This past February, my friend Stari asked me two questions: “Do you like Umamusume?” followed immediately by “Would you go see a movie with me?” My answers were “I only know that it exists lol” and, after a couple follow-up questions, “Putting it on my calendar now!!” At the time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into by agreeing to tag along.
In 2018, P.A. WORKS (the animation studio behind titles such as Angel Beats!, Charlotte, and Another) released a 13-episode anime called Umamusume: Pretty Derby primarily as a means of promoting a mobile game that Cygames was working on. After production delays, Cygames finally launched the game in Japan in 2021 alongside an additional 13-episode season of the anime. It wasn’t until 2025 that an English version of the mobile game was released, and by that point there was already a third season of the anime, a trading card game, a four-episode ONA, a movie, a completed six-volume manga, 20 volumes of a then-ongoing manga (which has since concluded with a total of 23 volumes), and four, five, ten, and three volumes of three more manga that are still ongoing today.
With this much media in circulation, a sizable following had already been established (I remember hearing it mentioned for the first time at a sports anime panel a few years ago); however, the introduction of the game’s English server last year jumpstarted a boom in the fandom. Now that I myself have been swept up in the horse girl excitement, when I attended my first Otakon earlier this month I kept my eyes peeled for fellow Uma fans—and boy did I find them! Let’s go through the areas of Otakon where the Umamusumefandom really left its mark this year.
Merch
I unfortunately never got the chance to scope out the Artist Alley or Dealers Room and thus couldn’t observe the availability of Umamusumemerchandise with my own eyes, so instead I asked some members of the Otakon Discord server what they had noticed in terms of Umamusume merch. One congoer named Faye noticed an “explosion of [Umamusume] in both [the Dealers Room] and [Artist Alley], but […] it mostly [revolved] around the same 12-ish characters.” She didn’t specify which characters, but she did comment that there were also “some JPN-only horses like Almond Eye [and] Still in Love” in the Artist Alley and that one artist reportedly had a bin labeled “Retiring horses – please adopt” full of JPN horses such as Espoir City. According to the unofficial Artist Alley masterlist made by Discord user @ravenflier, no fewer than 32 artists had Umamusume products available in the Artist Alley alone.
As for the Dealers Room, Faye also remarked that at least two vendors were selling “Thoroughbred collection plushies,” including those of some racehorses that do not appear in the the Umamusume franchise. Furthermore, the curator of the aforementioned Artist Alley masterlist remarked that the booth for Japanese manufacturing company Kotobukiya was selling packs of the Umamusume trading card game. Another congoer on Discord remembered seeing “a lot of Umamusume stuff” at the Akiba Anime Store booth (pictured above).
Lastly, while this may not necessarily count as “merch,” there was a variety of Umamusume-themed badge ribbons in circulation. Unfortunately all of my ribbons fell off without my noticing about halfway through the con, but I remember acquiring several, including one that said “Umazing!” with a thumbs up. I also encountered an “Oguri James” cosplayer (a hilarious and creative mashup of Oguri Cap and Lebron James) who gave me a ribbon that said “OGURI JAMES FROM DOWNTOWN.” I didn’t have the pleasure of running into them, but I know that @ravenflier (mentioned above) handed out ribbons that said “Trainer-san gave me a carrot!” (along with actual baby carrots!) while dressed as the Team Spica Trainer from the anime. Instagram user @burnthesofa handed out the design below:
Some other designs included “LIFE IS SHORT. BE CHAOTIC.” between two horseshoes and a silhouette of Gold Ship, two horseshoes around the words “SURVIVED THE GLUE FACTORY!” (which is a joke I will never get tired of), and a hyper-realistic horse head next to the words “HORSIN’ AROUND.”
Programming
On Friday night I attended a panel titled “The Real Umas Behind The Musumes.” One of the most intriguing elements of this franchise is that every single horse girl is named and styled after Japanese racehorses from real life, and this panel was all about those real horses.
With over 142 Umas in the game’s Japanese server (not even including supporting characters) and approximately 50 Umas exclusive to the manga and/or anime, I was surprised that the panel began with an introduction to a horse that doesn’t appear in the Umamusume franchise: a Thoroughbred named Sunday Silence. At first I thought this was an odd decision when there were so many characters to choose from; however, the panelists explained that many of the horses that do appear in the franchise are descendants of Sunday Silence. They displayed the following graphic to illustrate just how many horses (represented here by their Umamusume counterparts) share a lineage with him:
As for the horses that dohave an Uma inspired by them, it would be impossible to touch on ALL of them, so instead the panelists focused on 15 of them.Although the panelists didn’t specify their criteria for choosing the horses they did, I noticed that the list includedthe namesakes of the protagonists from the first two seasons of the anime as well as Cinderella Grey:Special Week, Silence Suzuka, Mejiro McQueen, Tokai Teio, and Oguri Cap. The remaining horses wereGold Ship, Obey Your Master (whose real life equivalent is actually named Pay the Butler), El Condor Pasa, Vodka, Daiwa Scarlet, Tamamo Cross, Super Creek, Narita Top Road, TM Opera O, and Admire Vega. Each of them had a slide with a picture of the real life racehorse along with bulleted factoids including their active years and notable victories. For some of them (such as Vodka and Daiwa Scarlet), the panelists also showed video footage from their actual races. Some characters, likeTanino Gimlet and Stay Gold, did not have their own slides dedicated to them but were brought up as part of other horses’ stories.
