100 Park Blvd · Conventions — Events

Petco Park Interactive Zone — Free SDCC Offsite Experience 2026

This Happened

250 Gathered

250 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Petco Park Interactive Zone — Free SDCC Offsite Experience 2026

Jul 23, 2026 Lexus Premier Lot, 100 Park Blvd, …

You do not need a badge to feel like Comic-Con found you. The Interactive Zone at Petco Park is the largest free Comic-Con experience in San Diego — a sprawling lot of brand activations, pop-up shops, food vendors, and cosplay photo ops that turns the Lexus Premier Lot into a theme park for anyone who has ever loved a fictional world more than they can explain. This year's lineup includes MaruMart, an immersive walk-through of a Japanese convenience store from Maruchan with SDCC-exclusive merchandise and surprise giveaways. The Hello Kitty Cafe Truck rolls in with macarons, madeleines, and custom quarter-zips. KAYOU's Walls of Fandom celebrates trading card culture with large-format displays. The Labu'Tique Farmers Market brings Labubus, Squishy Toys, Jelly Cats, and Needohs — the kind of plush haul your inner child has been waiting for. Open Thursday July 23 through Sunday July 26, 10am to 5pm daily (4pm on Sunday). Located in the Lexus Premier Lot next to Petco Park, just across the Harbor Drive pedestrian bridge from the convention center. Free entry. No badge required. Bring the kids, bring the cosplay, bring the energy.

KAYOU Walls of Fandom — SDCC 2026 at Petco Park

This Happened

14 Gathered

14 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

KAYOU Walls of Fandom — SDCC 2026 at Petco Park

Jul 23 – Jul 26, 2026 Petco Park Interactive Zone, 100 P…

The walls are ten feet tall and covered in trading card art you have been staring at on your phone screen for months — except now the colors are the size of your entire body and you are standing inside the frame. KAYOU makes its San Diego Comic-Con debut in 2026 with the Walls of Fandom, a free immersive walkthrough experience at the Interactive Zone at Petco Park. This is KAYOU's first convention appearance, and they brought everything: larger-than-life installations inspired by their trading card lines spanning Naruto, My Little Pony, Demon Slayer, and K-pop collectibles. The experience is a love letter to the artwork behind the cards — the craftsmanship that usually lives behind a plastic sleeve, blown up to a scale where you can finally see the brushstrokes. Beyond the walls: on-site card purchasing, a fan meetup at Tito Rick's Garage (2918 Imperial Ave) on Friday July 24 from 5-9pm with trading sessions and casual My Little Pony TCG play, and the SDCC-exclusive Superfan Passport — collect stamps across KAYOU's three locations and unlock rewards. July 23-26, 10am-5pm daily (Sunday until 4pm). Free admission, no badge required.

Coming Soon

52 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 6h away

52 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

New York Comic Con 2026 — New York, NY

Today · 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.

Weekly

37 Gathering

2 days away

37 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Big Bear Lake Oktoberfest 2026

Every Saturday · Next Oct 10 Big Bear Lake Convention Center, 4…

Up at 6,750 feet the beer comes with a mountain view and absolutely no chill whatsoever. Big Bear's Oktoberfest has been running for over fifty years, which means the whole thing operates like a well-oiled Bavarian machine: the log-sawing contests, the stein-holding endurance battles, oompah bands flown in from actual Germany, and a hall full of flatlanders discovering that yes, they will in fact do the chicken dance in front of three hundred strangers. It runs weekend after weekend all through the fall, so it becomes the excuse to finally make the mountain trip you keep putting off, alpine air and a giant soft pretzel and a designated driver who is being a very good sport about all of this. The lake sits right there for a cold, gold-lit walk between rounds when the beer hall finally gets too warm and loud. Bring a group and lederhosen you're not afraid to fully commit to. It fills the Convention Center in Big Bear Lake across nine weekends of autumn.

Coming Soon

102 Gathering

29 days away

102 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

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.

Coming Soon

29 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 90 days away

29 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

CES 2027 -- Las Vegas, NV

Jan 6 – Jan 9, 2027 Las Vegas Convention Center, 3150 …

Every January, a room in Las Vegas shows you the thing you will recognize in a store six months from now and think, quietly, I already knew about that. That preview feeling is the whole reason people come back - not to buy, but to find out what is coming. The scale is unlike any trade show you have attended. Spread across 2.6 million square feet - the Convention Center, Venetian Expo, and satellite hotel venues across the Strip - CES is less a conference than a city inside a city. Entire halls are dedicated to automotive technology, health tech, immersive entertainment, robotics, and AI hardware. Keynote stages host the CEOs of Samsung, Sony, Nvidia, and Intel. The demo floors are where prototypes become real - you will see things that do not exist for sale yet, and half a year later you will recognize them on shelves. If you have any curiosity about where technology is heading, it delivers, unambiguously; this is not for people who want to buy things, it is for people who want to understand what is being built. If your frame is "I already know what I like," CES will feel overwhelming. If your frame is "I want to know what I don't know yet," it will feel like electricity. Plan for 25,000 steps a day and wear the most comfortable shoes you own. Register early - attendee badges are required and pricing increases as the show approaches. Download the CES app and pre-plan your exhibitor list by hall and day. The Las Vegas Convention Center's underground Loop connects buildings, but lines build fast, so walking is often faster; stay on the north end of the Strip near the LVCC to minimize transit time. The South Hall eats first-day schedules, so plan it for day two or three. Most cultural events reflect the world as it is; CES previews the world as it is being redesigned. The exhibitors are not selling products - they are proposing futures, and every year a handful of those proposals become the devices in your pocket two years later. Attending even once rewires your sense of what "soon" means. CES 2027 takes place in Las Vegas, NV.

