Pennsylvania’s Zenkaikon celebrated their twentieth anniversary from March 19th through 22nd, 2026. This event saw the largest number of attendees in the con’s long history: 9,287 people attended Zenkaikon 2026—up by 1,878 people from last year. Zenkaikon was the first anime convention I ever attended back in 2011, and since 2024 it has been an annual tradition for me, fellow Fandom Spotlite writer Hailey, and her wife Allyson, so the con has a special place in my heart. But has Zenkaikon grown too big for their britches? Let’s talk about it.
Please note that this is not by any means an all-encompassing overview of the convention. I packed my schedule too fully this year and wasn’t able to experience everything I wanted to, so I want to be perfectly transparent in that there are many things I didn’t see for myself.
The Event Space
After starting out in King of Prussia back in 2006 then experimenting with Oaks in 2012, the Zenkaikon started using the Lancaster County Convention Center in 2013, and it’s looking like this venue will be the convention’s permanent home. In 2022, the convention also started scheduling events at a local pub called Tellus 360, and in 2024 they further expanded by including the Holiday Inn down the street to accommodate the increasing number of attendees.
This year, following was located at the Lancaster County Convention Center (LCCC):
- Registration
- Panels
- Workshops
- Cozy Corner
- Arcade gaming
- Video gaming
- Cosplay photoshoots
- Artist Alley
- Dealers’ Room
- Voice actor guests
- LARP
- Scavenger hunt
- Magic of Cosplay Exhibit
- Carolina Manga Library
- Performances and contests (Hall Costume Contest, Idol Fest, Cosplay For Your Life, Cosplay Masquerade, Cosplay Dating Game, taiko drum performance)
- Charity auction
- Free photo areas
- Friday evening Cosplay Ball
- Saturday night dance
- Opening and closing ceremonies
Meanwhile, the Holiday Inn hosted the following:
- Panels
- Tabletop gaming
- Fandom meetups (not to be confused with cosplay meetups)
- Ribbon game
- 21+ mixers (specifically Speed Friending, Octavia’s Social Club, Pride Mixer, and Chill Vibes)
- Zenkaikon’s 20th birthday party (this event was not included with a regular registration and was only open to those who had purchased a Premium Bundle or paid an additional fee)
The only events that took place at Tellus 360 were karaoke and the raves.
The addition of the Holiday Inn and Tellus 360 has come with its fair share of both pros and cons. The pros are self-evident: extra buildings means more space, and, as Will Ferrell’s character said in the movie Step-Brothers, it adds “so much [room for] activities!” The Holiday Inn is especially advantageous. Of the five rooms available for the con’s usage, 303 was the designated spot for fandom meetups, 304 was the headquarters for the ribbon game, and 301, 302, and 305 were used for panels (more on that in the next section). A total of 64 panels were scheduled in the Holiday Inn; that’s over two full days’ worth of programming that wouldn’t be possible if the convention was restricted to just the LCCC. In addition, the hotel’s second floor housed tabletop gaming and the Octavia Ballroom.
By far the largest downside to these additional spaces is getting to them. The Holiday Inn is about half a mile away from the LCCC—approximately a 10 minute walk. The unpredictable March weather has the potential to make these 10 minutes miserably wet, cold, and/or windy. But the worst part, in my opinion, is that this walk takes you through the very public streets of downtown Lancaster. For most, if not all, of those 10 minutes, congoers (especially those in cosplay) are exposed to the judgmental stares and comments of Lancaster locals as well as tourists visiting for reasons unrelated to Zenkaikon. Anime conventions are meant as a safe space for anime lovers, but that peace of mind is sacrificed when walking from one building to the other. While I have yet to make it over to Tellus, apparently this issue is even more prominent there. Since Zenkaikon did not completely commandeer the pub, the karaoke and raves hosted there were also open to the public. Congoers in the Zenkaikon Discord server reported that anyone in cosplay was met with “whispers” and “weird stares,” to the point that at least one person backed out of karaoke completely as a result.
The good news is that this intermingling with the public is avoidable thanks to the Zenkaikon shuttle that runs between the LCCC and Holiday Inn. In response to attendee feedback from 2025, they even added a second shuttle this year. These free shuttles are available only to Zenkaikon badge holders and arrive at each venue every 15 minutes. Unfortunately, lining up your schedule with that of the shuttle can be tricky, and relying on the shuttle is risky when you need to be at an event by a certain time. Many attendees (myself included) chose to forgo the shuttle because walking was faster. With panels filling up as quickly as they did (which I will discuss in a moment), waiting for the shuttle could result in missing out on them.
