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45 results for North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre in Anime & Manga Events Clear filter

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🌎 Nation's Best 7h away

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New York Comic Con 2026 — New York, NY

Tomorrow · Oct 8 – Oct 11 From $45 (1-day) Jacob K. Javits Convention Center,…

The Javits Center in October, a hundred thousand people in four days, every niche of pop culture in one building — and the streets of Hell's Kitchen turning into something you've never seen on a regular Tuesday. The Javits Center fills with a programmatic density that rewards strategic planning. Main stage panels feature talent from the year's biggest genre properties. The show floor covers hundreds of thousands of square feet of publishers, studios, collectibles vendors, and artist booths. Artist Alley at NYCC skews heavily toward comics — the original fanbase — alongside anime, gaming, and TV, giving it a different character than conventions that have shifted more entirely toward film and streaming. The autograph and photo op schedule is extensive; tickets for specific sessions go on sale in advance and sell out. New York Comic Con in 2026 is celebrating twenty years, and the Coney Island theme suggests organizers are going big on identity and atmosphere. The anniversary edition will likely bring programming and exclusives designed for the occasion. If you have been considering NYCC as a destination event, this is the year to go. The East Coast advantage: NYCC is adjacent to one of the world's great cities. The convention ends at 7pm and New York starts. Restaurants, bars, and attractions are all accessible from the Javits Center. Hotel inventory near the venue is limited; book early and consider Hudson Yards or Hell's Kitchen options within walking distance. Tickets go on sale in June with a Superfan Presale for Popverse members opening before general on-sale. Javits Center, New York City. October 8–11, 2026. New York Comic Con was founded in 2006 and reached 250,000 attendance within its first decade. The 20th anniversary edition in 2026 with the Coney Island theme signals that the organizers are treating this as a milestone year — expect expanded programming, anniversary exclusives, and a level of production that reflects two decades of iteration. If you have been waiting for the right year to make NYCC a destination trip, the 20th anniversary is the obvious choice.

Texas Renaissance Festival 2026 — Todd Mission, TX

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48 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 2 days away

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Texas Renaissance Festival 2026 — Todd Mission, TX

In 3 days · Oct 10 – Dec 13 21778 FM 1774, Todd Mission, TX 77…

Fifty-five acres in Todd Mission, Texas, eight themed weekends from late September through November. The Texas Renaissance Festival is the largest in the country — and it takes the concept seriously. Each weekend runs a different theme — Celtic Christmas, Halloween/All Hallows Eve, and specialty arts and family weekends — meaning the crowd, entertainment, and atmosphere shift dramatically from week to week. Six stages run simultaneously throughout the day: jousting tournaments, birds of prey demonstrations, fire performers, comedy troupes, and human chess matches. The Turkey Leg is a cultural institution unto itself; the Polonia Restaurant (authentic Polish food on the grounds) has its own dedicated following. Camping on the festival grounds is available and encouraged — staying overnight is its own experience, distinct from the day-visit version. The show closes at 8 PM but the energy runs later. Theme weekends attract different audiences: Celtic Christmas draws costumed annual returners; Halloween weekend brings the largest single-day crowds of the season. If you have attended a Renaissance festival anywhere in the country and thought it could be larger — you haven't seen larger. This is the template that smaller festivals try to replicate, and no other event in the country puts 500,000 people through a 55-acre living history environment across eight consecutive weekends. It is for people who love craft, performance, cosplay, and the kind of community that builds around all three. It is not for people who want to check off an attraction in two hours. The Texas Ren Fest rewards the visitor who stays, explores, and comes back. Buy tickets online in advance — on-site prices are higher and entry lines longer. Arrive at the 9 AM opening to witness the King and Queen gate ceremony; it sets the tone for the day. Bring cash: 00–200 per person is a realistic budget for food and artisan purchases, as card readers are inconsistent. Wear comfortable, closed-toe shoes — 55 acres of uneven ground and dust make anything else a mistake. Approach the grounds from Highway 105 (north) to avoid the worst traffic backup. Pick five or six must-see performances before arriving and let everything else happen organically; first-timers who try to see everything see nothing. The themed-weekend structure means it is functionally eight different festivals. Celtic Christmas, in late November, has its own cultlike following among people who return annually in period costume. The Texas Ren Fest has been operating for over 50 years and still generates the reaction of someone discovering it for the first time. Season opens September 26, 2026. The cast live out here and work the circuit of smaller faires the rest of the year, which is why the accents hold up under questioning.

SD Who Con 2026 — San Diego's Doctor Who Convention

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8 days away

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SD Who Con 2026 — San Diego's Doctor Who Convention

In 9 days · Oct 16 Handlery Hotel, 950 Hotel Circle N…

Somewhere in your memory, a blue box is still spinning. You heard the sound once — that impossible grinding wheeze — and something in your chest shifted. You never fully came back from it. SD Who Con returns to San Diego for a weekend built by the people who understand what that sound means. This is not a corporate franchise activation. It is a volunteer-run gathering at the Handlery Hotel, October 16–18, where the hallways fill with cosplayers who sewed their own scarves, collectors who can date a Dalek by its bumps, and first-timers who just discovered that their obsession has a name and a room. Panels, vendors, an Artist and Author Alley, and guest appearances fill the programming. But the real draw is the recognition — sitting in a room where nobody needs the reference explained. Where someone can say 'reverse the polarity' and fifty people laugh without thinking. If you've ever paused a conversation to explain regeneration to someone who didn't ask, your people are already here. The San Diego Doctor Who crowd meets in far smaller rooms the rest of the year, which is where most of these costumes get their test run.

