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Jun 27, 2026
$10
GameSync San Diego, 2860 Main St, …
June's Dragon Ball Sparking Zero community night at GameSync in downtown San Diego on June 27. The meta has evolved since launch — new techniques, new character tiers, new answers to the old dominant strategies — and so has the local competition.
Full bracket, character variety encouraged, and the kind of crowd energy that only Dragon Ball generates in a live room. GameSync is the right venue for this: a fighting game community arcade with an audience that grew up with the franchise and takes it seriously without losing the joy. This is not casual. It is the San Diego FGC choosing the game it wants to compete at, which means the skill level is real and the matches are worth watching even if you are not in the bracket.
Show up early to warm up. Bracket play starts after an open practice period. 2860 Main St in Barrio Logan — free street parking available after 6 PM. All skill levels welcome. The regulars will explain the matchups. Dragon Ball Sparking Zero rewards style as much as execution. This is the game the community chose. Show up.
Weekly
35 Gathering
Tomorrow
35
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Every Friday· Next Oct 9
$10
GameSync San Diego, 2860 Main St, …
Somewhere in Logan Heights the same room fills up every week carrying the same question in the air: did you get any better since last time? Nobody says it out loud. Everybody is there to answer it.
This is the longest-running fighting game weekly in San Diego and one of the most established anywhere in the region — Street Fighter, Tekken, Guilty Gear Strive, Mortal Kombat, Dragon Ball FighterZ, straight open bracket. Casuals first if you want to warm your hands up, bracket after. The crowd runs from people entering their first tournament ever to regional players using the night as maintenance, and it stays competitive without turning cruel, which is the reputation this scene has quietly built for itself nationally.
No appointment, no seeding politics. You show up on Main Street, sign up, and play. Entry splits between the venue and the pot.
Text the friend who only plays online and blames the lag. This is the cure, and it is not gentle.
Monthly
34 Gathering
16 days away
34
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Every 4th Saturday· Next Oct 24
$10
GameSync San Diego, 2860 Main St, …
Ranked matches cannot give you this: the noise a room makes when someone reads a counter correctly, twenty people behind you with an opinion about every character select, and the very particular humiliation of losing in front of witnesses who saw exactly what you did wrong.
GameSync runs it properly — real monitors, proper controllers, a bracket that treats the evening like it matters. The advantage of a monthly is the regulars. These players have history with each other, which produces both a level of play and a level of trash talk you will never find in a random online lobby. A close set in this room has an audience, and the audience is loud.
Ten dollars at the door on Main Street. If you have been playing since launch, come find out where your game actually stands. If you are new to it, this is still the right entry — you will lose to people who can explain why.
Bring the friend you have been beating online. Watch what happens in person.
While you are lookingDifferent scene, same night out.
Coming Soon
810 Gathering
266 days away
810
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Jul 1 – Jul 4, 2027
Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…
You will be tired in a way that feels earned. Four days, a hundred thousand people, and not one of them needs you to explain what you are talking about.
The largest anime convention in North America takes the Los Angeles Convention Center over Fourth of July weekend and spills into the JW Marriott and the Ritz-Carlton beside it. Industry panels, screening rooms, autograph sessions with voice actors and composers, concerts that sell out weeks ahead. Studios from Japan use this as their main North American announcement stage — if a sequel or adaptation is being revealed, it often happens in a room you could be standing in.
The exhibit hall carries imported merchandise and collaboration exclusives that surface nowhere else on the continent.
Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S Figueroa St. Thursday through Sunday. Badges run from top-tier early-access down to single-day passes.
Book the connected hotel corridor months out. Everyone who tells you that learned it the hard way.
Coming Soon
304 Gathering
91 days away
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Jan 7 – Jan 10, 2027
Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …
Some knowledge you cannot buy: which panels are worth lining up an hour early for, which guest signings empty out fast, which late-night rooms never make it onto the printed schedule. Regulars hand that down to each other here, and it is the real inheritance of a convention that has been meeting for over two decades.
The tradeoff for running smaller than Anime Expo is access. To the guests, who trend toward voice actors and fan creators who build their year around Southern California cons. To the programming, which you can actually get into. To each other — the dealer room and artist alley run at a scale where you can move without turning sideways.
Four days at the Long Beach Convention Center, January 7-10, 2027, and they open the convention calendar for the whole region.
Send this to whoever you stood next to in line last year. They are already planning.
Coming Soon
184 Gathering
22 days away
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Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2026
Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…
The big one down the coast takes all the attention. The people who come to this one prefer it that way, and they are quietly glad you have not worked it out yet.
Three days at the Convention Center — celebrity signings, panels, and an exhibitor floor that runs independent publishers alongside the major houses. Fifty thousand people who grew up on the same stories, turning a hall into a reunion.
The character is different on purpose. This is the industry's own convention, the one people attend in costume because they want to rather than because the press is watching. Comics, sci-fi, gaming, horror, anime, fantasy, across all three days.
Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S Figueroa St. October 30 through November 1.
The mythology is still being made in that room, and some of the people making it are sitting at a table waiting for someone to say hello.
Coming Soon
172 Gathering
233 days away
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May 29 – May 31, 2027
Riverside Convention Center, 3637 …
An hour to Los Angeles for the big convention, an hour back at one in the morning — that is what being an anime fan out here has always meant. This is the year that stopped. There is a real pride in a room full of people from Riverside, San Bernardino, Temecula and Redlands who finally did not have to leave home to find each other. It is the whole format at a scale you can actually walk: panels, an exhibit hall, artist alley, gaming rooms, and a cosplay contest judged by a crowd that recognizes the characters without being told. No airport-terminal sprawl. That trade was made on purpose — less distance between you and the thing you came for. The convention takes over the Riverside Convention Center downtown, with dates confirming at animeriverside.com. Bring the friends who made that drive with you one too many times.
Monthly
122 Gathering
9 days away
122
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Monthly· Next Oct 17
Balboa Park, 1549 El Prado, San Di…
Somebody spent six months on a foam pauldron and somebody else bought their costume online last Tuesday, and for one morning in the most photogenic park in San Diego, nobody cares which one you are.
That is the whole premise. So-Cal Cosplay Scene runs it as an open call — any fandom, any level of build, no entry requirements, no competition, no hierarchy. The Spanish Colonial Revival facades do the production work for you: a Zelda build photographs against the museum walls like a production still, and a Star Wars costume catches the fountain light in ways that should not be possible from a public park.
It starts in the morning, when the light is good and the park is still quiet. Photographers are welcome and encouraged — bring your gear. Follow @socosplayscene for the gathering point.
Just come. That is the entire instruction, and it is the only one that has ever mattered here.
Coming Soon
102 Gathering
29 days away
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Nov 6 – Nov 8, 2026
Los Angeles Airport Marriott, 5855…
The best moment at a small convention is never on the schedule. It is the twenty minutes after a panel ends when the voice actor stays in the room and just keeps talking, because it is a small room and nobody is rushing them out.
Pacific Media Expo has run on that for two decades, built by and around the people who make the work: voice actors, anime producers, manga artists, and the Southern California fans who kept the lights on. The panels put you close. The dealer room runs mainstream to deep-cut. The AMV contest is where the real showing-off happens, and the hallway gatherings between official programming are half the reason people come back year after year.
It lands at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott on Century Boulevard, with the full schedule at pacificmediaexpo.com.
If you would rather hear how a show got made than wait in a line for a photo, this is your convention. Send it to the one person who will understand why.
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