Coming Soon

51 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 36 days away

51 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

MagicCon: Atlanta 2026 — Atlanta, GA

Nov 13 – Nov 15, 2026 Georgia World Congress Center, Bui…

Wizards of the Coast brings the official Magic: The Gathering convention to Atlanta — three days of competitive play, exclusive reveals, and side events that don't exist at a local game store. Step into MagicCon and the scale of the Magic ecosystem becomes visceral. The main hall hosts commander pods running nonstop, side event drafts firing every 90 minutes, and a merchandise floor stocked with exclusive foil treatments and collector editions that do not exist outside the convention walls. The World Championship stage draws a live audience who understands the stakes — watching a pro player navigate a complex board state in a top-8 match is legitimately thrilling even to non-competitive attendees. Panel stages feature lead designers previewing the upcoming set, Reality Fracture, with reveals that ripple across the entire community within minutes of announcement. Meet-and-greets with pro players and content creators run throughout the weekend, though they fill fast. The atmosphere skews intensely knowledgeable — this crowd knows what a Rhystic Study is, why it is obnoxious, and will argue about it with warmth. MagicCon Atlanta is for anyone who plays Magic with genuine investment — not necessarily competitive, but committed. If your Friday nights involve a Commander pod and you have at least one deck you have been tuning for six months, you will feel completely at home here. This is not a casual spectator event. It is for the player who loves the game enough to fly across the country for three days of it. First-timers to MagicCon frequently say the same thing: they had no idea how large and how skilled the community actually is until they walked in. Register for ticketed play events before the convention — sealed and draft pods sell out weeks in advance. Bring your trade binder if you have one: the secondary market area moves fast and has genuine deals. Badge merchandise must be picked up onsite; if you miss the pickup window before close on Sunday, you forfeit it. The Worlds stage is open to badge holders but seating near the feature match area is first-come, standing room fills by round 4 of the top 8. Bring cash for artist alley — many illustrators are cash-only and the original card alters available from top artists are some of the most collectible items in the room. For the Magic community, this is not just an event. It is the proof that the game is still alive, still evolving, and still worth every dollar you have spent on it. MagicCon: Atlanta 2026 runs November 13-15 at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta. The same players turn up at regional opens and prereleases the rest of the year; this is the weekend the whole scene is in one building.

Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival 2026 — Los Angeles, CA

Coming Soon

31 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 39 days away

31 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival 2026 — Los Angeles, CA

Nov 16 – Nov 18, 2026 200 Dodger Stadium, 1000 Vin Scully Av…

Tyler the Creator builds his festival the way he makes his albums — as a complete vision, not a lineup. The 2026 edition runs November 16–17 at Dodger Stadium: Tyler himself, Andre 3000, Erykah Badu, Playboi Carti, Earl Sweatshirt, Vince Staples, Daniel Caesar. Sixty thousand people. This is his current read on what matters. Flog Gnaw feels nothing like a conventional music festival. Tyler's aesthetic — Golf Wang colors, surrealist visual direction, Converse collabs, the cartoon universe he's been building since Odd Future — pervades every inch of the grounds. The headliner list reads like Tyler's personal taste index rather than a booking agency's safe plays: Andre 3000's rare public appearances, Earl Sweatshirt's deliberately sparse touring schedule, legacy artists like Erykah Badu alongside younger voices. The surprise guest tradition is genuine — in past years unannounced performers have drawn more conversation than the headliners. The crowd skews young, fashion-conscious, and culturally literate in a way that is self-selecting. Flog Gnaw is the festival where people bring cameras for the fits, not just the performances. This is for people whose music listening doesn't fit a single genre label — who have Tyler the Creator, Badu, Earl, and Daniel Caesar on the same playlist and see nothing contradictory about that. It is for the aesthetically curious. It is not for people who want clear setlist times, grid-pattern stages, and predictable headliner slots. Tyler runs his festival on his own logic, and that's the point. If that energy resonates, Camp Flog Gnaw is one of the few festivals where the curation is unambiguously the product. Two-day passes sell significantly faster than single-day. The Dodger Stadium location is accessible by Metro (Dodger Stadium Express from Union Station — skip the parking). Merchandise drops at Flog Gnaw are serious and sell out quickly; the Golf Wang collabs available only at the festival have become collector items. Arrive early day one — the grounds have carnival rides, food, and art installations that reward exploration before the headliners. Andre 3000's live appearances remain rare enough to justify the trip from anywhere in the country. Tyler the Creator built a world — Golf Wang, Odd Future, Igor, Call Me If You Get Lost, Cherry Bomb — and Flog Gnaw is where that world becomes a place you can stand in for two days. The music industry produces thousands of festivals. Very few of them feel like they could only exist because one specific person willed them into being. Flog Gnaw is one of them. Tickets at Ticketmaster. November 16-17, 2026, Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles.

Marisela: Eterna Tour 2026 — San Diego Civic Theatre

Coming Soon

11 Gathering

37 days away

11 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Marisela: Eterna Tour 2026 — San Diego Civic Theatre

Nov 14, 2026 San Diego Civic Theatre, 1100 Thir…

Some voices carry a whole history in a single note. Marisela's voice carries quinceañeras and kitchen radios and the moment your mom stopped what she was doing to turn up the volume because Sin El was playing and nothing else in the world mattered for three minutes. Marisela brings the Eterna Tour 2026 to the San Diego Civic Theatre on Saturday, November 14 at 8 PM. The Civic Theatre is a 2,967-seat venue in downtown San Diego that pairs the elegance of a performing arts center with the intimacy of a room where a ballad singer can make every seat feel like the front row. Marisela has been the voice of Mexican romantic balladry for over forty years — an artist whose catalog is not just listened to but lived in by the communities who grew up with it. The Civic Theatre is at 1100 Third Avenue, a short walk from the Gaslamp Quarter and the Convention Center trolley stop. Parking at the Civic Center garage. This is the show you bring the person who raised you on this music. They've been waiting for you to suggest it.

Anime Weekend Atlanta 2026 — Atlanta, GA

Coming Soon

20 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 42 days away

20 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

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.