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🌎 Nation's Best 36 days away

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TwitchCon North America 2026

Nov 13 – Nov 15, 2026 San Diego Convention Center, 111 W…

Your favorite streamer - the one you have watched for 3,000 hours - is probably in the building, and you can actually walk up and talk to them. That is the whole reason to go. There is a strange intimacy to a parasocial relationship built over thousands of hours of someone's voice in your headphones, and this is the one place it collapses into a real handshake. You know their cat's name. You know which of their friends you would get along with. They do not know you exist, and somehow that does not make the queue feel foolish, because everyone standing in it is carrying the same lopsided friendship and nobody here is embarrassed about it. The expo hall plays like a live streaming studio crossed with a gaming lounge: streamers broadcasting right off the floor, sub-notification sounds coming from everywhere, meet-and-greets with people who have lived in your second monitor for years. Variety Arcades, developer showcases, and cosplay competitions for game characters fill out the rest, and the whole convention is built around live streaming culture - the people who make it and the people who never miss a stream, in the same room for once. Is it worth the trip? If streaming is background noise to you, no - it will read as a trade show for a job you do not have. If a particular channel has been the thing you put on when the apartment is too quiet, then yes, unreservedly. This is the one weekend of the year when a community stops being a chat window and becomes a crowd with faces in it. What first-timers get wrong is planning around panels and missing the hall. The panels get recorded. The accidental conversation in a signing line does not. Wear shoes you can stand in all day, bring a battery, and accept that your schedule will survive roughly until lunch. TwitchCon North America 2026 returns to San Diego, September 25-27. Half the crowd stays in the city afterward, and the unofficial meetups scattered around the convention are where the rest of it actually happens.

Yuki Chiba — First North American Headline Tour at Music Box San Diego

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26 days away

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Yuki Chiba — First North American Headline Tour at Music Box San Diego

Nov 3, 2026 Music Box, 1337 India St, San Dieg…

Somewhere between city pop and shoegaze there is a room that only opens at night, and Yuki Chiba holds the key. The Japanese singer-songwriter's voice sits in the same frequency as streetlights reflecting off wet pavement — warm, a little blurred, impossible to ignore once you've noticed it. This is his first headline tour in North America, which means the room will be full of people who discovered him through playlists that autoplay at 2 AM, through anime-adjacent OSTs that hit harder than the show itself, through a friend's story that just said 'trust me.' The Music Box in Little Italy is small enough that you'll feel the bass in your chest and see the setlist taped to the monitor. This is the kind of show where the crowd is half the experience — everyone there found him the same way you did, and nobody can explain why it feels this personal. Tickets are twenty-five dollars advance, thirty at the door. Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · 8 PM · Music Box in Little Italy · 1337 India St · $25 adv / $30 door

Wuthering Waves Concert Tour: To the New World

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9 days away

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Wuthering Waves Concert Tour: To the New World

In 10 days · Oct 17 Peacock Theater, 777 Chick Hearn C…

Loving a game nobody around you plays is a specific kind of lonely. You have four hundred hours in it, you know the soundtrack better than most albums you own, and the people who would understand are all on a Discord server in other time zones. Then a tour announces a North American stop and the server becomes a group of people you can actually stand next to. This is that night. The score for this game is genuinely orchestral - recorded with real ensembles, not a synth patch pretending - and hearing it played live in a two-thousand-seat theater is the closest the medium gets to a symphony hall treating it seriously. Cosplay will be everywhere and nobody will find it remarkable. If you have somebody in your life who has tried to explain this game to you and given up, this is the night to just go with them. This is the North American debut of the tour, which has otherwise only played Asia. Doors well before the eight o'clock downbeat on Saturday the 17th.

Comic Con Los Angeles 2026 — Stan Lee's LACC

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22 days away

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Comic Con Los Angeles 2026 — Stan Lee's LACC

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.

ANIME WRESTLE-VERSE: The Ultimate Cosplay Entrance Experience

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23 days away

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ANIME WRESTLE-VERSE: The Ultimate Cosplay Entrance Experience

Oct 31, 2026 30 8548 Lankershim Blvd, Los Angeles,…

KnokX Pro Wrestling looked at two rooms -- anime cosplay contests and wrestling entrance theater -- and decided they belonged together. ANIME WRESTLE-VERSE is what happened when a real wrestling promotion asked: what if the cosplay walk-out was the competition? On Halloween night in North Hollywood, 275 people will watch competitors enter the ring in full anime cosplay -- theme music, character energy, crowd reaction -- competing for the Anime Wrestle-Verse Championship Belt and a 750 dollar prize pool. This is not a costume contest judged on accuracy. It is judged on the entrance. On presence. On the room reaction when you walk through that curtain. Between heats: KnokX Pro wrestling matches, a live K-pop and anime DJ, a vendor floor, food, and photo ops. The full card. This is for the person who watched wrestling and thought about doing it in cosplay. Or the cosplayer who was waiting for a stage where the walk-in matters as much as the fit. October 31, 2026. Doors 7 PM. North Hollywood, Los Angeles. Tickets: 30 dollars GA. Capacity: 275. Ages 18+.

Anime Weekend Atlanta 2026 — Atlanta, GA

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🌎 Nation's Best 42 days away

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Anime Weekend Atlanta 2026 — Atlanta, GA

Nov 19 – Nov 22, 2026 Georgia World Congress Center, Bui…

The American South's longest-running anime convention has been meeting in Atlanta every September since 1997. Anime Weekend Atlanta is where the Southeast's anime fandom comes to recognize itself. Walk the AWA floor on a Thursday night and the energy hits immediately: cosplayers in elaborate handmade builds line the escalators, artist alley tables overflow with original prints and fan art, and the programming halls pulse with AMVs, panel debates, and late-night gaming tournaments that run until 3 AM. The dealers room is legitimately staggering — vintage merchandise, imports, rare figures, and indie creators all packed into a space where you could spend a full day and still miss things. The masquerade on Saturday night is one of the most theatrical cosplay competitions in the country, drawing contestants who have spent months on a single build. AWA moves differently than the mega-cons: it feels less like a trade show and more like a reunion — because for thousands of attendees, it genuinely is. If you grew up watching anime in the South and never found your people, AWA is the answer. This is not for casual fans who think anime is just Naruto and Dragon Ball. It is for people who obsess over seasonal charts, debate subculture lore, and have a hard drive full of unfinished cosplay plans. First-timers frequently describe AWA as the con that finally felt like home. If you are that person — the one who learned Japanese from subtitles and named a pet after a character — this is worth every flight mile. Book your hotel at the World Congress Center Marriott before August or it will sell out — AWA attendees treat the hotel block as sacred and it fills months in advance. Badge pickup lines on Thursday afternoon are brutal; opt for pre-registration and arrive before noon. The dealers room has no ATMs inside — bring cash, bring more than you think you need, and budget for at least one impulse figure you did not plan for. The programming schedule releases about six weeks before the event and fills fast; panel rooms cap out, so plan your must-see events 30 minutes early. The loading dock area outside Building C is where the best spontaneous cosplay photo shoots happen after dark. It is the convention that proved the South has always had its own thriving fan culture — it just needed a room big enough to hold it. AWA 2026 runs November 19-22 at the Georgia World Congress Center, Building C, Atlanta. The Southern con circuit keeps going the rest of the year in far smaller hotels, and the same people build costumes for all of it.