A common complaint last year was that the panel rooms filled up too quickly, especially those in the Holiday Inn. Two of the three panel rooms have enough space for about 60-65 audience members (the sign outside Holiday 302 said the room capacity was 65 and I counted 60 chairs in that room, and I believe Holiday 305 was the same size), while the third one (Holiday 301) can hold between 250-300 people according to the Con Chair. Unfortunately, this still wasn’t enough space to meet the demands of then-record breaking attendance (and keep in mind that 2025 had nearly 2,000 fewer attendees than 2026). I personally remember making the hike over to the Holiday Inn only to be turned away at the door because the room was full, despite arriving 10 minutes before the start time. This happened to me two or three times, and I know many other congoers had the same experience. Something Zenkaikon is known for is being responsive to feedback, so these complaints did not fall on deaf ears: the con was excited to announce that three new rooms had been built in the LCCC and that they would be used for panels in 2026. Two of these rooms (Con Center 101 and 102) could hold between 140-180 audience members, while the third one (Con Center 103) had enough room for about 300 people. 72 panels were scheduled in those rooms—so 72 panels that there wouldn’t have been enough space for last year. While Zenkaikon technically had nothing to do with the LCCC’s remodeling, their decision to use these new spaces as panel rooms was a smart move.
Nevertheless, even these significant additions STILL were not enough. Unfortunately the only panel I was able to find time to attend was Horror Movie Jeopardy, which was demoted to one of the smaller Holiday Inn rooms despite becoming a sort of Zenkaikon cult classic over the past five years. While I can’t say I myself was turned away, several attendees ended up arriving late because they had mistakenly assumed the game would be taking place in the larger room and gone there instead. As for Hailey and Allyson, they witnessed an entire group of Scooby Gang cosplayers be turned away from The Complete History of Scooby-Doo. In addition, when I asked in the Zenkaikon Discord server if anyone had encountered full panel rooms this year, both congoers and department heads confirmed that the problem returned. The Assistant Program Director, for example, stated, “All of my panels were full except 2. […] Most of mine were in one of the new panel rooms with a max capacity of around 130 or so. People were still unfortunately turned away at a lot of my panels this year which is kind of unavoidable I guess.” The staff member who had been on duty for Pokémon Bingo, which was held in Con Center 102, added, “Pokemon Bingo filled up almost immediately and I had to turn away literally fifty people or more.” One attendee also reported that “Everything we wanted to do besides 3 events/panels was completely full with a line out the door 20-30 minutes before the event started. One of them was karaoke […] but cosplay dating game also filled up very rapidly.” The good news, however, is that this same person shared that “We didn’t have as many issues with the holiday inn panels as last year.” So, although they still have some numbers to balance, Zenkaikon is at least headed in the right direction in terms of panel availability.
Meetups / Photoshoots
I want to start this section by clarifying the difference between a “fandom meetup” and a “cosplay meetup / cosplay photoshoot.” According to the Ribbon Game Department Head, “A fandom meetup is hanging out to talk about the fandom and series rather than taking photos, while a cosplay photoshoot is focused on taking pictures of cosplayers from that series.” Last year, the two events were included on the same spreadsheet titled “COSPLAY MEETUPS,” with each event being specified as either a “Fandom Meetup” or “Cosplay Photoshoot” in parentheses. This year, the distinction was made much clearer by organizing them on two different spreadsheets titled “FANDOM MEETUPS” and “COSPLAY PHOTOSHOOTS.” The term “cosplay meetup” actually never even appears on either sheet. The term “meetup” was still thrown around by a lot of attendees (myself included) when referring to the cosplay photoshoots, but Zenkaikon did their part in specifying that these are not the same as fandom meetups. Although I’ve never participated in a fandom meetup before, now that I know exactly what they are I’d be interested in attending or even hosting one next year.
The convention’s growth was evident in both events. In 2025, there were 26 cosplay photoshoots and 10 fandom meetups, whereas this year there were 36 cosplay photoshoots and 21 fandom meetups. Last year both the fandom meetups and cosplay photoshoots were held in the Vine Street Lobby in the LCCC; however, this location is where the three new panel rooms discussed in the previous section were built, which meant they both needed a new home. To help make the separation of the two types of events even more explicit, in 2026 they were placed in entirely different buildings: fandom meetups in room 303 of the Holiday Inn, cosplay photoshoots in LCCC’s Commonwealth 1 (which had previously been used for panels). The results of the latter were… fine. The lighting left a bit to be desired, and the beige wall panels were not nearly as nice of a background as the stones in the area formerly known as the Vine Street Lobby. The space is also significantly less open, and it seemed a little cramped for some of the bigger fandoms such as Pokémon (which ended up running 15 minutes over their allotted time due to the size of the group). Still, I would say the location worked out well enough, and in my opinion sacrificing Vine Street Lobby for the sake of having more panels was worth it.