Coming Soon

17 days away

7 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Bear Ghost – Tiny Hitman Tour 2026

Oct 25, 2026 Lodge Room, 104 N Avenue 56, Los A…

Theatrical rock made by people who are obviously having a wonderful time is deeply unfashionable and completely undefeatable in a live room. This Arizona band writes songs with narrative arcs, key changes that should not work, and a horn part when a horn part is funny — the sort of thing that finds its audience through video games, animation communities, and the general internet rather than through radio. Their crowd is young, extremely online, and knows the words to material that never charted anywhere. Expect the room to handle whole sections unprompted. Sunday evening in an upstairs Masonic hall in Highland Park, wood floors, no seats. Music at 7:00 PM at 104 N Avenue 56. Fandoms built in Discord servers and comment sections are the ones most likely to turn a normal concert into something closer to a convention, and that is the atmosphere here.

Coming Soon

304 Gathering

91 days away

304 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

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.

Coming Soon

99 Gathering

29 days away

99 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Anime Pasadena 2026

Nov 6 – Nov 8, 2026 TBA Pasadena Convention Center, Pasade…

The thing nobody says out loud about the giant conventions is that you go for the artists and then spend the whole weekend failing to reach them. Six people deep at every table, a crowd that carries you past what you came to see, a morning of your life spent in a badge line. This is the other version. The vendor hall is the argument: importers with inventory that never appears on domestic sites, small publishers stocking titles nobody else carries, figure dealers holding real stock, and artists who skip the bigger shows entirely. The cosplay skews toward builders — people who spent months on a prop and want a room where you can actually stop and look at it. Friday evening hours let the weekend breathe instead of compressing. Three days at the Pasadena convention center, free parking, weekend passes cheap by convention standards. Send this to the friend who came back from Anime Expo saying they saw nothing.

Coming Soon

165 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 129 days away

165 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Super Bowl LXI 2027 — Inglewood, CA

Feb 14, 2027 0 SoFi Stadium, 1001 Stadium Drive, …

The Super Bowl has come to Los Angeles before. It has never come to SoFi. That changes February 7, 2027 — at the half-billion-dollar stadium that opened in 2020 and changed what a modern NFL venue can look like: translucent canopy, open-air California design, Hollywood Park campus surrounding it. What Super Bowl week in Los Angeles looks and feels like is unlike any other sporting event on the calendar. The week before the game, Radio Row draws every media personality with a microphone. The NFL Experience fan festival opens to the public at the Convention Center. Celebrity parties are announced and cancelled and announced again. The halftime show rehearsals happen under tight security at the stadium while the surrounding streets fill with brand activations, pop-ups, and spontaneous gatherings of fans who couldn't get tickets but wanted to be near the thing. Los Angeles absorbs the Super Bowl differently than Nashville or Minneapolis — the entertainment industry and sports culture overlap here in a way that produces genuine energy rather than manufactured excitement. Is the Super Bowl worth attending in person? If you have the means and the access, the answer is yes, but the experience is as much about the week as the game. Super Bowl tickets are among the most expensive in sports, and the seat you occupy at game time may matter less than the four days of surrounding events, parties, and city energy that build toward kickoff. For the majority of people who will experience Super Bowl LXI from Los Angeles without attending the game, the city itself becomes a venue. Watch parties at venues across SoCal will be among the most concentrated social events of the year. What to know: Tickets sell through the NFL and Ticketmaster — secondary market prices will be extreme. The SoFi Stadium campus includes a performance venue (YouTube Theater), a casino (Inglewood), and hotel development in progress; the entertainment zone around the stadium is walkable and dense. Metro's C Line (Green) stops at Hawthorne/Lennox, about a 20-minute walk from SoFi. Parking is limited and expensive; transit from LAX is the recommended option for most attendees. The week's best experiences are often free — Radio Row, fan zones, and the energy of the city. Super Bowl LXI matters for one reason beyond the game itself: it is the largest single-day American cultural event, and in 2027 it comes to Los Angeles. The convergence of the NFL, Hollywood, the music industry (halftime show), and the national media in one city for one weekend creates a cultural moment that extends far beyond the game. Knowing about it, knowing what week to plan around it, knowing the venue and the city — that is the preparation that turns an ordinary February into the right February.

Coming Soon

🌎 Nation's Best 26 days away

8 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

SEMA Show 2026 — Las Vegas, NV

Nov 3 – Nov 7, 2026 0 Las Vegas Convention Center, 3150 …

Somewhere on that convention floor sits a Dodge Challenger built as a tribute to a mechanic who died, a Bronco engineered for Baja with a 700-mile range, and a Toyota Tacoma so heavily modified the factory DNA has nearly vanished - and the person who built each one is standing right there, willing to explain exactly how. The SEMA Show fills a Las Vegas convention center every November: 2,000 brands, 160,000 automotive professionals, and the most elaborate custom vehicles on earth, the industry's annual argument about what cars can become. This is not rows of production vehicles under fluorescent lights. The smell of fresh paint, engine oil, and ambition is everywhere. The Specialty Equipment Market Association show exists because the aftermarket - the people who make your car yours - needs one place to show what they built this year. Whether it is worth attending depends on who you are. If you are in the automotive world at any level, SEMA Fest on Saturday, the public consumer day, is one of the most inspiring afternoons you can spend in Las Vegas: six-figure full-coverage builds sit 10 feet from you, the designers will talk to you, and the fabricators will explain how they did it. Even if you are not a car person, some of these vehicles are genuinely art, and the Battle of the Builders final is as dramatic as any competition you will watch this year. SEMA Fest is Saturday, November 7 - this is the enthusiast day; the full trade show, Tuesday through Friday, requires industry credentials. Book hotels well in advance; SEMA week fills the Strip. Parking is manageable at the Convention Center, but wear comfortable shoes - the floor is enormous. The Battle of the Builders announcement happens mid-afternoon Saturday and draws a crowd, so position yourself early. Merchandise lines and meet-and-greets with builders and YouTubers run throughout the day. Nothing else in automotive culture operates at this density of craft in a single location. For anyone who has ever looked at a stock car and imagined what it could be, SEMA Fest is the pilgrimage.