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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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50 days away

Hostile: Benda B2B Vastive

Nov 27, 2026 The Vermont, 1020 N Vermont Ave, L…

Back-to-back sets are the only format in electronic music that is genuinely unrepeatable. Two people trading records in real time, each trying to answer what the other just did, means the night cannot be rehearsed and has never happened before and will not happen again in that order. When it goes well the crowd can hear the argument. Hostile runs bass nights at a small East Hollywood room and has built a reputation on booking exactly this — pairings rather than headliners. Putting Benda and Vastive on one deck for a long stretch is a deliberate choice about texture; both work the heavier, more mechanical end of dubstep, so rather than contrast you get escalation. The room is the other half of it. The Vermont holds a couple hundred people, which for bass music is the correct number — sub frequencies in a large hall dissipate, and in a small one they are structural. You feel the set in your ribs rather than hear it. Nine PM to two AM on Friday November 27, the night after Thanksgiving, which is historically the best-attended and worst-organized night of anyone's year. This one is organized. The Vermont, 1020 North Vermont Avenue.

Anime Expo 2027 — Los Angeles Convention Center

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266 days away

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Anime Expo 2027 — Los Angeles Convention Center

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.

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🌎 Nation's Best 127 days away

Katsucon 2027 — National Harbor, MD

Feb 12, 2027 Gaylord National Resort & Conventi…

There is a photograph you have seen without knowing where it came from: someone in an elaborate costume standing on a marble staircase under an eighteen-story glass atrium, winter light coming through, looking like a still from a film that was never made. That is Katsucon, and the building is most of the reason it has the reputation it does. Held every February at the Gaylord National Resort on the Potomac just outside Washington, it is among the most photographed anime conventions in the world, and the cosplay community treats a weekend there as something closer to a pilgrimage than a trip. The atrium is the event. Other conventions have panels and dealers and artist alleys, and Katsucon has those too, but what actually happens is that thousands of people spend three days building and wearing things they worked on since summer, and then the building gives them the best backdrop in North America to be seen in. Photographers book months ahead. There are impromptu gatherings by series on the staircases at all hours. Because the whole thing is under one roof and the weather outside is February in Maryland, the convention never really stops — the hallways at three in the morning are as busy as the floor at noon. Worth it? If you make things — sew, foam-smith, wig-style, prop-build — this is the room where that labor is understood without explanation, and there is no substitute for that. If you are coming to shop or to meet voice actors, other conventions do that better and cheaper. Katsucon is for the makers and the people who love watching them, and it is honest about that. First-timers who come without a costume routinely report it was still the best convention they had been to, because the spectacle is genuinely free to watch. What to know: the host hotel sells out almost immediately, and staying on-site is materially different from staying off — the atrium at night is the whole point. Budget for that. Bring a repair kit; something will break. The convention center portion and the hotel portion are connected but the walk is longer than it looks in costume. And Friday is the quiet day worth arriving for. It earns a place here because it is the clearest example in American fandom of a venue and a community finding each other perfectly, and because knowing it exists changes what you think a costume is for. Katsucon 2027 runs February 12–14, 2027 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.

ONE PIECE Fest 2026 — Los Angeles (COSM LA)

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ONE PIECE Fest 2026 — Los Angeles (COSM LA)

Aug 25 – Aug 26, 2026 COSM Los Angeles, Inglewood, CA

For ten years you have been waiting on Elbaph. Mostly alone — a chapter a week, on a phone, late, inside a story you have been reading for twenty-seven years. Toei built a room for it. An 87-foot LED dome where the floor and the ceiling and every wall move at once, themed to the arc happening right now instead of one that already ended. First production of its kind in North America. People who went to the Tokyo edition keep failing to describe it and landing in the same place: the closest anyone has come to standing on the Grand Line. Entry is by lottery, roughly 7,000 across both days, and Discord servers have organized group registrations since the announcement. There is no door to walk up to. COSM Los Angeles, 777 Prairie Ave, Inglewood. August 25-26, 2026. Sessions 10am-2pm and 4pm-8pm. $109 per pair via Ticketmaster after lottery notification. Send this to whoever you have been theorizing with for the last decade.

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🌎 Nation's Best 169 days away

Sakura-Con 2027 — Seattle, WA

Mar 26, 2027 Seattle Convention Center, 705 Pik…

The oldest and largest anime convention in the Pacific Northwest was started by a group of college students in the mid-nineties, back when liking this at all required explaining yourself, and it is still run entirely by volunteers. That fact shapes everything about the weekend. Nobody is extracting margin from you. The programming is built by people who wanted it to exist rather than by a department, which is why the schedule is full of things no commercial convention would ever green-light. What that produces is a convention with an unusually high proportion of actual content — panels running past midnight, a serious concert program, a masquerade that people prepare for over months, and a video programming track that still shows things on a screen in a dark room to whoever wanders in. There is a formal ball. There is a chess tournament. The dealer hall is large but is not the center of gravity, which at an anime convention in the current era is genuinely unusual. The crowd skews younger than the older-guard conventions and the atmosphere is closer to a very large school event than to a trade show, in the best possible way. Worth it? If you want a convention where the programming rather than the shopping is the reason to be there, this is one of a handful left in the country, and it is the best of them on the West Coast outside of Los Angeles. If you are coming primarily for big-name industry announcements, the larger shows will serve you better. Sakura-Con is for people who want to spend three days inside the thing rather than adjacent to it. What to know before you go: registration opens early and the price ladder rewards buying well ahead. Late March in Seattle means rain, and the walk between the convention center and most hotels is short but unsheltered. The concerts are included with a badge and fill up, so line early for the ones you care about. Bring cash for artist alley. And the volunteer staff will genuinely help you if you ask, because they are attendees too. It belongs on this list because a thirty-year-old, volunteer-run, still-thriving convention is evidence that a community can build something durable without anyone monetizing it, and that is worth knowing exists. Sakura-Con 2027 runs March 26–28, 2027 at the Seattle Convention Center.

