor, which means you are not only shopping — you can finally settle a question about something that has been sitting in a closet for twenty years. Trade Night runs Saturday evening for people who would rather deal without the daytime crush. Hotel Circle, two mornings, cheaper in advance than at the door. Bring the box you have never had the nerve to get graded. This is the weekend you find out.

Coming Soon

15 Gathering

34 days away

So-Cal Cosplay Shoot — Waterfront

Sep 20, 2026 Free Embarcadero, San Diego, CA 92101

A character you'd photograph against Balboa Park's mission arches reads completely differently against ferry docks, harbor patrol boats, and the downtown skyline at sunset - and that's the entire reason to bring your build to the water instead. The So-Cal Cosplay Shoot at the Waterfront is the open-air edition, San Diego Bay behind every frame, the Embarcadero handing each costume an urban backdrop with water and skyline in the same shot. It's not better or worse than the park version; it's a different image, and the difference is the point. Any fandom, any build. Photographers with gear are welcome and encouraged. The waterfront light peaks in the late afternoon, so arrive early enough to catch golden hour before the crowd fills in. The shoot is organized but relaxed - come in costume and find the right backdrop. Embarcadero, San Diego. September 20th. Free. Follow @socosplayscene on Instagram for the exact gather point and start time.

Coming Soon

34 days away

Los Angeles Angels vs Minnesota Twins

Sep 20, 2026 $18+ Angel Stadium of Anaheim, 2000 E G…

The final home game of the season carries its own bittersweet charge: one last afternoon in the sun at the Big A, fan appreciation giveaways, and the long goodbye until spring. The Angels close out the home slate against the Minnesota Twins on a Sunday, the kind of relaxed, nostalgic day that reminds you why you fell for the ballpark in the first place. Sunday, September 20, 2026, Angel Stadium of Anaheim. Bring the family for the season send-off, thank the regulars in your section, and savor the last churro-and-sunshine day of Angels baseball for the year. Season finales have a gentle magic to them, win or lose. Come be there when the Halos take their final home bow of 2026 under the Anaheim sky.

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