Coming Soon

58 Gathering

36 days away

58 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

San Diego Anime Convention 2026

Nov 13 – Nov 15, 2026 DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel San Die…

The conventions that last are almost never the biggest ones. They're the ones where the artist in the alley remembers your face from last year, where the panel is small enough that you can actually ask your question, where the regulars know each other's names. Four years in, this is quietly becoming one of those — a room that hasn't forgotten why people go to conventions in the first place. The DoubleTree keeps it contained in the way that works: fifty-some vendors, fifty-some artists, a layout that creates natural places to stand around and talk, and a hotel bar that fills with cosplayers once the panels let out. It has the energy of a gathering, not a production — the kind of place where you show up not knowing anyone and leave having found your corner of it. DoubleTree Mission Valley — November 13–15, 2026, three-day badges at sandiegoanimecon.com, free parking, easy from anywhere in the city. Saturday's the peak, Sunday's the long goodbye. Come in costume or don't; both belong here.

Coming Soon

42 Gathering

121 days away

42 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Long Beach Comic Expo 2027

Feb 6, 2027 Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …

At most conventions the person who actually drew the thing is behind a rope with a line and a forty-second window. Here they are sitting at a table with an empty chair beside them. That is the entire identity of this one-day show: writers, pencilers, inkers, colorists, letterers — working professionals available for a real conversation about the craft instead of a signature and a shove. The floor treats mainstream and alternative as equals, Marvel and DC in the same aisles as independent publishers and self-published creators who came because the audience here came specifically for comics. Artist alley carries a density of professional quality that bigger, more casual shows cannot match. One day only, at the convention center downtown, with the Metro A Line running straight into Long Beach. Check the official site for the date. Go with the person who lent you their first trade paperback. Buy them something original.

Hidden Leaf After Dark — Anime San Diego Official After-Party

This Happened

68 Gathered

68 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Hidden Leaf After Dark — Anime San Diego Official After-Party

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

The convention floor closes. The lights come up. You're standing in a hallway holding a prop sword and a bag of prints, and every cell in your body is saying: not yet. Hidden Leaf After Dark is the official Anime San Diego after-party — the room where the energy that built all day doesn't have to stop. Five DJs take the Convention Center stage after the panels end, spinning anime anthems remixed for a crowd that already knows every word. The cosplays stay on. The dance floor fills with people who spent the day in artist alley and are now discovering each other's moves. Shonen Riot produces this alongside Anime San Diego, so the handoff is seamless — same community, different mode. You don't need a convention badge to attend. The only thing you need is the specific feeling that the day wasn't enough. Friday, September 5, 2026. Doors 8:30 PM. San Diego Convention Center. 18+. Tickets $29.51.

Weekly

30 days away

5 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Frank & Son Collectible Show

Every Saturday · Next Nov 7 Free Frank & Son Collectible Show, 1783…

Every collector has a box they do not fully explain at home. The honest thing about this place is that nobody inside it needs the box explained — you can hold up a sealed 1999 starter deck and three strangers will tell you what it is worth and two of them will be wrong on purpose. It is a warehouse in City of Industry, open since 1988, and the scale is the thing nobody warns you about: more than two hundred booths, every one independently owned, which means the pricing is a negotiation and the knowledge is uneven and that is the entire pleasure. Graded baseball cards two aisles from loose Gundam kits two aisles from Disney pins. Regulars walk it in a fixed order. The cardboard smell is real and people will admit they come for it. Saturdays run nine to six, admission and parking free, last entry ten minutes before close. It is a convention that never ends and never announces itself, which is why half the city has still never been.

This Happened

102 Gathered

🌎 Nation's Best

DEF CON 34 2026 — Las Vegas, NV

Aug 6 – Aug 10, 2026 380 Las Vegas Convention Center, 3150 …

More critical infrastructure vulnerabilities have been disclosed at DEF CON than anywhere else on earth. The conference where that happens — 34 editions in now — is held in Las Vegas every August and draws the largest gathering of security researchers, hackers, and engineers in the world. DEF CON is unlike any conference you've attended. Walk in and you'll find badge puzzle hunts that thousands of people spend the entire conference solving; lock-picking villages where anyone can learn to pick a padlock in minutes; talks that expose critical vulnerabilities in systems we trust daily — power grids, voting machines, medical devices, cars. The crowd is a mix of 20-year-old prodigies, retired intelligence professionals, and corporate security teams sitting in the same row. There is no dress code except the absence of one. The culture rewards curiosity over credentials. DEF CON has the energy of a music festival crossed with a graduate thesis defense — and the hallway conversations may be more valuable than either. If you've ever wondered how systems get broken — and how they get fixed — DEF CON is worth the trip to Las Vegas. This is for technologists, security professionals, students, and curious people who want to understand the infrastructure of modern life by learning its failure modes. It is not for people who need structured agendas and sponsored lanyards. DEF CON is self-organized, intentionally weird, and deliberately unwelcoming to corporate gatekeeping. If you've ever googled "how does that hack actually work" — you belong here. Register early — badge prices increase at the door and can exceed $400. Cash is preferred and sometimes required. The badges themselves are puzzles; experienced attendees spend all four days cracking them. Bring comfortable shoes — the Las Vegas Convention Center spans multiple halls. DEF CON runs four specialized villages simultaneously (Wireless, AI, Hardware, Social Engineering) and you will miss most of them. That's part of the culture: nobody sees everything. Bring a way to share contact information — the hallway conversations at DEF CON have launched more security careers than any job board. The mainstream technology industry spends billions on security theater. DEF CON spends four days showing you exactly how it fails — and then showing you how to fix it. If you've ever felt that the systems you rely on are more fragile than anyone admits, you're right. DEF CON is the room where people say so. Tickets and registration at defcon.org. August 6–9, 2026, Las Vegas Convention Center.