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🌎 Nation's Best 204 days away

C2E2 2027 — Chicago, IL

Apr 30, 2027 McCormick Place, 2301 S King Dr, C…

Chicago spent years being treated as a stop rather than a destination on the convention circuit, and the show that changed that did it by being unusually good at the unglamorous parts — floor layout, panel scheduling, actually letting people talk to creators. C2E2 has grown into the Midwest's flagship pop culture convention, held each spring at McCormick Place on the lakefront, and it now draws six figures of attendance across a weekend. The experience is defined by scale plus air. McCormick Place is one of the largest convention buildings in North America, which means that even at peak Saturday the floor does not have the crushing quality that smaller venues develop. The artist alley and the comics guests are substantial, the anime and gaming presence has grown considerably, and the cosplay championship is a serious competitive event rather than a costume parade. What regulars single out is the programming: panels here are frequently craft-focused and long enough to get somewhere, and the moderators generally know the material. There is also a genuinely good kids' area, which makes it workable as a family weekend rather than a thing one parent does alone. Is it worth it? If you live anywhere in the middle of the country, this is your show and there is no real competitor — the alternative is flying to a coast. If you already attend two or three large conventions a year on the coasts, C2E2 will feel familiar rather than revelatory, though the artist lineup is consistently strong. It is best understood as the most complete general-purpose fan convention between the coasts. What to know: McCormick Place is not downtown and the walk from most hotels is longer than the map suggests; use the shuttles or plan for a train. Chicago in late April can be forty degrees and windy off the lake regardless of what the forecast promised. Food inside is expensive and mediocre — eat before or walk to the south loop. Buy exclusives Friday morning or accept you will not get them. And the smaller press tables at the back of artist alley are where the finds are. It belongs here because a healthy convention in the middle of the country is a real indicator about where fandom lives, and it is not only on the coasts. C2E2 2027 runs April 30 – May 2, 2027 at McCormick Place.

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Hentai Matsuri 2026 — San Diego

Jun 12 – Jun 14, 2026 Varies — see Eventbrite for badge options 950 Hotel Circle North, Mission Va…

Three days of programming the mainstream anime circuit won't run. Hentai Matsuri returns to the Handlery Hotel in San Diego's Mission Valley for panels, cosplay, a vendor hall, and more — June 12–14, 2026. Hentai Matsuri is a deliberately adult-oriented anime and pop culture convention that leans into the parts of anime fandom that other conventions treat as secondary — mature art, doujinshi culture, cosplay without content restrictions, and creator-forward panel programming. The convention has built a loyal following in the Southern California anime community over multiple editions: repeat attendees recognize the crowd, and the crowd recognizes itself. Panels cover creator meetups, figure collecting, the adult animation industry, fan art culture and cosplay-adjacent programming. The vendor hall leans toward independent artists, doujinshi creators and specialty merchandise you won't find at a larger general-audience con. The convention floor operates on a schedule; the hotel lobby runs on a different clock. If you've maxed out Anime Expo and want something smaller, more focused and unfiltered, this is the room. Handlery Hotel, Mission Valley. 18+ with government ID.

We Touch Grass: Los Angeles Anime Rave 2026

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We Touch Grass: Los Angeles Anime Rave 2026

Oct 3 – Oct 4, 2026 TBA Catch One, 4067 West Pico Boulevar…

Somewhere around the second hour, a room full of adults in cosplay screams the opening of a show they once cried at, and nobody is embarrassed, and that is the whole product. This is not a convention panel with a speaker in the corner. It is a full-tilt dance floor — breakdowns built off anime openings, EDM edits, bass drops, remixes, and a sea of glowsticks going up the second the right song lands. The crew has run this circuit across North America and Europe, and the San Diego night they threw sold out months ahead, which tells you what the door will look like here. Cosplay is strongly encouraged. Catch One has the rooms and the sound system to hold it. On Pico in Los Angeles, twenty-one and over, and tickets move fast. Send it to the friend who owns the wig and has never once had anywhere to wear it.

Studio Ghibli PONYO Exhibition -- Academy Museum Los Angeles

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Studio Ghibli PONYO Exhibition -- Academy Museum Los Angeles

Every day · Next Oct 8 6067 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, C…

You were five, and the ocean was the biggest thing you had ever seen, and nobody had to explain to you that it was alive. Walking into this gallery reopens that exact file, except now you are an adult and still cannot account for why Miyazaki makes you cry. More than a hundred pieces, hand-picked by the studio: original drawings in Miyazaki's own hand, art boards laying out the frame-by-frame labor behind every wave that rolled across the screen, posters from the original Japanese release. Some of it has never been shown anywhere in North America. There is a table where you build your own stop-motion sequence out of paper sea creatures, which is the room where the children go still and the parents quietly take over. Wilshire Boulevard at the Academy Museum, timed admission, closed Tuesdays. Take the kid. Then notice which one of you refuses to leave the drawings.

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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.

One Piece Rave Los Angeles — August 2026 at The Compound

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One Piece Rave Los Angeles — August 2026 at The Compound

Aug 16 – Aug 17, 2026 The Compound by Dirt Dog, 6540 E W…

Luffy finds a new island and the entire crew loses their minds. Somewhere around midnight that is precisely what this room is doing, except everyone is in costume and the bass is doing the screaming. COSRAVES runs it: DJs pulling One Piece themes apart and rebuilding them over house and bass, with anime cut into the projections and synced to the drops. Half the floor can name every Straw Hat in order. The other half came because a friend said trust me, and an hour in there is no way left to tell which is which. Anime fandom and rave culture should not fit together this well. They do, and the cosplay commitment here is unhinged in the best possible way. A warehouse in Commerce, doors very late, grown folks only, two nights in August. You will leave at closing with your ears ringing and the certainty that you belong to something. Bring the friend who has been reading it since middle school.

One Piece Card Game Regional Championship -- Los Angeles 2026

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One Piece Card Game Regional Championship -- Los Angeles 2026

Jun 13 – Jun 14, 2026 1201 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, C…

You've been shuffling the same sixty cards against yourself for three weeks. You know the matchup spread, the mulligan lines, the exact turn the deck either wins or falls apart. What you can't know -- not until you're across the table from someone who did the same thing with a different list -- is whether you were right. That's what a Regional is for. The One Piece Card Game barely landed in North America and the competitive scene already plays like it's been here a decade. On June 13 and 14, CoreTCG runs the Regional Championship at the Los Angeles Convention Center -- the biggest organized-play weekend on the Southern California OPTCG calendar, the one people rearrange their month around. CoreTCG is the organizer the serious players trust to run a clean bracket, which is why the room fills with people who didn't drive in to have fun so much as to find out where they actually stand. Open bracket, two days -- the kind of tournament where the metagame for the next month gets decided in real time, and you get to watch it happen or be the one who decides it. Entry is $37, registration runs through rk9.gg (the platform every OPTCG player already lives on for standings and pairings), and the deadline is June 12 at 7 p.m. -- miss it and you're spectating. Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S Figueroa St, right off the Metro Expo Line.