I knew a tiny bit about American horse racing because my mom used to ride horses and is a big fan of the Kentucky Derby, but my only exposure to Japanese horse racing was through the sports anime Fanfare of Adolescence (which ranked 14 out of 21 in my 2022 anime ranking). Fortunately, the panelists’ explanations were all easy to understand. I never really looked into how the Umamusumecreators came up with the unique designs for all the characters, and this panel taught me a lot about the reasons for some of these choices, particularly color schemes, personality traits, and relationships with other Umas. (Though that last one was awkward at times; I didn’t love hearing that one of my favorite ships are grandfather and grandson in real life.) I’m glad I was able to fit this into my schedule!
Guests
One of Otakon’s many claims to fame is their impressive list of celebrity guests, including many from Asia. This year’s guest list included four voice actresses with roles in the Umamusume franchise: Ayaka Fukuhara, who voices Seeking the Pearl in the mobile game; Yuna Nemoto, who voices Air Messiah in the mobile game; Rumi Okubo, who voices Dynamu Heroine in the Cinderella Grey anime; and Machico, who voices Tokai Teio in both the mobile game and the first three seasons of the anime. Kan Mizoguchi, who is the animation producer for both the ONA Road To The Top and the movie Beginning of a New Era,was a guest as well.
Since this was my first Otakon, I was unfamiliar with how the international guest autograph sessions work and didn’t realize that some of them only do signings as part of a group rather than individually. While Ayaka Fukuhara (Seeking the Pearl) did have her own independent autograph sessions, all of the other guests with a connection to Umamusume were part of four-person groups comprised of people who took part in one specific anime: Yuna Nemoto (Air Messiah) was part of the Romelia War Chroniclegroup, Rumi Okubo (Dynamu Heroine) was part of the Magic Knight Rayearth group, Machico (Tokai Teio) was part of the Roll Over and Die group, and Kan Mizoguchi was part of The World Is Dancing group. I was lucky enough to secure a spot in the latter autograph session, so I had the privilege of meeting and getting an autograph from Mizoguchi!
While I don’t know if this was the case for all of the international autograph groups, The World is Dancinggroup required all four members of the group to sign the same object, which means it would have been awkward and rude to ask them to sign something Umamusume related if only one person in the group was involved with that franchise. Taking pictures was also strictly prohibited. Nevertheless, I still think it’s an awesome opportunity to meet someone who helped bring a series or game you love to life, even if the physical memento isn’t exactly what you had in mind!
Cosplay
This is arguably the department where the Umamusume fandom showed up the strongest. I knew this would be the case when I encountered four Uma cosplayers (a Haru Urara, a Gold City, a Nakayama Festa, and a Gold Ship) on Day 0 before the convention even officially began.
On Friday evening, my aforementioned friend Stari (the one who introduced me to this fandom in the first place) hosted the official Umamusume photoshoot through the Cosplay Coordination Department. (I helped out as a co-host-slash-gofer.) While I wasn’t there to witness it for myself last year, Stari told me that despite the English server only being out for three months at the time, approximately 200 cosplayers gathered for the 2025 Umamusume photoshoot; the turnout was about the same, if not bigger, in 2026. The group was so massive that the full group shot couldn’t fit into one or even two frames—it took the photographers three separate picturesto capture everyone. That’s a whole lot of horse girls!
I counted at least 46 different characters being cosplayed. The most common was undoubtedly Agnes Tachyon, followed closely by the anime-only Trainer, then Manhattan Cafe. Other characters that had at least five or more cosplayers include Gold Ship, Oguri Cap, Rice Shower, Mejiro McQueen, Stay Gold, Symboli Rudolf, Haru Urara, and Taiki Shuttle (which is who I cosplayed!). Interestingly, not a single person was dressed as the protagonist of the anime’s first season, Special Week, although I’ve recently discovered that just because she’s a main character doesn’t mean she’s necessarily beloved by the fandom.
Keep in mind that the photoshoot attendees only represent a fraction of the Umamusume cosplayers at Otakon. I saw several Umamusume cosplayers all three days of the con (four days, if we’re counting Thursday!), and there were plenty of cosplayers that didn’t make it to the photoshoot even though they were dressed as an Uma on Friday. It’s not even an exaggeration to say it seemed like there was a horse girl every time I turned a corner! As a newbie to the fandom who admittedly hasn’t even watched any of the anime yet (besides the Beginning of a New Era movie), I was a little worried that I wasn’t worthy of cosplaying Taiki Shuttle. Yet the other Uma cosplayers (as well as fans who weren’t in cosplay) embraced me with open arms.
You can view pictures from the official Umamusume photoshoot here.
In Conclusion
I don’t have the numerical data to support the claim that Umamusume was the #1 most prominent fandom at Otakon 2026; nevertheless, it certainly was one ofthe most prominent fandoms. I would say first Otakon, then the world, but it seems these horse girls have already begun their takeover of the globe! I don’t anticipate the Uma world domination to slow down anytime soon—and I’m okay with that!