Party Plus Ultra — Anime Rave at Mission Inn, Riverside

This Happened

14 Gathered

Party Plus Ultra — Anime Rave at Mission Inn, Riverside

Aug 29, 2026 Mission Inn Hotel, 3649 Mission In…

You've been watching the same show for six months. You've read every theory thread. You've sent the opening theme to three people who didn't ask for it. And now you need to be in a room where everyone else did the same thing. Party Plus Ultra is Shonen Riot's standalone anime rave — not a convention afterparty this time, but the main event. The Mission Inn in Riverside becomes the venue: five DJs (Chuck None, Kahn Artest, Hiero, Kudo, and Ohyea) spinning anime anthems and club remixes under the arches of one of California's most absurdly beautiful hotels. Cosplay welcome. Anime-themed drinks. Photo ops. And a dance floor full of people who can identify an opening by the first three notes. Shonen Riot runs the conventions behind Anime San Diego, Anime Riverside, Anime Pasadena, and Anime Las Vegas. This is the team that already knows how to pack a room with people who share a very specific frequency. Party Plus Ultra is that frequency, amplified, without the panel schedule. 18+. Doors 7 PM. Mission Inn Hotel, 3649 Mission Inn Ave, Riverside, CA 92501. Tickets at partyplusultra.com.

Coming Soon

69 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 57 days away

69 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Anime Frontier 2026 — Fort Worth, TX

Dec 4, 2026 Fort Worth Convention Center, 1201…

There is a convention center in Fort Worth where, for three days every December, the cowboys and the cosplayers share the same sidewalk — and nobody blinks, because Texas has always been bigger than any one identity. Anime Frontier returns to the Fort Worth Convention Center December 4–6, 2026, for three days of premieres, panels, and special appearances from some of the biggest names in anime and manga. Presented by Crunchyroll, Anime Frontier has carved out a space that the East Coast cons like Anime NYC and Otakon and West Coast cons like Anime Expo do not cover — the entire middle of the country, where anime fandom runs just as deep but the nearest major convention used to be a 12-hour drive. The convention has grown rapidly since its launch, filling a geographic gap that the anime community had been complaining about for years. The exhibitor hall and artist alley bring together hundreds of vendors, from official merch drops to independent artists whose work you will only find at cons like this. The programming runs from industry panels and world premieres to cosplay showcases and community meetups, and the scale is big enough to feel like a real convention without the crushing density of a 100K-attendance mega-con. New for 2026 is a Kids Sunday ticket and a dedicated Family Zone presented by Scholastic — a signal that Anime Frontier is building for the next generation of fans, not just serving the current one. If you are an anime fan in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, or anywhere in the central United States, Anime Frontier is the con that finally means you do not have to fly to a coast. If you are a veteran con-goer from either coast, Fort Worth offers something the big cons cannot — a manageable size, walkable downtown hotels and restaurants, and the Texas hospitality that makes out-of-towners want to come back every year. Tickets include single-day and 3-day badges, with Premium AF passes for extra access and perks. Ordering by October 23 gets your badge shipped before the event. Fort Worth in December is mild enough for outdoor cosplay without the summer heat that plagues most anime cons. The convention center is downtown, walkable to dozens of restaurants and bars, and the whole experience feels like a community gathering rather than a corporate expo. For the anime community in the middle of America, Anime Frontier is no longer the new con — it is the home con.

Coming Soon

120 days away

{# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Emo Night Karaoke

Feb 5, 2027 Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd, San Die…

The difference between singing along and taking the microphone is roughly the difference between watching and being watched, and one of those changes your whole evening. That is the entire format. A live band, a songbook of the records that ruined and rescued you somewhere around fifteen, and a queue of people who have been rehearsing in the car for years without admitting it. Nobody is good. Being good is not the point and would arguably wreck it. The room's job is to carry whoever is up there, and a room full of people who all know the same bridge is extremely good at that job. Doors at eight, going at nine, a Friday in February. February 5, Casbah, 2501 Kettner Blvd. Bring the person you would want holding the other microphone. This scene runs a whole year of these across the county and the karaoke ones are where the strangers stop being strangers fastest.

We Touch Grass: Anime Rave Convention After Party — San Diego

This Happened

54 Gathered

54 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

We Touch Grass: Anime Rave Convention After Party — San Diego

Jul 25 – Jul 26, 2026 Spin Night Club, 2028 Hancock St, …

We Touch Grass brings the anime rave to San Diego during Comic-Con weekend. Spin Night Club becomes the room where the convention crowd goes to let the cosplay breathe and the bass hit different. Touch Grass Entertainment has been running anime raves across the country, building a circuit where the soundtrack is J-pop remixes, anime OSTs turned club bangers, and the energy of a crowd that spent all day at panels and needs the night to match. This is the after-party the anime community shares in group chats before the official schedule drops. Saturday night of SDCC week. 9 PM until late. Spin Night Club, 2028 Hancock St, San Diego, CA 92110.

Coming Soon

19 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 231 days away

19 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

MomoCon 2027 — Atlanta, GA

May 27, 2027 Georgia World Congress Center, 285…

A convention that started as a one-day free event on a college campus and grew into a four-day gathering of tens of thousands keeps something from that origin that money cannot buy: it is still noticeably run by people who are the audience. MomoCon happens each Memorial Day weekend at the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta, and it covers anime, gaming, animation and comics with an unusually strong emphasis on the industry side of animation. The distinguishing feature is the volume of actual working professionals — animators, voice actors, studio staff — doing panels that are about how the work gets made rather than about promoting a release. Atlanta has become a genuine production city, and the convention benefits from that proximity. Alongside it sits one of the larger convention gaming setups in the country: a tabletop hall, a big freeplay arcade and console area, and esports tournaments running the whole weekend. Cosplay is central and the crowd skews young, energetic and heavily costumed. Memorial Day weekend means an extra day, and the extra day changes the pace considerably — there is time to do things properly rather than sprinting. Worth it? If you are interested in animation as a craft and a career, this is one of the best conventions in the country for that specific reason, and the access to working professionals is unusually good. If you are primarily a collector, the dealer hall is solid but not a destination. It is a maker's and a player's convention more than a buyer's. What to know: downtown Atlanta hotels connected to or near the convention center fill first and the walk matters in May humidity. The badge covers the gaming halls, which many first-timers do not realize until Sunday. Panels about breaking into animation fill up an hour early. Parking downtown is expensive; the MARTA station is close. And the four-day format means Thursday is genuinely worth arriving for. It is here because a convention where the people who make the thing talk honestly about making it is rarer than it should be, and knowing that room exists is useful whether or not you ever sit in it. MomoCon 2027 runs May 27–30, 2027 at the Georgia World Congress Center.