One Piece Card Game: Pirates Party — Los Angeles

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One Piece Card Game: Pirates Party — Los Angeles

Jun 20, 2026 Entry fee required; varies by event TBD — Greater Los Angeles Area, CA

The One Piece Card Game Pirates Party 2026 regional event lands in the greater Los Angeles area — and the timing could not be more deliberate. With ONE PIECE Fest set for COSM LA in August, the TCG scene is reaching crystallization phase in SoCal: the anime is at peak cultural moment, the card game is in its most competitive window, and the regional tournament format brings competitive players face to face with the community that texts each other about pulls at 11pm. Pirates Party is Bandai Namco's signature regional event format: competitive main events, side tournaments, exclusive promo card distribution, community meetups, and the kind of trading floor energy that doesn't happen on Discord. SoCal has one of the most active One Piece Card Game communities in North America — the competitive circuit here runs through multiple stores in LA, Orange County, and San Diego year-round. Whether you are grinding ranked play or showing up to trade and watch, this is the room where the SoCal One Piece TCG community will be in May-June 2026. Registration through the official One Piece Card Game website. Exact venue to be announced — follow the official channels for confirmation. Promo cards distributed to all registered participants. Show up with your best deck and an empty binder.

RAVEKAWA — Chiikawa Anime Rave at Catch One Los Angeles

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RAVEKAWA — Chiikawa Anime Rave at Catch One Los Angeles

Jul 4 – Jul 5, 2026 Catch One, 4067 W Pico Blvd, Los A…

The Chiikawa fandom understood something about those characters before the merch got everywhere — the anxious, striving energy of three tiny creatures trying to be brave is the same emotional register you feel walking into a club for the first time at 22. A rave built around that energy is not an anime tie-in. It is the right room. Catch One has been the Black-owned Pico Union venue at the center of Los Angeles club culture since 1973. Holding a Chiikawa rave there on July 4 weekend means the people who knew about this before the announcement are showing up to a place that has been holding rooms like this for half a century. Kawaii aesthetics, club music, decade-deep house lineage — the convergence is intentional. You will recognize the people there because they read the same threads as you. They cried when Chiikawa cried. They are not here to be ironic about it. The room is for the fans who carried this fandom when it was still small. Catch One Los Angeles, July 4 weekend. Doors and lineup details on the organizer page.

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Collectors Expo Orange County 2026

Aug 22 – Aug 23, 2026 Anaheim Convention Center, 800 Wes…

You know the type. Keeps a separate folder for the cards they will never sell, can tell you what a binder smells like, texts one specific friend the second a set drops. For years that person has driven to a different little shop for every game they love — Pokemon one weekend, One Piece the next, Lorcana somewhere across town. This is the weekend all of it lands in the same building. Pokemon, One Piece, Riftbound, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Lorcana and Magic share one convention floor: vendors deep enough to turn up the card you have been hunting for years, tables to trade and play, and the rare overlap where competitive grinders and vintage collectors finally walk the same aisles. Part flea market, part reunion, part the dig you have been putting off. Anaheim Convention Center, 800 West Katella Avenue. If you already know what a good pull feels like in your chest, nobody has to talk you into this one.

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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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AniPop 2026

May 16, 2026 $12–$17 California Center for the Arts, Es…

California Center for the Arts, Escondido. May 16th, 2026. $12-$17. AniPop brings the anime pop-culture market to a performing arts venue in North County San Diego — one of the only events in the region specifically designed for the community between Los Angeles and the San Diego convention circuit. The AniPop floor is built around independent artists and anime merchandise — handmade goods, fan art, imported items, limited-edition products that circulate at conventions and don't exist in stores. The artists who table here chose this event specifically, which means the energy of the dealer's room is different from a mall pop-up: these are people who care about the work and came to be in a room with people who care about it the same way. $12-$17 for the day. The California Center for the Arts has the layout to handle this well — the performing arts complex gives the event room to breathe without feeling underpopulated. Escondido is thirty minutes from San Diego and an hour from Los Angeles, which puts it in reach for most of SoCal. anipop.us for tickets and the full vendor list. The artist alley is where the real discovery happens — slow down in that section. The piece you didn't know you were looking for is usually on the table you almost walked past.

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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Anime Expo 2026 — Day 3

Jul 4, 2026 From $65 Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…

Day 3 at Anime Expo is when the convention becomes itself. Saturday, July 4, 2026 at the Los Angeles Convention Center — the highest-attendance day of the largest anime convention in North America. Over 100,000 fans across the floor, programming running in every corner of the building, the cosplay competition at full force. This year, Day 3 carries weight for two fandoms simultaneously. The BLEACH: Thousand-Year Blood War — The Calamity panel takes place Saturday morning at Crypto.com Arena, with Japanese VA Masakazu Morita and English voice director Johnny Yong Bosch present. And in the afternoon (2:45–4:05 PM, JW Diamond room), Science SARU presents the North American premiere panel for Ghost in the Shell 2026 — the first new entry in the franchise in over a decade, premiering on streaming July 7. This is a rare convergence: two landmark franchise events, one day, one convention. Beyond the main panels: the Artist Alley is at its most densely packed, exclusives sell out by early afternoon, and the spontaneous meetups — people who found each other because of a shared series, a specific cosplay, a niche fandom — run into the night. Plan for crowds at the main entrances by midmorning. General admission and day badges available. The Saturday ticket moves fastest.

