Inside New York Comic Con at 20: Fandom, fun, and facing the future

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A Fan at the Center of the Show

Across Manhattan’s Javits Center, New York Comic Con compresses comics, film, television, anime, gaming, publishing and cosplay into a four-day surge of panels, premieres, exclusives and fan-made spectacle, while 250,000 attendees move through nearly every usable corner of the building.

“We can’t find a corner of this building that’s not filled with something at this point,” ReedPop’s event director Chris D’Lando told Newsweek.

As the convention approaches its 20th anniversary in 2026, celebrating from October 8-11, its scale reflects how thoroughly fandom has entered mainstream culture, yet its appeal still rests on a live, communal charge D’Lando described as “that meeting place for everybody,” along with “that sort of central nervous system for fandom that you can only really get in a live event”.

“I went as a fan. I went as an aspiring pro. I went as somebody who worked on the show, and now I work as somebody who runs the whole show,” D’Lando told Newsweek. “It’s incredibly special to me.”

Although the title has changed, his view of the convention remains rooted in the people who gather there, because the event’s evolution mirrors a broader shift in entertainment while preserving the live encounter fans cannot reproduce through a screen.

Over 20 years, D’Lando has watched superhero cinema rise, anime move into the mainstream, and once-dormant interests return with new force; through each cycle, he said, New York Comic Con has tried to remain “at the bleeding edge of pop culture,” serving as “a central nervous system for fandom” whose energy depends on thousands of people experiencing a moment together.

What the Fans Say—and Where They Go

For all the emotion surrounding an anniversary, planning begins with evidence: ReedPop sends a detailed post-show survey after each event, reads thousands of responses and studies how crowds move through booths, panels and guest appearances.

“Our shows are pretty data heavy,” D’Lando said. “Our team reads every single one of those, and it’s thousands of responses with dozens of questions each.” Those findings become “the foundation for the following year,” he added, while attendance patterns reveal “how many people went to this booth, or how many people went to that panel, or how many people saw this guest.”

Anime’s “exponential explosion” during the past five to seven years has brought brands including Bandai, Viz and Crunchyroll into prominent positions, while collectibles and trading cards have surged. “Comic books are back in a big way this year,” D’Lando said, citing DC Comics’ Absolute line, and he repeatedly returned to the medium in the convention’s name.

“Our Artist Alley is one of the best in the country,” he said. “We have over 500 of the biggest comic book artists in the world.” For D’Lando, the priority remains explicit: “It’s really important to me that we are still a comic convention.”

His own reading list makes the institutional argument personal. D’Lando cited James Tynion IV’s Tiny Onion operation and writer-artist Daniel Warren Johnson, whose rise he has followed from earlier convention appearances; when promising creators emerge, he said, experience often reveals where their work may lead.

“I’ve been very fortunate to get to know comic creators who were in Artist Alley when they were self-publishing their books,” he said, recalling artists who later secured the assignment capable of leading to “the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing.”

New York Comic Con therefore functions as a marketplace, classroom and proving ground, where established professionals can meet editors while newcomers pursue portfolio reviews and practical guidance. D’Lando once approached panelists with a blunt question—“How do I get a job?”—so the convention’s expanding professional track, including Wednesday programming outside the main show schedule, carries unusual weight for him.

“There is somebody attending the show this year who’s going to maybe be on a similar career trajectory to mine,” he said.

The Schedule Behind the Spectacle

Space and time impose harder limits than imagination. “We can only put on so many panels,” D’Lando said, although ReedPop receives roughly 3,000 to 5,000 programming submissions and reviews them individually before the team gathers to argue for the ideas each member believes the show needs.

“People will fight for things and say, ‘Hey, this is a really important community piece for the show,’” he said, while other advocates may point to a publisher announcing a new book or a creator “that’s really burst onto the scene.” The rejected slate remains formidable: “The version of New York Comic Con that’s all the stuff that is on the cutting-room floor would be the second-best comic convention in the country.”

Those arguments can identify a community before its size becomes obvious. A staff member once championed HBO’s Our Flag Means Death, sensing its importance to a devoted and underserved audience; after ReedPop brought guests from the series, fans traveled from across the United States and abroad. “We were all just bowled over with the response,” D’Lando said. “I need to be at this event. I need to be with my community and with my tribe,” he recalled attendees saying.

Conviction still must survive logistics, and even modest adjustments can reshape an attendee’s day. After Cosplay Central landed in a small, out-of-the-way room last year, the team reworked the footprint for 2026, moving the feature into a larger, open area with natural light for photography. “Sometimes we miss the mark,” D’Lando said, “and then we look at ways to adjust it for future years.”

Building Surprise Inside a Full House

With the Javits Center packed, novelty usually requires subtraction, relocation or negotiation, although D’Lando said his team resists beginning with a refusal when a studio or exhibitor proposes an ambitious activation. “We never want to start with, ‘No, you can’t do this,’” he said. “We always want to start with, ‘How can we make this a reality?’”

Convention-center rules, security demands and operational constraints may narrow an idea, yet the guiding pressure remains simple: returning fans should encounter something they have never seen.

Major studios sometimes bring their own security to protect premieres or exclusive clips, while ReedPop concentrates pre-show information across a small group of official channels, including its website, mobile app and photo-op partner. Once doors open, digital coverage expands the audience, though D’Lando sees livestreams as an invitation rather than a substitute.

“You can watch the panel, but in a world where you can watch anything at any time, there’s really nothing quite like being in that room when it happens,” he said. “My hope is that the digital component of this show is only going to give you more FOMO.”

A Convention Designed to Last All Day

“We have a really great guest list this year—I’m so pumped about our guest list,” D’Lando said, before moving through a schedule designed to stretch across genres and generations: Nicolas Cage; Star Wars actors Hayden Christensen and Ian McDiarmid; Sebastian Stan; legendary Muppet performers; video-game voice actors; a 30th-anniversary Scream reunion; and cast reunions for Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Community.

“Stuff like that just makes me so happy,” D’Lando said of the Muppeteers, whose announcement energized what he called another underserved fandom. Literary programming includes Rick Riordan, V. E. Schwab and Dungeon Crawler Carl author Matt Dinniman, while after-dark screenings, panels and community events aim to keep visitors engaged after the show floor closes.

“We want to make sure that you feel like you’ve got your money’s worth, and we want to make sure that you feel like you had a full day,” D’Lando said. The irony is immediate: as the floor fills with exclusives, prints, toys, games and elaborate booths, its director may barely see it during public hours. “I consider it a win if I get onto the show floor during show hours at all,” he said, describing a hurried pre-opening walk as his best opportunity to take in the spectacle.

Where Fandom Goes Next

“To me, pop culture is culture,” D’Lando said, and “everyone is a fan of something.” Comics will remain a centerpiece, he added, although the convention’s reach now encompasses superhero films, television, science fiction, anime, books and cosplay.

Looking ahead, he expects the boundaries to widen again: “Is it music?” he asked. “Is it K-pop?” Professional wrestling is already moving into comic conventions, while horror, long present at the edges, may gain more space as its audience grows. “There’s so much out there that has such intense fandom,” he said, “that is looking for places like our show to have that community and have that live event experience.”

The next version of New York Comic Con will emerge from the same mix of instinct, argument and evidence, because D’Lando wants attendees to praise what worked and name what failed.

“This show did not become the show that it is without growth,” he said. Criticism, in his view, often arrives from affection: fans want the convention to remain “that special thing” while it grows large enough to hold the next community still waiting for its room.

Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Edward Pearcey.

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