Ready Party One: The Final Level — 2026 SDCC Kick-Off Party

This Happened

30 Gathered

30 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Ready Party One: The Final Level — 2026 SDCC Kick-Off Party

Jul 22 – Jul 23, 2026 Parq Nightclub, 615 Broadway, San …

The week of San Diego Comic-Con starts before you ever enter the convention center. Ready Party One: The Final Level is how it begins right. Parq Nightclub hosts the SDCC Kick-Off Party on Wednesday July 22 — the night before badge pickup begins, when the city is already filling with fans who flew in from everywhere. Neon-lit gaming and arcade atmosphere, DJs across two floors, a live cosplay showcase, and a set from The Flux Capacitors, one of the most committed Back to the Future tribute acts in the country. No SDCC badge required. Parq is a short walk from the convention center on Broadway. VIP tables and elevated tiers available. Price: $33.85-$321.96. Organized by Experience Level Entertainment. July 22, 2026 | 8 PM - 2 AM.

Art Basel Miami Beach 2026 — Miami Beach, FL

Coming Soon

13 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 55 days away

13 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Art Basel Miami Beach 2026 — Miami Beach, FL

Dec 2 – Dec 7, 2026 Miami Beach Convention Center, 190…

You leave having seen things that will show up in auction records and retrospectives for the next decade - and you did not have to buy a single piece to be part of it. For one week in December, Miami Beach becomes the most concentrated gathering of contemporary art in the Western Hemisphere: 250 galleries from 30 countries, and a city that builds its entire social calendar around them. The main fair at the Convention Center is overwhelming in the best sense, with galleries from New York, London, Tokyo, and Sao Paulo competing for attention across a space that would hold several football fields. Wynwood's murals and the Design District's boutiques become satellite venues. Opening-night parties are invitation-only, but the energy of the week bleeds into every restaurant and hotel lobby in South Beach. This is not a quiet museum experience - it is a city in a specific, charged state of collective attention that happens once a year and then recedes. It is worth attending even with no intention of buying: the public programming includes talks, artist installations, and outdoor screenings, and the works you encounter at the main fair and at satellite shows like Untitled, NADA, and Scope are what the contemporary art world is actively debating in real time. If you care what art is doing right now, this is where you go to find out. Secure a hotel early - December in Miami Beach is peak season and fair proximity commands a premium. The main fair requires a ticket ($50-100 depending on day and time); many satellite fairs are free. RSVP to gallery openings in advance through their own websites, and book Design District restaurants weeks out. A car or rideshare is more flexible than the free shuttle. The main fair is most crowded on preview days (Wednesday and Thursday) and thinnest on Sunday, when collectors pack up their acquisitions. Miami absorbs the energy of the global art market and does not quite release it until January. December in Miami Beach.

Coming Soon

15 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 301 days away

15 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Gen Con 2027 — Indianapolis, IN

Aug 5, 2027 Indiana Convention Center, 100 S C…

On a shelf in your house sit the games that only come out when the right people are in town, and the right people are almost never in town. That is the quiet arithmetic of being into this: the hobby is built for a full table and adult life keeps handing you three chairs and a Tuesday. For four days every August, one American city solves that completely, and the solution is so total it reorganizes how people think about the rest of their year. Running since 1968 and held in downtown Indianapolis since 2003, Gen Con has grown into the oldest and largest tabletop gaming convention in North America. It takes over the Indiana Convention Center, spills into Lucas Oil Stadium, and fills the connected hotels until the skywalks over the street are moving crowds at two in the morning. Roughly seventy thousand people come. It is the closest thing the hobby has to a homecoming. What it actually feels like is a city that has agreed, briefly and completely, to be about one thing. You walk into a hall the size of an airport terminal and every table in it has strangers sitting at it playing something. Open gaming runs essentially around the clock, which is the part that surprises first-timers most — at three in the morning there are still hundreds of people awake and mid-game, and joining a table requires nothing but asking. Designers demo their own unreleased games personally. The line you are standing in becomes a game. People who have played together online for nine years meet in person for the first time and it is visibly emotional. Is it worth it? If you have ever felt the specific frustration of loving something that requires other people to enjoy, yes, and it is not close. This is not a spectator convention where you look at things behind glass — you sit down and you play, constantly, for four days. It is not for someone looking for a relaxed vacation; it is loud, enormous, and physically demanding, and you will walk more than you expect. It is for the person who wants to be surrounded. What veterans know: the Exhibit Hall opens at 10 AM Thursday and the first hour is genuine chaos, because the new releases that everyone came for have limited print runs and the popular ones are gone before noon. Buy event tickets the moment registration opens; the good sessions sell out in minutes. Book a hotel on the skywalk system and thank yourself later. Gen Con 2027 runs August 5 through 8 at the Indiana Convention Center. The rest of the year, the same people are findable in a hundred smaller rooms.

This Happened

11 Gathered

Comic Tron - Comic Con After Party

Jul 25 – Jul 26, 2026 1337 India Street, San Diego, CA 9…

The convention center goes dark at six, but the people inside it don't power down — they just need somewhere to put the charge. That's the whole reason a tribute act spent years building replica chromed helmets, a full-scale pyramid stage, and electro-luminescent suits that glow like the inside of a game grid. They believe the best hours of Comic-Con week aren't on the floor at all — they're after, when the badge comes off and the costume stays on and a room full of strangers turns out to be exactly your people. Little Italy's Music Box becomes a Tron sequence for one night: futuristic beats, glowing everything, an "Alive 2007"-style spectacle that treats Daft Punk like scripture. Cosplayers, ravers, and the SDCC crowd who refuse to call it a night all end up under the same lights. You do not need a Comic-Con badge to walk in. Doors at 8PM, the night ignites at 9PM, Saturday, July 25, 2026, at Music Box, 1337 India Street, San Diego, CA 92101. Tickets through Belly Up.