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Anime Expo 2026 — Day 2

Jul 3, 2026 From $65 Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…

Anime Expo 2026 — Day 2 continues Friday, July 3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Anime Expo is the largest anime convention in North America, drawing over 100,000 fans to the Los Angeles Convention Center each summer. The 2026 edition runs July 2-5 across all four days, with a massive 340,000-square-foot Exhibit Hall, Artist Alley, J-Pop and ani-song concerts, industry panels, anime premieres, cosplay competitions, autograph sessions, and gaming areas. The convention is organized by the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation and runs continuously across all four days. Each day brings different programming, exclusive announcements, and guests from across the anime, manga, and J-Pop industries. Saturday and Sunday draw the largest crowds; Thursday and Friday move at a more manageable pace for exhibit hall access. The Los Angeles Convention Center is located at 1201 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90015, steps from the EXPO/Convention Center Metro station. Badge pickup opens before the convention; pick yours up early to avoid lines. Tickets are available at anime-expo.org. Single-day and four-day badges are offered, with four-day badges providing the best value for full-weekend attendees.

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Anime Expo 2026

Jul 2 – Jul 5, 2026 Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…

Anime Expo runs July 2nd through 5th at the Los Angeles Convention Center — badges at AXS — and the West Hall, South Hall, Petree, and Concourse are all cleared for four days and given over to the largest anime convention in North America. A hundred thousand people. Some in costumes that took six months to build. All in the same building at the same time. The AX floor rewards knowing what you're looking for and punishes aimlessness — the Exhibit Hall has premiere merchandise, Japanese publishers, indie creators, and industry names in a space that takes three hours to cover once at a casual pace. The panels fill the big rooms with standing ovations for announcements that hit the internet seconds later. The Artist Alley is where the convention finds its actual soul: original work, fan work, artists who drove thirteen hours and set up at 6 AM because this is the room where their work finds its people. Outside the hall, the cosplay density on Day 2 turns the Convention Center plaza into its own event. Four days is not enough time. Pick your anchors — panels, signings, morning Exhibit Hall, night events — and let the rest happen around them. Badges sell out. Lock yours in.

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Anime Expo 2026 — Day 1

Jul 2, 2026 From $65 Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…

Anime Expo 2026 — Day 1 opens Thursday, July 2 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Anime Expo is the largest anime convention in North America, drawing over 100,000 fans to the Los Angeles Convention Center each summer. The 2026 edition runs July 2-5 across all four days, with a massive 340,000-square-foot Exhibit Hall, Artist Alley, J-Pop and ani-song concerts, industry panels, anime premieres, cosplay competitions, autograph sessions, and gaming areas. The convention is organized by the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation and runs continuously across all four days. Each day brings different programming, exclusive announcements, and guests from across the anime, manga, and J-Pop industries. Saturday and Sunday draw the largest crowds; Thursday and Friday move at a more manageable pace for exhibit hall access. The Los Angeles Convention Center is located at 1201 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90015, steps from the EXPO/Convention Center Metro station. Badge pickup opens before the convention; pick yours up early to avoid lines. Tickets are available at anime-expo.org. Single-day and four-day badges are offered, with four-day badges providing the best value for full-weekend attendees.

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Anime Expo 2026 — Day 4

Jul 5, 2026 From $45 Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…

Anime Expo 2026 — Day 4 closes the convention on Sunday, July 5 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Anime Expo is the largest anime convention in North America, drawing over 100,000 fans to the Los Angeles Convention Center each summer. The 2026 edition runs July 2-5 across all four days, with a massive 340,000-square-foot Exhibit Hall, Artist Alley, J-Pop and ani-song concerts, industry panels, anime premieres, cosplay competitions, autograph sessions, and gaming areas. The convention is organized by the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation and runs continuously across all four days. Each day brings different programming, exclusive announcements, and guests from across the anime, manga, and J-Pop industries. Saturday and Sunday draw the largest crowds; Thursday and Friday move at a more manageable pace for exhibit hall access. The Los Angeles Convention Center is located at 1201 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA 90015, steps from the EXPO/Convention Center Metro station. Badge pickup opens before the convention; pick yours up early to avoid lines. Tickets are available at anime-expo.org. Single-day and four-day badges are offered, with four-day badges providing the best value for full-weekend attendees.

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Anime Expo 2026 — Los Angeles, CA

Jul 2 – Jul 5, 2026 From $87 (1-day) / $175 (4-day) Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…

Every July 4th weekend, the Los Angeles Convention Center stops being a convention center and becomes the largest gathering of anime fans in North America. The four-day span draws 100,000 attendees and turns downtown LA into the axis of the anime world for the summer. The scale hits you immediately. The Exhibit Hall spans over 340,000 square feet of merchandise, artist booths, publisher displays, and licensed collectibles. Artist Alley is a separate destination — hundreds of independent creators selling original art, prints, and handmade goods, the kind of work you will not find on any streaming platform or official retail channel. The Industry Panels are where announcements happen: English dub cast reveals, new season confirmations, licensing news that fans will screenshot and share for weeks. Voice actor autograph sessions routinely have lines forming before sunrise. Is Anime Expo worth it? If you are even moderately embedded in anime culture — yes, emphatically. The density of what you can see and do in four days at the LACC is unmatched. There is no equivalent event in North America for scope, for industry access, for the sheer number of people who look exactly as excited about the same things you are. The cosplay alone — tens of thousands of costumes across every franchise — is worth the badge price for someone who has never seen it at this scale. Before you go: buy your badge early; prices increase and popular event tickets (Masquerade, concerts) require separate purchase and sell out fast. The convention floor opens at 9am but autograph lottery lines form before 7. Wear comfortable shoes — you will walk six miles without trying. The 4th of July weekend means Downtown LA is also hosting holiday events; plan transit accordingly. Metro is faster than driving. Bring cash for Artist Alley. Anime Expo earns its Nation's Best position because it is the single largest public expression of a cultural moment that has been building for thirty years and shows no sign of slowing. The mainstream discovered anime. AX is where the culture that built it celebrates on its own terms. Los Angeles Convention Center. July 2–5, 2026. The concert programming — separate ticketed events within AX — brings J-pop and ani-song artists to Los Angeles who rarely perform in North America outside of this weekend. If you follow any Japanese artist, check the concert schedule before finalizing your badge type. These shows sell out independently of the main badge and often represent the single best live music opportunity of any anime fan's year.

