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Everything at San Diego Convention Center — including past events

Coming Soon

87 Gathering

🌎 Nation's Best 36 days away

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TwitchCon North America 2026

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

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

San Diego Comic-Con 2026 — San Diego, CA

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🌎 Nation's Best

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San Diego Comic-Con 2026 — San Diego, CA

Jul 23 – Jul 26, 2026 From $75 (1-day) San Diego Convention Center, 111 W…

The badge lottery closes months before anyone knows who is actually showing up, which is the first strange truth about Comic-Con: you commit to being in San Diego before you have any idea what you'll get to see. What you get is the closest proximity to what's coming in film, TV, comics, and gaming that any event on earth offers. The experience splits in two depending on how you engage. There's the inside game: badge in hand, in the Hall H line at 4am for a panel that will be dissected online before you walk out, hunting exclusive merch in the Exhibit Hall, scoring a signature from a creator you've followed for years. And there's the outside game, increasingly its own event - Petco Park and the Gaslamp Quarter fill with activations, giveaways, and pop-ups that require no badge at all. The city becomes the convention, and SDCC has outgrown the convention center by design. It's worth it, but go in with clear priorities. The Exhibit Hall alone is a full day. The panel schedule runs simultaneously across twenty rooms, so choices are constant and FOMO is structural. First-timers should identify their top three panels and build backward from there; everything else is bonus. The badge lottery typically opens in January, and returning attendees get priority in OPEN registration. If you miss the lottery, the outside events - which are free - are genuinely excellent. The Hall H overnight line is real and forms the night before major panels. Buy exclusives online if possible to avoid the floor scrum. San Diego in July is warm and sunny; the Gaslamp is walkable from the center; parking is brutal, so take the trolley or Uber. Comic-Con International has been a nonprofit running this since 1970, and the original vision - a gathering that took comics seriously as literature and art - persists under all the studio noise. The programming outside Hall H skews closer to that original spirit: creator spotlights, comics history panels, portfolio reviews, and an Artist Alley representing the actual comics community rather than its Hollywood adaptation. It is the annual gravity well of popular culture, a four-day event that shapes the next twelve months. San Diego Convention Center. July 23-26, 2026.

Pokemon TCG Regional Championship — San Diego

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Pokemon TCG Regional Championship — San Diego

May 30 – May 31, 2026 San Diego Convention Center, 111 W…

San Diego Convention Center, May 30th. The Pokémon TCG Regional Championship — Masters division at the top of the bracket, open age divisions running throughout, and a room that understands what competitive Pokémon actually looks like up close. Regionals draws players from across the Southwest who have been testing this format since the last set dropped. The level of play at the top tables is worth watching even if you're not registered — decks built around specific counters, plays made in the final minutes of a round that determine travel points and World Championship invites. The side event area runs all day for players who dropped from the main or just want reps in the room. Judges in official regalia move through the aisles with practiced calm. There's a specific atmosphere to a TCG Regional: binders and sleeves and the particular tension of a timed round winding down at a critical board state. If you play, register at rk9.gg. If you don't play and want to understand why this game still fills convention halls, come watch the top tables during Day 2. The Pokémon Regional is the proof.

@dmorris55

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@dmorris55

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San Diego International Comic Con

Jul 25 – Jul 28, 2024 San Diego International Comic Con …

Downtown stops being an office district and becomes a place where a stranger in full armor holds the crosswalk button for a family with strollers, and nobody finds it remarkable. That is the part people who have never gone do not understand — this is not a trade show. It is the week when the thing you love in private becomes the default language on the street. Comics are still the spine of it, but the floor spilled long ago into movies, television, gaming, and interactive work that did not have a name when this started. The convention center downtown holds the official version; the sidewalks, the hotel lobbies and the lines hold the rest, and the lines are where people actually meet each other. Go with the person you have been explaining your favorite series to for years, and let them find out there are thousands more.

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TwitchCon

Sep 19 – Sep 22, 2024 San Diego Convention Center

TwitchCon is an annual convention for the live streaming video platform Twitch. The event features panels, meet-and-greets with popular streamers, interactive activities, and showcases of the latest in gaming and streaming technology. It is a hub for content creators, gamers, and fans to connect and celebrate the Twitch community.

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Comic-Con International: San Diego 2025

Jul 24 – Jul 27, 2025 San Diego Convention Center

The line forms before dawn and nobody standing in it is unhappy about that. Somebody passes back a folding chair. Somebody explains a costume they spent months building to a stranger who genuinely wants to know. This is the part outsiders never understand — the waiting is not the tax you pay for the convention. It is a large part of the convention. Inside, the San Diego Convention Center holds every fandom at once and refuses to rank them: comics, anime, science fiction, fantasy, gaming, all of it running at the same time across panels, sneak peeks, and floors of merchandise you cannot get anywhere else. The biggest names in entertainment come here to say things out loud for the first time, and one aisle over an independent creator is selling you a book they drew themselves. Both happen in the same building. That is the actual miracle. Cosplay in every direction, collectibles, and a city that hands itself over for the weekend. Go with the person who got you into all of it.

While you are looking Different scene, same night out.