Thrilljoy Block Party: Rock the Block — SDCC 2026

This Happened

11 Gathered

Thrilljoy Block Party: Rock the Block — SDCC 2026

Jul 25, 2026 InterContinental San Diego, 901 Ba…

The collectibles community has its own SDCC — and this is it. Thrilljoy's Rock the Block takes over the InterContinental San Diego on Saturday night of Comic-Con week with exclusive PIX Packs, carnival games, giveaways, and the kind of energy that only happens when people who obsess over the same things end up in the same room. When tickets launched, bots crashed the site. Thrilljoy had to manually cancel suspicious purchases and restore spots for real collectors. That is not a marketing story — that is the community telling you how badly they wanted in. The demand is the signal. Every attendee gets two drink tickets, food, and an exclusive Block Party PIX Pack with event-only items you cannot get anywhere else. This is the party where your shelf gets something nobody else's shelf has. The games and giveaways run all night. The venue is steps from the Convention Center — close enough to still feel the SDCC energy, far enough to breathe. Ages 5 and up. Doors at 6 PM, runs until 11 PM. Tickets are 165 dollars and limited to 2 per person — this is intentionally small. The InterContinental San Diego is at 901 Bayfront Ct, right on the waterfront. If you collect, this is your Saturday night.

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.

San Diego Symphony — Summer Pops at The Rady Shell 2026

This Happened

250 Gathered

San Diego Symphony — Summer Pops at The Rady Shell 2026

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

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

Party Plus Ultra — Anime Party at Parq Nightclub (SDCC 2026)

This Happened

9 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Party Plus Ultra — Anime Party at Parq Nightclub (SDCC 2026)

Jul 23 – Jul 24, 2026 $30-$125 Parq Nightclub, 615 Broadway, San …

You spend all day on the convention floor, and by night you need a room that matches the energy. Party Plus Ultra is the one the anime community circles on the SDCC schedule before badges even ship -- XLE Productions turning Parq Nightclub, one of the Gaslamp's premier venues, into a full anime experience: cosplay, themed activations, and photo ops for a crowd that earned the night out. Live anime cover band Isekai Stage opens with fan-favorite openings and anthems before DJs Chuck None, DJ Overkill, and Kahn Artest take over until 1:30 AM. XLE has been running SDCC after-parties for years, and this is their signature one. Thursday night of SDCC week at Parq Nightclub, 615 Broadway, San Diego, CA 92101. General admission starts at $30 early bird; VIP available. 21+.

Happening Now

Big Bear Lake Oktoberfest 2026

Oct 3 – Oct 25, 2026 42900 Big Bear Blvd, Big Bear Lake…

At 6,752 feet, the mountain air turns crisp enough in October that a full beer hall in the forest starts to feel less like a party and more like the reason the season exists. Every October weekend, Big Bear throws its Oktoberfest at the Big Bear Convention Center, and the fall foliage and the elevation do the work that no lowland festival can fake. German beer on draft, brats, pretzels, sauerkraut, Bavarian desserts. Live oompah bands play through the day. Stein-holding contests, chicken-dance competitions, and a full dance floor run from early afternoon into the night, and there are no reservations to make - you show up, grab a stein, and join in. It runs Friday evenings, Saturdays, and Sundays across all four October weekends. One warning: mountain traffic on the 18 and 138 stacks up on Saturday afternoons, so arrive early or late. Big Bear Village and the surrounding forest hit peak fall color in October, which makes this an easy excuse to turn one afternoon into a full weekend in the mountains.

Coming Soon

65 days away

Comic Arts Los Angeles 2026

Dec 12, 2026 Homenetmen Ararat North Campus, 30…

Small press comics are made by people who mostly lose money doing it, which is exactly why the work is interesting, and why a room full of them feels different from a convention floor. No celebrity photo ops here, no film studios, no queue for a Funko exclusive — just long tables of risograph zines, hand-bound books, and cartoonists sitting behind their own work explaining it to whoever stops. Los Angeles has an unusually deep bench of independent cartoonists because the animation industry pays some of them to live here, and this is the weekend they show what they make when nobody is art-directing. Admission is deliberately low-barrier and the crowd skews toward art students, working illustrators, and people who will spend forty dollars on something printed in an edition of sixty. December 12 and 13, 2026, at the Homenetmen Ararat North Campus on Dolores Street in Glassell Park. It runs annually, and the same cartoonists turn up year over year, which is how you watch a scene grow in real time.

Street Food Cinema: Cars 20th Anniversary — The Autry Museum, Griffith Park

This Happened

11 Gathered

Street Food Cinema: Cars 20th Anniversary — The Autry Museum, Griffith Park

Aug 1, 2026 The Autry Museum, 4700 Western Her…

Twenty years since Lightning McQueen first rolled into Radiator Springs, and somehow the ache of that little Route 66 town still lands — the idea that the best things in life are the ones you find when you’re lost on the way to somewhere else. Street Food Cinema is screening Cars for its 20th anniversary on the lawn of the Autry Museum, and in partnership with D23, the evening turns into something richer than a regular outdoor movie night. Doors open at 6pm with a live band, a curated spread of LA’s best food trucks, and that particular Griffith Park golden hour that makes everything feel like it was designed by a production designer who actually cares. The movie rolls at 8:15pm on a massive outdoor screen. Bring a blanket, bring a date, bring the kid who memorized every car’s name and still does the voice. This is the kind of night LA does better than anywhere: outdoor cinema, good food, good light, good company. General admission $23. The Autry Museum, 4700 Western Heritage Way, Griffith Park. Dog-friendly. Bar on site. Free parking.

Crunchyroll Anime FanFest 2026 — San Diego

This Happened

4946 Gathered

4946 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #} 9 saved

Crunchyroll Anime FanFest 2026 — San Diego

Jul 25 – Jul 27, 2026 222 Marina Park Way, San Diego, CA…

This is what it sounds like when 10,000 anime fans hear the opening notes of something they have been listening to alone for years. The Rady Shell sits on San Diego Bay directly behind the Convention Center, and for two days during Comic-Con it belongs to the music anime made famous. No badge, no wristband, no cost — which means the crowd is half convention-goers and half people who came for this and nothing else. The 2025 edition put SPYAIR, yama, ASH DA HERO and Denzel Curry on the same stage and it did not read as a novelty. It read as a playlist. The 2026 lineup is announced closer to the date. Gates Saturday July 25 at 1 PM. Sunday July 26 continues. 222 Marina Park Way, San Diego. Free. You know which friend has been playing these songs in the car since high school.