Submissions for meetups and photoshoots were done via Google Form. In that form’s description, it stated, “Accepted photoshoots/meetup will be emailed prior to the convention to confirm the time slot. These emails are expected to be sent out between January 25th and February 1st.” However, the snowstorm in late January apparently put the team behind schedule and pushed this timeline back to between February 1st and 15th. Both acceptances and rejections were sent by email on February 10th. After hosting photoshoots at Zenkaikon two years in a row (SK8 The Infinity in 2024 and Hellaverse alongside Starlight Cat Cosplay in 2025), I was surprised when both of the photoshoot requests I submitted (Chainsaw Man and Danganronpa) were declined. (This part isn’t super important, but as a pedant I want to mention that the rejection email was worded in a way that made it sound like I had requested a combined photoshoot for the two fandoms. When I emailed to clarify this, though, I quickly got a response back confirming that they knew they were two separate photoshoots and both had individually been declined.) I was pretty bummed by this news because I thought it meant those meetups had been rejected entirely; fortunately, when the tentative schedule was released four days later on February 14th, I saw that both meetups would be occurring, I just wouldn’t be the one hosting them. I wish that had been made clearer (or, better yet, that I would have been given the option to co-host, which is what MAGFest does when more than one person submits a meetup for the same fandom), but ultimately I’m just grateful these meetups happened at all!
I also noticed several unofficial meetups/photoshoots crop up this year, which I did not encounter at all last year. In the Discord server alone I saw people advertising unofficial gatherings for Cookie Run: Kingdom, Twisted Wonderland, Sailor Moon, My Little Pony, Witch Hat Atelier, farming sims, and Hellaverse. I actually ended up hosting one myself, too! The official KPop Demon Hunters photoshoot was scheduled for literally the only day during the weekend that I wouldn’t have time to do my Baby Saja cosplay, so when I noticed that there were no fandom meetups scheduled for after 12:45 on Sunday and also an empty space in the photoshoot schedule from 1:45 to 2:30, I reached out to see about adding either a KPDH fandom meetup or a second photoshoot on Sunday afternoon. I sent this email to cosplaymeetups@zenkaikon.org early in the morning on March 10th; however, apparently this inbox is no longer monitored, even though the rejection email I had received said “If you have any further questions, please email cosplaymeetups@zenkaikon.org!” After two days of radio silence (which was unusual for the cosplay meetup department, which is normally super speedy in their responses), I tried contacting the department co-heads personally. They responded right away and said that the meetup schedule was finalized on March 10th… which means that if they had actually checked the inbox of the advertised email address, I might have been able to squeeze it in just in time. I can’t pretend I’m not a little butthurt about it. Still, I was told that I could organize my own unofficial meetup/photoshoot “so long as they are in spaces publicly accessible to fellow attendees and abide by the conventions rules.” Thus, I put together a KPop Demon Hunters mini-meetup in the Holiday Inn lobby (though the weather was beautiful so we ended up moving to outside the Lancaster Public Library). There probably would have been a better turnout had it been listed as an official meetup in the Guidebook (we only had nine people attend in total, including myself), but honestly, having the freedom to choose our own location rather than being confined to the assigned rooms in the Holiday Inn or LCCC ended up being a huge bonus. I was also able to convert it from a fandom meetup to a photoshoot by roping in one of my photographer friends at the last minute!
Panels
As I mentioned in the previous section, I regrettably attended hardly any panels this Zenkaikon, even though I was interested in a ton of them. However, I had the pleasure of hosting three panels of my own and co-hosting a fourth. Hosting these panels was an absolute blast and I hope to continue being a panelist at Zenkaikon for years to come! I have to say, though, that the process of becoming a panelist was significantly more stressful than last year, and it had nothing to do with the fact that I went from hosting one panel to four.
I hosted a panel at Zenkaikon for the first time in 2025. The acceptance process was very simple: I received an email on February 2nd stating that my panel had been accepted and that they would let me know my placement in the programming schedule in about a week. This email also included a voucher code for two free Silver Memberships and instructions to let them know if I had already registered for Zenkaikon so the Registration department could get a refund started. I had recently found out I would be competing in Cosplay For Your Life, so when I responded to this email to warn them about the potential scheduling conflict, within a few hours I received an email from someone named Adam informing me of when my panel was scheduled and assuring me it wouldn’t conflict with Cosplay For Your Life. The full schedule was then sent out to panelists on February 14th (so closer to two weeks later than the promised one week, but I don’t remember this being a problem).