Demon Slayer: New Arc — Season Premiere Watch Party

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Demon Slayer: New Arc — Season Premiere Watch Party

Jul 3, 2026 Animé Café, 3671 30th St, San Dieg…

Animé Café, 3671 30th St, San Diego. July 4th. Demon Slayer's new arc premieres on Crunchyroll and Animé Café hosts the watch party — the specific version of this event where the room is full of people who have been waiting since the last arc ended and have opinions ready before the first episode loads. Demon Slayer watch parties are their own category of experience. The show builds to moments — the breathing technique reveals, the demon transformations, the specific chord progressions that arrive underneath the fights that earn them — and those moments are designed to be witnessed with other people. The collective inhale before something lands, the collective exhale after it does, the conversation that starts before the credits finish. That's what the Animé Café watch party provides. July 4th. crunchyroll.com for the premiere schedule. Animé Café at 3671 30th St runs a venue built for exactly this gathering. Arrive before the episode — the setup includes the context catch-up that works whether you rewatched everything recently or haven't touched it since the last arc. Come in for a drink. Stay for the whole watch. The new arc starts here.

Anime Impulse Bay Area 2026 — Santa Clara, CA

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Anime Impulse Bay Area 2026 — Santa Clara, CA

Jul 18 – Jul 19, 2026 Santa Clara Convention Center, 500…

The floor hits different up here. NorCal's anime crowd is its own thing - tech workers who cosplay, university anime clubs that run their own programming, a vendor hall that skews more independent than the LA circuit - and once a year it fills the Santa Clara Convention Center for one of Northern California's largest anime weekends. The Artist Alley is the real draw: Northern California has a deep well of independent creators whose work rarely reaches Southern California convention markets, so if you collect original prints, this floor rewards the walk. If you are the kind of person who treats convention season as a pilgrimage - who plans the year around AX in July and SDCC in July and fills the weekends with smaller cons that hit differently - Anime Impulse Bay Area is worth the drive or the flight. The production is professional, the crowd skews slightly older than Pomona (early-to-mid 20s median), and the July timing slots cleanly between AX and the August convention season. A few logistics: the Santa Clara Convention Center is BART-adjacent (Convention Center station, Orange Line), which matters if you are flying into SJC or coming from SF. The floor gets crowded Saturday afternoon around 1-3pm. Industry panels and local creator showcases are scheduled to avoid overlap with the main stage, so read the schedule before you arrive. Parking is available but fills by 11am Saturday. Cosplay is everywhere and elaborate builds are the norm, not the exception - the hallway costume game is legitimately competitive. Anime Impulse has become the convention for Northern California's anime community the way Anime Expo defines the Southern California circuit, and it is not trying to be AX; it built its own identity around community access and independent creator support. San Jose and Santa Clara have a dense Japanese-American cultural community that shows up visibly in the Artist Alley and cosplay composition, alongside independent zine publishers, food vendors with Bay Area-specific flavor, and a significant South Asian otaku community - dimensions you do not find at Southern California conventions. Anime Impulse Bay Area 2026 lands at the Santa Clara Convention Center July 18-19, with a guest list built around the current season's most talked-about creators.

Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc — Fan Screening Community Event San Diego

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Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc — Fan Screening Community Event San Diego

Jun 7, 2026 AMC Mission Valley, 1640 Camino de…

Chainsaw Man: The Movie — Reze Arc is in theaters now across San Diego, and the local anime fan community is gathering. The film adapts the Reze Arc from Tatsuki Fujimoto manga — a self-contained story with Reze as one of the most complex characters in the Chainsaw Man universe. Whether you are a manga reader who has waited for this or an anime-only fan, this is the recommended community theater experience. AMC theaters in San Diego are showing the film — check AMC Mission Valley, AMC La Jolla, and AMC Chula Vista for current showtimes. Subbed and dubbed versions available. Crunchyroll Fan subscribers may have early access screening access at participating theaters. Running time approximately 1 hour 45 minutes. Post-credits scene worth staying for. This community event page is for SD-area fans who want to watch together and meet other fans. Check r/ChainsawMan Reddit for local fan coordination. Bring a friend who has not seen the series — the Reze arc works as a standalone entry point.

SoCal Pinball League — Summer Series 2026

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SoCal Pinball League — Summer Series 2026

May 23 – Aug 29, 2026 Various venues, Los Angeles County…

The Southern California Pinball League runs competitive pinball tournaments throughout the summer at rotating venues across the Los Angeles and Orange County areas, offering IFPA-sanctioned competition that counts toward world ranking points and the SoCal circuit standings. The Summer Series format typically runs 6-8 events between May and August, with venues rotating through the established pinball locations of Southern California: Full Tilt in North Park, Pins and Needles in Los Feliz, Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda (visiting events), 82 Bar in Hollywood, and hobbyist host locations where private collectors make their machines available for competition. Competitive pinball at the SoCal League level is matchplay format: players face a random opponent each round on a randomly selected machine, accumulating match wins across the tournament. The format rewards machine versatility — knowing current Stern productions, classic 1990s WMS games, and vintage electromechanical tables equally is an advantage that specialists in any single era don't possess. The league welcomes players at all skill levels. If you know what a multiball is and can drain intentionally, you have enough foundation to participate in a league event. The regulars are uniformly welcoming to newcomers and the post-event gatherings at the host venues extend the experience well beyond the competition itself. Check the IFPA Southern California player directory and the SoCal Pinball League social channels for the 2026 Summer Series schedule, venues, and registration requirements.

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SacAnime Winter 2026

Jan 2 – Jan 4, 2026 SAFE Credit Union Convention Cente…

Three days of anime magic with epic cosplay, exclusive panels, gaming battles, and an artist alley full of treasures. Immerse yourself in the ultimate otaku experience.

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SacAnime Winter 2025

Jan 3 – Jan 5, 2025 SAFE Credit Union Convention Cente…

Dive into the vibrant world of anime and pop culture at SacAnime Winter 2025! Enjoy a weekend filled with panels, vendors, and unforgettable experiences that bring your favorite anime characters to life!

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SacAnime Summer 2024

Aug 30 – Sep 1, 2024 SAFE Credit Union Convention Cente…

SacAnime Summer is an anime convention featuring cosplay, panels, screenings, gaming, and special guests from the anime industry. The event attracts anime fans from throughout Northern California.

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UI-Con 2024

Mar 2 – Mar 3, 2024 Illini Union, Urbana, IL

Get ready for UI-Con 2024, where gaming and pop culture collide for an unforgettable weekend! Join us for gaming tournaments, cosplay contests, panel discussions, and more. Explore the vendor hall for unique merchandise and meet special guests. Whether you're a hardcore gamer or casual fan, there's something for everyone at UI-Con!

