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May 22 – May 23, 2027
Ontario Convention Center, Ontario…
Somewhere in the artist alley there is a table with your favorite book on it, and the person who drew it is sitting behind it, waiting for someone to say the right thing. That is the whole reason to go. The Inland Empire's comic weekend stays small enough that you can actually reach that table — no wristband lottery, no line that eats your morning, no security walking the queue with a clipboard. Panels run all day for the people who want to hear how the work actually gets made. The exclusive merchandise moves early, which the regulars know, which is why they walk the floor before they do anything else. Pop culture at large is here too, but comics are still the spine of it. Ontario Convention Center, in Ontario. Bring the friend who has been quietly drawing in the margins since middle school and has never shown anyone.
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May 16 – May 17, 2026
$20-35
2000 E Convention Center Way, Onta…
At the big conventions you queue for a photo. At this one you sit down across from the person who drew the thing, and they have time.
The floor is built around direct creator access — meet artists and writers face to face, commission original work while you wait, pick up independent titles shelved next to the mainstream publishers, and dig through a dealer room genuinely packed with back issues, figures and collectibles. Cosplay runs the whole weekend without anyone treating it as a competition.
Saturday draws the bigger crowd. Sunday moves slower, which is when the browsing gets good and the conversations get longer.
Ontario Convention Center, 2000 E Convention Center Way — off the 10 and the 60, parking on-site. Weekend passes are the better value if you are coming both days.
Bring cash and a list. You will leave with something signed by a person whose name you now know.
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The Inland Empire does not usually get things like this, which is exactly why people drive in from across the region and treat a Saturday in Ontario like a holiday.
A comic convention out here is not a scaled-down version of the big one down the freeway. It is the one where you can actually reach the artist tables, actually get a question in at a panel, actually stand in front of a guest long enough to say the thing you rehearsed in the car. The floor is walkable. The lines end. Nobody is fighting you for a badge, and nobody is too cool to talk about the run they have been collecting since middle school.
Exhibitor booths, panels, special guests, and a full day of it at the Ontario Convention Center on Convention Center Way.
Bring the kid who is just old enough to start having favorites. This is where a person finds out their thing has other people in it.
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May 17 – May 18, 2025
Ontario Convention Center, Ontario…
Somewhere in the artist alley there is a table with your favorite book on it, and the person who drew it is sitting behind it, waiting for someone to say the right thing. That is the whole reason to go. The Inland Empire's comic weekend stays small enough that you can actually reach that table — no wristband lottery, no line that eats your morning, no security walking the queue with a clipboard. Panels run all day for the people who want to hear how the work actually gets made. The exclusive merchandise moves early, which the regulars know, which is why they walk the floor before they do anything else. Pop culture at large is here too, but comics are still the spine of it. Ontario Convention Center, in Ontario. Bring the friend who has been quietly drawing in the margins since middle school and has never shown anyone.
While you are lookingDifferent scene, same night out.
Coming Soon
🌎 Nation's Best
169 days away
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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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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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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.
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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
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In 9 days· Oct 17
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel San Die…
A horror panel tucked inside somebody else's general convention always feels like being let in through a side door. This is the other thing entirely — a whole weekend built by people who wanted to be in a horror room and stopped waiting for permission to have one.
You can tell from the guest list. The names here come from the films themselves, not from adjacent franchises with a horror-shaped marketing angle, and that single detail tells you exactly who the weekend is for. The floor runs both days: vendors, artists, and an artist alley carrying original work, prop replicas, and merch that never surfaces at the mainstream shows. The people filling it pre-order the special editions, know the director's full filmography, and hold real opinions about the best practical effect of the last decade.
Two days in October, in a Mission Valley hotel with real function rooms, in the one month the whole city is finally in the right season for it.
If you take horror seriously, you already know who you are texting about this.
Coming Soon
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289 days away
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Saturday is when Comic-Con becomes what it is.
Hall H fills before dawn — the line outside has been there since the night before. The franchise trailers, the cast reunions, the first looks: they all happen on a Saturday at San Diego Comic-Con. July 24, 2027. The day the industry picks to say what it couldn't say anywhere else, in front of the crowd that will carry it everywhere.
Saturday programming runs across all three levels of the Convention Center simultaneously. Hall H anchors with the major franchise panels. Ballroom 20 runs television and streaming. The smaller rooms carry comics, animation, games, and the programming that doesn't make the headlines but is often better.
The exhibit hall is at peak capacity on Saturday. Artist Alley is fully operational. The Off-Site activations in the Gaslamp are fully active — the marketing footprint of SDCC Saturday extends six blocks in every direction.
The pinnacle of the convention calendar. The day the rest of the year has been building toward.
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