This year was not NEARLY as straightforward. Instead of notifying applicants that their panel had been accepted via email, acceptance notifications were sent through Eventeny. On January 31st, the new Panels/Workshops Department Head sent a message through this platform warning applicants about technical difficulties they had encountered. Oddly, I never received that email and had to find out about it through friends who did; it was never determined why I never got this message. Acceptance notifications then went out in batches throughout the month of February: for the three solo panels I submitted, I received my acceptances on February 2nd, 14th, and 23rd. The final two notifications were ultimately redundant because on February 7th, they sent out (again through Eventeny) an alphabetical list of all the accepted and waitlisted panels and workshops. I also never got this message and had to have a friend forward it to me, which means that if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have friends who were also panelists, I would have incorrectly thought two of my panels were denied until those delayed acceptances arrived on the 14th and 23rd. The aforementioned Starlight Cat Cosplay received a random email blast from Eventeny on February 25th, which included an acceptance for a panel that had not appeared on the list of accepted and waitlisted panels. This left them with less than a month to prepare that panel after spending nearly 20 days under the impression that it had been rejected. Starlight has been a Zenkaikon attendee since 2011 and repeat panelist since 2019, yet they shared with me that this was the most stressed they have ever felt leading up to the convention.
A tentative programming schedule was sent out on February 14th; however, due to a large volume of requests for schedule changes, the schedule was not finalized until March 12th: a mere week before Day 0 of the convention. Now, I want to make it very clear that I greatly appreciate that the staff was even willing to make changes at all. They were well within their rights to say, “Sorry, this is the final schedule so you’ll have to make it work somehow,” but instead they carefully considered every request and bent over backwards to accommodate the panelists. I truly am grateful for this, and I know many other panelists are too! Still, the long wait made it very difficult for panelists to plan their convention. For instance, one of my costumes was dependent on the Warrior Cats Trivia I was set to co-host with Hailey, and this panel was originally scheduled during a time I wasn’t available. Therefore, if they weren’t able to move it that would mean that 1. I would have to remove my Scourge cosplay (which I had already packed in my suitcase) from my Zenkaikon cosplay lineup and 2. Hailey would have to prepare to host the game by herself. We didn’t receive confirmation that it could indeed be rescheduled until March 10th: nearly an entire month after we found out it was accepted. It didn’t end there, though. A few hours later, after I had already made and shared digital flyers for the event, Hailey received an email from the Panels & Workshops Department Head saying, “I just got off a call with our con-chair and found out that Warrior Cats is getting really good traction on Guidebook, so we would like to move it to a larger room, which means a different time.” When we asked for the number of people who had expressed interest in the panel on Guidebook so we could have a better idea of whether or not it would be worth it to reschedule, we never got a response. We also never got a response when I posed this same question again because we weren’t sure how many copies of the answer sheets to print. Somewhere between 80 and 100 people ended up attending, so despite the whiplash, I have to concede it was definitely a smart move on the con’s behalf to upgrade us to a larger room, and ultimately worth the last minute change in schedule.
I would love to say that all’s well that ends well, but the chaos of this year’s pre-convention timeline has me a bit worried. In their defense, Zenkaikon had a lot of factors working against them: a new Panels & Workshops Department Head, technical difficulties with Eventeny, and a record number of panel submissions (300+ compared to 264 last year, according to the Director of Programming) left them with an overflowing plate. But if the convention is going to continue to grow at the rate it has been, such issues absolutely must be ironed out sooner rather than later. Some of the staff often gave the impression that they had bit off more than they could chew, such as when attendees expressed concerns in the Discord server and were met with dismissive, snarky, or sarcastic replies from department heads. Whenever someone asked a question about when panel acceptances would go out, for example, more often than not the response had something to do with how complicated and difficult it is to put together a programming schedule. I don’t want to suggest that this task isn’t a major endeavor, but is that not what having departments is for? Besides, while I’m sure they were extremely busy and reasonably getting annoyed by the same question being asked so many times, that’s not an excuse to forgo professionalism. Several well-intentioned members of the Discord offered to help only to be shot down by department heads who insisted they had everything under control. I feel as though they owed it to both themselves and the congoers to accept or ask for help if they ended up in over their heads—and it certainly seemed like they were at times. Again, I’m not trying to belittle their efforts, and I admire all that they were able to accomplish in the end, but it seems a bit unnecessary for individual people to take on so much responsibility. Teamwork makes the dream work, guys!