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FanimeCon 2024

May 24 – May 27, 2024 San Jose McEnery Convention Center…

FanimeCon is an annual anime convention held in San Jose, California. It is one of the largest anime conventions in North America, attracting thousands of attendees each year. The event features a wide range of activities including cosplay contests, gaming tournaments, artist alley, panel discussions with industry professionals, and much more. FanimeCon aims to celebrate the diverse world of Japanese pop culture and provide a welcoming space for fans to come together and share their passions.

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Anime Expo 2024

Jul 4 – Jul 7, 2024 Los Angeles Convention Center, Los…

Anime Expo is one of the largest anime conventions in North America, featuring cosplay, industry panels, exclusive premieres, and a massive exhibitor hall. The event attracts tens of thousands of attendees from around the world.

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Anime Expo 2025

Jul 3 – Jul 6, 2025 Los Angeles Convention Center, Los…

Experience the biggest anime convention in North America at Anime Expo 2025! With celebrity guests, panels, screenings, and an extensive marketplace, this event is a must for anime fans.

While you are looking Different scene, same night out.

Austin City Limits Music Festival 2026 (Weekend Two) - Austin, TX

Coming Soon

🌎 Nation's Best Tomorrow

Austin City Limits Music Festival 2026 (Weekend Two) - Austin, TX

In 2 days · Oct 9 3-day and single-day passes Zilker Park, 2100 Barton Springs R…

Eight bands deep into a Saturday, standing in a flat green bowl with the Austin skyline going gold behind the main stage, you stop keeping track of which set you came for. That is the whole proposition of the Austin City Limits Music Festival 2026 - one of America's defining music weekends, a nine-stage festival held every October in Zilker Park a few minutes from downtown Austin, Texas, drawing well over four hundred thousand people across two consecutive weekends. 2026 is the twenty-fifth anniversary, which matters because ACL began as a local extension of a public television taping and became the event that turned Austin's self-description as the Live Music Capital of the World from a slogan into something defensible. Weekend Two runs Friday October 9 through Sunday October 11. What it actually feels like is a city park that has been temporarily colonised by sound. Zilker is flat, open and enormous, and because the stages ring the perimeter you spend the day walking across a green bowl with music arriving from three directions at once. October in Texas is not autumn; it is eighty-five degrees and humid with very little shade, and the single thing that surprises first-timers most is how physical the day becomes. The crowd is noticeably broader than at a destination desert festival - families with wagons, students from the university up the road, people in their sixties who have been coming since the first year. At dusk the downtown skyline lights up directly behind the main stage, and that image is the one everybody takes home. Is it worth it? If you are the kind of person who would rather see eight bands you half-know than one band you already love, yes, emphatically. This is a discovery festival. It is not for anyone who needs a guaranteed front-row view of a single headliner, and it is not a luxury experience - the ground is dirt and the queues are real. The 2026 bill is deliberately genre-fluid: Charli XCX, Lorde, Twenty One Pilots, Rufus Du Sol and The xx play both weekends, while Kings of Leon are Weekend Two only, alongside Natasha Bedingfield, Houndmouth and Bella Kay. Turnstile, Labrinth, Young Miko, Geese, Bleachers, Sofi Tukker, Parcels, The Chainsmokers and The War On Drugs fill out the middle of the bill, which is where a festival is actually won. What to know before you go: Weekend Two is the locals' weekend. Crowds are slightly thinner, security lines move faster, and hotel rates run ten to twenty per cent below Weekend One - the same lineup for less money and less friction, which is why experienced attendees quietly prefer it. Bring an empty refillable bottle; there are free water stations throughout and dehydration is the most common reason people leave early. Wear closed-toe shoes you do not care about. Check the bag policy before you leave the hotel, because it changes year to year and the walk back is long. And go to an early-afternoon set: the field is half empty, the artists are often better than their slot, and by four o'clock every path is a queue. ACL is on this list because it is the clearest American example of a festival that belongs to its city rather than to a promoter's circuit. Twenty-five years in, the lineup is a reasonable snapshot of what the country is listening to, assembled in a park that residents use the other fifty-one weekends of the year. Tickets for Weekend Two are sold as three-day passes and single days, and they move.

Coming Soon

🌎 Nation's Best 322 days away

Anime NYC 2027 — New York, NY

Aug 26, 2027 Jacob K. Javits Convention Center,…

New York went without a major anime convention for an embarrassingly long time given how many people there wanted one, and when it finally arrived it grew faster than almost any convention in American history. Anime NYC now fills the Javits Center on the far west side of Manhattan and has become the East Coast's largest anime event, with the industry treating it as a genuine announcement platform rather than a regional stop. What separates it from the older conventions is that it feels like it belongs to the city rather than to a hotel complex. Attendees spill into Hell's Kitchen and midtown between panels; the after-hours culture happens in restaurants and karaoke rooms rather than in hotel hallways. Inside, the industry presence is unusually heavy — Japanese publishers and studios send real delegations, there are manga creators doing signings who rarely leave Japan, and the concert programming has brought over acts that had never played the United States. The dealers hall is large and the artist alley is genuinely excellent, benefiting from the density of illustrators who already live within a train ride. Is it worth it? If you follow manga and the industry side of anime rather than only the shows, this is the best convention in the country for you, because the guests are the people who actually make it. If you want a warm, sprawling, all-night fan convention, the hotel-based cons in the Midwest and Maryland do that better — Javits closes and you go out into Manhattan, which is a different experience and an expensive one. What to know before you go: badges sell out, sometimes months ahead, and there is no walk-up. Javits is a long avenue walk from the nearest subway; budget the time. Late August in New York is hot and humid and the costume math should account for that. Ticketed signings are allocated by lottery — enter early. And eat outside the building; you are in one of the best food cities on earth. It earns a place here because the speed at which it grew is the clearest single piece of evidence about how large this audience actually became, and that is worth knowing even from across the country. Anime NYC 2027 runs August 26–29, 2027 at the Javits Center.

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Anime Los Angeles 2027

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.

Anime Riverside 2027 — Inland Empire Convention

Coming Soon

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Anime Riverside 2027 — Inland Empire Convention

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.

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So-Cal Cosplay Shoot — Balboa Park

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.

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Pacific Media Expo 2026 (PMX)

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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