This Happened

205 Gathered

🌎 Nation's Best

205 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Rose City Comic Con 2026 — Portland, OR

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

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

This Happened

128 Gathered

128 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Long Beach Comic Con 2026

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

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

This Happened

62 Gathered

62 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Idyllwild Renaissance Faire

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

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

The Neil Diamond Concert Experience starring Rob G

This Happened

84 Gathered

84 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

The Neil Diamond Concert Experience starring Rob G

May 16, 2026 2100 E. Thousand Oaks Blvd, Scherr…

Scherr Forum, 2100 E Thousand Oaks Blvd, Thousand Oaks. May 16th. The Neil Diamond Concert Experience — starring Rob Garrett in the role built for a voice like Neil Diamond's, at the Bank of America Performing Arts Center, in a show designed to bring that catalog to a theater that can hold it properly. Neil Diamond's songs are American cultural furniture. "Sweet Caroline." "Cherry Cherry." "Song Sung Blue." "I Am, I Said." "Hello Again." The catalog is the thing — songs that have been sung in stadiums and kitchen radios and karaoke bars for fifty years, each one recognizable in the first four notes, each one carrying the specific weight of wherever you were when it mattered most to you. The Scherr Forum is a proper performing arts venue with the sound and the sightlines to make a tribute concert feel like the event it's designed to be. Tickets at ticketmaster.com. May 16th in Thousand Oaks. A Neil Diamond tribute in a room this size, with a voice built for this material, is the version of the concert that the recording approximates. Come ready to sing.

This Happened

23 Gathered

🌎 Nation's Best

23 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Fantastic Fest 2026 — Austin, TX

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

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

Happening Now

🌎 Nation's Best

114 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Anime NYC 2026

Aug 20 – Nov 22, 2026 From $175 Javits Center, New York, NY 10001

The East Coast doesn't have Anime Expo. It built Anime NYC — and for the community on the right side of the country, that distinction matters. Javits Center, November 20-22, 2026. Three days, one convention floor, and the crowd that traveled 400 miles to be in the same room as guests who shaped the shows they grew up on. Panels, artist alley, industry announcements, the con floor energy that only happens when this many people are this invested. The guest roster pulls from English and Japanese voice acting, manga artists, and industry figures who don't appear at US conventions often. Artist Alley is one of the larger ones on the East Coast circuit. The show floor runs exhibitors across the full range — merchandise, media, collectibles. Badges from $175. New York City is the venue around the venue — the community migrates through Midtown after hours. The East Coast convention that became its own thing.

Long Beach Expo — The Collectibles Show 2026

This Happened

26 Gathered

26 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Long Beach Expo — The Collectibles Show 2026

Sep 9, 2026 Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …

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

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

This Happened

11 Gathered

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

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

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

This Happened

87 Gathered

87 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Agenda Show Long Beach 2026

Aug 6 – Aug 7, 2026 Long Beach Convention Center, 300 …

The biggest booth on the floor is almost never where the conversation is. It is the small table in the corner, a brand on its second or third season, somebody who still has something to prove and forty minutes to explain it to you. Walking this show slowly is the entire skill. The fall edition carries different inventory than the January one. Brands come back from summer with lines that did not exist eight months ago, things that began as samples on a garage floor, collabs that read differently in August light than they ever will in a lookbook. If you work in this industry, this is where fourth-quarter decisions get made over a handshake. If you only orbit it, this is where you see what is coming before it lands anywhere else. Long Beach Convention Center on Ocean Boulevard, registration at agendashow.com. Be there the moment it opens, because the corner tables run out of attention first.

This Happened

156 Gathered

156 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Anime Matsuri 2026

Jul 23 – Jul 26, 2026 Paid - $40-$120 George R. Brown Convention Center,…

Everybody knows the LA and New York conventions. Almost nobody outside the Gulf Coast talks about the one the entire South actually organizes its summer around — and that's exactly why it hits different once you're inside it. For nearly two decades, Houston's anime community has poured itself into these four days, and the room has the specific warmth of a scene that built its own home instead of driving to somebody else's. Thirty thousand people fill the George R. Brown for it — a convention center big enough that the panels don't feel like fire hazards and the exhibit hall has room to actually move. The guest roster runs international, Japanese voice actors and manga artists alongside the English-dub names, and the cosplay competition is one of the most serious in the South: people who spent six months on a build come here to be seen by a crowd that knows exactly what they're looking at. You come for the guests and stay for the feeling that Houston has quietly been doing this at a level the coasts never bothered to notice. George R. Brown Convention Center, Houston — July 23–26, 2026. Badge info and the guest list build as the date nears.

Coming Soon

70 Gathering

269 days away

70 {# Rendered ALWAYS and hidden below the threshold, never omitted. An element that is absent at 0 cannot be repainted when the reader makes it 1 — that is why the card's count used to sit stale until a reload. falkorPresence (base.html) owns the text from here. #}

Anime Expo 2027 — Day 4 (Sunday)

Jul 4, 2027 Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…

Everyone chases the opening days — the announcements, the premieres, the Hall H-sized adrenaline. The people who know AX chase the last one. Sunday is when the world's largest anime convention exhales: the lines go short, the floor slows down, and the conversations finally stop being shouted between panels and start being real. It's also the day the floor gets generous. Artist Alley cuts prices to clear the table, exhibitors let exclusive merch go at a discount, and the Closing Ceremonies — the weekend cosplay recap, the Masquerade awards, the official goodbye — mark the moment four days of strangers become the community that'll wait a whole year to reassemble. Day 4 badges are the easiest to find on resale and the most underrated ticket of the convention. And in 2027 the finale lands on the Fourth of July, with fireworks visible from parts of the LACC plaza depending on which way they launch. Anime Expo 2027, Sunday July 4, Los Angeles Convention Center. Take Metro or rideshare — downtown parking and traffic are brutal on the Fourth. Come for the goodbye; it's the part that stays with you.

Leaving Falkor