Cosplay For Your Life
I can’t write about Zenkaikon without mentioning my favorite event of the weekend. Hosted by Lancaster Pride and organized by their Director of Entertainment Karma Sutra, Cosplay For Your Life is a lip sync competition that occurred for the first time at Zenkaikon 2025. Drag queen Amethyst Diamond returned as the host for 2026, with fellow queens Charlize Angelz, Majestee, and Nevaeha Le’Vixenn as judges. Cosplayer Mak Sherrid, who had been one of the judges in 2025 as well, was also a judge. For the most part, the event’s sophomore year was set up almost identically to the inaugural event (if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it!) except for one major change: it was converted to an 18+ event. Feelings about this decision were mixed, as it would limit the number of potential audience members but also expand the possibilities for performances. Most of the performers kept it PG anyway, but I personally took full advantage of this change and performed to Daisy by Ashnikko (if you know, you know). I was a little bummed that the little boy who asked me to sign his shirt when I performed as Scourge from Warriors last year couldn’t be there, though.
While I don’t have the exact attendance numbers, the audience seemed to be about the same size as last year’s despite the new 18+ restriction. On the other hand, there was a clear increase in the number of performers. Last year, there were 11 competitors; this year, that number nearly doubled. Almost every single person who competed in 2025 returned again in 2026 (including the defending champion @hunni_bunn__ as well as yours truly), which just goes to show how much fun this event is to participate in! Also among the competitors this year were cosplay influencers @koikosplay and @rottenries. To compensate for this growth in competition, instead of choosing just one winner like last year, this year there were also two runner-ups. Third place went to @greyeyedwolfie, while @galileo_figero was the first runner-up and the overall winner was @erisakablu. (It just now occurred to me as I’m writing this that none of the three winners were returners from last year. Nevertheless, the event is such a blast that this realization doesn’t deter me in the slightest from competing again in 2027, and I know the other Cosplay For Your Life 2025 alumni that I spoke with, including Hero of Wind and Alucard Schnee, feel the same way!)
I only have one negative comment to make about Cosplay For Your Life 2026: The organizers didn’t hire a photographer this year. I was disappointed to hear this since last year’s pictures by Julya Nichols Productions were incredible; however, I was told by the event organizer that a recording would eventually be available for the performers to access, so I was content to just take some screenshots from that whenever it was ready… Except there is no video. Participants were informed on April 7th that the Zenkaikon staff were told to record but not stream the event because of copyright restrictions, but due to a miscommunication they did not record the event at all. I know everyone makes mistakes, but this was a BIG mistake that let a lot of people down. Maybe I’m just dramatic, but I’m a little heartbroken about it, to be honest. I’m counting my blessings that Hailey was able to take a video of my performance for me, but I was really looking forward to the professional-grade recording. Plus, I don’t know if every competitor was lucky enough to have a friend record for them, so for some of my fellow contestants their lip sync routines may exist only in the memories of the audience. (Okay, fine, that was dramatic.)
Conclusion
So, what’s the consensus? Are Zenkaikon’s growing pains looking fatal, or are they making the convention stronger?
It seems that even with the use of three venues, the event space still isn’t big enough to meet the demands of this convention whose attendance jumped by nearly 2,000 people in just one year. But rest assured that the Zenkaikon team is already working to address this. Moving out of Lancaster is definitely not on the table for the foreseeable future, so instead the plan is to expand into even more locations within the city. The Con Chair, Joe, revealed in the Discord server on March 26th that there are five “not very small” venues that Zenkaikon is eyeing for next year, all of which are within a five minute walk of the LCCC. These locations have not been identified yet.
The new cosplay photoshoot location was a bit of a downgrade from previous years, but it worked out well enough that I wouldn’t call it a major area of concern. The convention staff’s energy would be better spent improving something else… such as organizing panels. While the large variety of panels offered was fantastic, becoming a panelist was remarkably more complicated this year than in the past. Despite the frustrations behind the scenes, though, I will say that during the convention itself everything was relatively stress-free for panelists. I just hope that next year the pre-convention process runs more smoothly. Lastly, Cosplay For Your Life was a hit yet again for both performers and audience members and was once again the highlight of my convention weekend!
In short: This year was a little messy at times, and there are still a few kinks to work out, but Zenkaikon is up for the challenge and has no intention of reverting to a smaller size. I’m interested to see the solutions the Zenkaikon team comes up with—and I am confident that they will come up with solutions. Now the question is: Will attendance reach 10,000 people next year?
Zenkaikon 2027 will be held from March 18th through 21st with Video Gaming as the theme.