Coming Soon

🌎 Nation's Best 330 days away

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PAX West 2027 — Seattle, WA

Sep 3, 2027 Seattle Convention Center Arch Bui…

The medium you grew up on has spent thirty years being described to you by people who do not play it. You already know what it actually is — the thing you did with friends on a couch, the thing that got you through a bad year, the thing that is obviously an art form and obviously also just fun. Once a year over Labor Day weekend, Seattle stops arguing about that entirely and just holds the party. PAX West is the original PAX, started in 2004 by the people behind Penny Arcade as a convention built for players rather than for press and buyers. That origin still shows. Unlike the industry trade shows, nearly everything here is hands-on: you queue, you sit down, you actually play the unreleased thing, and the person explaining it to you is frequently the person who made it. It occupies the Seattle Convention Center across two buildings downtown and pulls tens of thousands of people into a few walkable blocks. The feel of it is less corporate than people expect. Whole halls are given over to things with no commercial purpose at all — freeplay rooms full of console setups, a tabletop area where you can borrow from a library of hundreds of games, handheld lounges, a legitimately good concert lineup at night. The indie section, called the PAX Rising floor, is where most veterans will tell you to spend your time, because that is where you play something made by four people in a room and recognize that it is better than most of what is upstairs. Is it worth it? If you actually play games, yes — this is the rare convention built around doing rather than watching. If you are coming hoping to see enormous AAA reveals, be warned that those increasingly happen in online showcases instead, and the show has drifted toward indies and community, which most attendees consider an improvement. It is for the person who wants to play fifteen things they have never heard of. What to know before you go: the show runs 10 AM to midnight Friday through Sunday, which is the single most useful fact about it — PAX is an evening convention as much as a daytime one, and the halls after 8 PM are calmer, the lines shorter, and the tournaments and concerts are running. Sunday and Monday are noticeably less crowded. The convention center is split between the Arch and Summit buildings, so read which one your panel is in before you walk. PAX West 2027 runs September 3 through 6 at the Seattle Convention Center, Arch Building, 705 Pike Street. Badges sell out; buy early.

Monthly

3075 Gathering

5 days away

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Los Angeles Pinball League — Monthly Tournament

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

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

LoL Worlds 2026 — Play-In Stage (Los Angeles)

Coming Soon

1445 Gathering

7 days away

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LoL Worlds 2026 — Play-In Stage (Los Angeles)

In 7 days · Oct 15 – Oct 18 Riot Games Arena, 12181 Bluff Cree…

Every region sends its dark horses, and most of them go home in the first week. That is what makes the opening stage the most nervous, least predictable stretch of the whole tournament. The Play-In Stage is where teams that did not walk in with a guaranteed bracket spot have to earn one, on foreign soil, against opponents they have only ever studied on video. Nothing is safe and nobody is comfortable. Upsets that reshape the entire championship happen here, in front of a few hundred people, before the broadcast audience has fully tuned in. Riot Games Arena is the tightest, loudest room in North American esports — small enough that crowd noise reaches the stage, close enough to watch a player's posture change when a fight goes wrong. From inside that building it is a different sport. Riot Games Arena, 12181 Bluff Creek Dr, Playa Vista. October 15-18. Tickets through lolesports.com. If you have only ever watched it on stream, this is the one to go to.

Weekly

669 Gathering

17h away

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D&D Adventurers League — Game Empire SD

Every Thursday · Next Oct 8 Free / $5 suggested 5037 Shawline St, San Diego, CA 92…

You do not need a group, a character, or any idea what you are doing. That is the entire design. Drop in on a Thursday evening, pick up a pregenerated character sheet, and join a table — mid-campaign or at the start of something fresh. Dungeon Masters are provided. Dice are provided. Rules questions are not tolerated so much as encouraged. Tables sort by Tier, so a first-time player rolling their first d20 sits with other new characters instead of getting lost behind a party three levels deep. If you already have a D&D Beyond character in Adventurers League legal format, bring it — after tonight it is recognized at any AL table anywhere in the world, which is the quietly remarkable part of organized play. Game Empire SD, 5037 Shawline St, San Diego — a dedicated tabletop store with real event space and staff who know the rules. Parking on-site. Most sessions need no reservation; check the store calendar. The only bad session is the one you did not show up for.

Coming Soon

246 Gathering

29 days away

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Fleet Week San Diego 2026

Nov 6 – Nov 9, 2026 Free admission Broadway Pier, 1000 North Harbor D…

Your chest hears them before your ears do. A sound comes in off the water, every conversation on the Embarcadero stops mid-sentence, and a few thousand heads tilt back at the same moment. This is the week the Blue Angels belong to San Diego Bay, flying low enough that the downtown skyline becomes their backdrop. What visitors miss is the quieter half. You can walk aboard Navy destroyers, submarines, and amphibious ships free of charge, up the gangway and into the passageways where somebody's kid stands on deployment. The Parade of Ships moves through the bay, the bands play, and the city says out loud that the Navy is its largest employer. This is not a show San Diego hosts. It is San Diego looking at itself. Free, family-friendly, on the Broadway Pier and Embarcadero in October, and the trolley beats parking on air show day. Bring the person who has never stood underneath one of those passes.

Comic Con Los Angeles 2026 — Stan Lee's LACC

Coming Soon

184 Gathering

22 days away

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Comic Con Los Angeles 2026 — Stan Lee's LACC

Oct 30 – Nov 1, 2026 Los Angeles Convention Center, 120…

The big one down the coast takes all the attention. The people who come to this one prefer it that way, and they are quietly glad you have not worked it out yet. Three days at the Convention Center — celebrity signings, panels, and an exhibitor floor that runs independent publishers alongside the major houses. Fifty thousand people who grew up on the same stories, turning a hall into a reunion. The character is different on purpose. This is the industry's own convention, the one people attend in costume because they want to rather than because the press is watching. Comics, sci-fi, gaming, horror, anime, fantasy, across all three days. Los Angeles Convention Center, 1201 S Figueroa St. October 30 through November 1. The mythology is still being made in that room, and some of the people making it are sitting at a table waiting for someone to say hello.

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