gen con 2026
03 Aug 2026 - digitalily
At some point last year, not more than a few weeks prior to Gen Con 2025, a friend posed the question (paraphrasing) 'do we want to try going to Gen Con even though it is imminent?' And we definitely tried, but the exorbitant hotel cost, lack of hotel space nearby in general, and dubious ideas of transportation meant that it wasn't to be, almost certainly for the better. This year however, with others also interested, we chose one day to attend the con, booked an AirBnB a couple months in advance, and after a bit of a whirlwind of a couple days, have successfully completed Gen Con 2026 with an eye for a full Gen Con 2027 weekend.
Gen Con is a convention highly centered around board games, ttrpgs, card games, and a lot of general nerdery ultimately much broader in scope than the likes of your typical anime con. For myself, it is by far the largest convention I've been to, with near double or more attendees than ACEN usually gets at a cool ~72,000 over the course of the weekend. Not only does it utilize a hefty portion of the Indiana Convention Center and several ballrooms in the neighboring hotels, but also closes down several streets for food vending and utilizes a pretty good sized portion of the next door Lucas Oil Stadium.
The journey down was by car, and ended up being a good 4 1/2 hour drive or so, with a really rough amount of traffic near Chicago combined with rain. I ended up working a half day and wanted to get some miscellaneous things done before going, and so the time of departure also wasn't ideal, but arrival at our AirBnB that evening was quite welcome. Ultimately the AirBnB choice was because hotels were rough, and the cost of splitting it across the whole group made it decently affordable. Questionable amenities aside, it was a solid location, and not too far from downtown. The shower was embarrassingly difficult to operate, however.
On the morning of our attendance day, I ended up being first to the floor itself and was amazed by how large the space was. ACEN's dealer's hall and artist alley are both large spaces, but this first hall was particularly surprising because it was essentially just rows and rows and rows of tables for playing various games only. After crossing the whole hall and finding a conveniently placed help desk, I was informed the entrance to what I'll call the 'Main' Exhibit Hall was in the opposite corner, so made my way back over just as they were opening up the entrance and many, many people were gathering. I undertook a mission to find some specific books for a friend who wasn't able to attend and made my way to that company's booth (which naturally was on the opposite side of the hall) immediately just to get it out of the way. After the rest of the group arrived and I had to double back to meet up with them, I really began to understand just how large this space was. In the end, I think it took a good 3 1/2 - 4 hours to clear (and not completely) between 1/4 and 1/5 of the booths there. For me this was fine, as I came away with many pretty dice, but in particular I wanted to do as much of the floor as possible on this trial trip to Gen Con because I think it's the best way to get a feel for the con overall. Between what sorts of things are sold, what artists have up for display and the sheer volume of people you walk past, you get a good look at everything. Plus, since the floor closes at 6, you do have time for some events afterward anyway.
Towards floor closing time, myself and the group I was with decided we wanted to go to a sit down restaurant to eat. However, the rain that had been falling all day had decided now was the time to become torrential, but seeing as we wanted the sit down restaurant and were carrying a ton of stuff that needed depositing in the car (my fingers and arms were dying from the aforementioned books I had been now carrying all day), we booked it in the rain the block and a half or so to our garage, and arrived to the car soaking wet sans the one of us who was blessed by random poncho man. About 5 minutes after pulling out of the garage of course, all our phones began to scream because there was now a -Tornado Warning- in effect.
By the time we worked out that yes it actually did say Warning not Watch, and that Warning was the worse of the two, we had already driven far enough that there were no tall buildings or garages to shelter in any more and ultimately decided well, the touch down was south, and we're going north, so despite the warning and the heavy rainfall we made our way towards our AirBnB and ate dinner nearby. Unfortunately due to time constraints we weren't able to stop back at the AirBnB for drier clothes, but we mostly dried out in the interim anyway and grabbed umbrellas from a nearby store before heading back. I will let the reader guess whether these ended up needing to be used.
Several of our group had an expensive (but good value) Magic the Gathering event to attend, so when we arrived back the rest of us gathered to watch the 'Dungeons & Drag Queens' performance, which ended up being a pretty good time. These sorts of live play DnD type things can be hit or miss in my experience, but between the performers, the live improv music, and some good old horrendous d20 rolls, there were many laughs to be had.
After that concluded, we attempted to watch some of the destruction of the card tower charity event that was running during the con, but there was a large crowd making it difficult to see, and the actual destruction was put off and put off despite being past when it was said it would begin? Having not much context for what this particular event is like and it being the end of the day definitely made it not the best thing ever, so we ended up dipping early and heading back to the AirBnB to wait for the others to return, sleep, and hit the road the following morning.
All in all, I think all of us agreed that this was a very successful trial run of Gen Con, and that we are all very interested in doing a full weekend + attached hotel next year. In particular, I'm keen to try more games with the expanded timeframe a full weekend brings, and also have the ability to rest without driving when necessary.
I think Gen Con was also very interesting insofar as how it felt. Having mostly been to anime cons, there's going to be an obvious difference in general vibe between those and something like Gen Con right off the bat in terms of subject matter, but I think it goes deeper. For one, Gen Con has a much longer history than something like ACEN, and as a larger convention with more experience behind it, it came across feeling a good deal more professional across the board. Something I didn't mention was Gen Con's artist alley, which isn't even called that, but is notable in that it was extremely small, not quite out of the way, but definitely not -central-, and featured booths that in general felt a bit more hefty than what you would see at ACEN's artist alley (not wholly, to be clear). I think in general, an artist alley at an anime convention will feature smaller operations that trend more amateur (not in a negative connotation or in terms of quality, just people newer to doing this kind of thing), whereas the artist booths on the floor felt more like, this is my capital B Business, or, I have designed professionally for X, Y, or Z, and here's some of my other work, which- ACEN does have, but there was more of it here. Key also for me I think is that because anime wasn't the focus and you thus don't get as much flavor of the week 'I have to draw this series because it's popular right now and I need to pay my bills,' I found on average the booths ended up being more personally interesting, or had things worth looking at. Part of why it took so long to cover so little of the main hall was because most of those booths were worth looking at in detail in a way that I don't get as much at something like ACEN.
Additionally, I think the average attendee age felt trended a little higher than ACEN, and if it didn't in reality I wouldn't be surprised if it was because there were more parents with younger kids. It's not as though Gen Con had 0 nudity or similar content, but compared to an anime con it was both generally more tasteful, less present overall, and just less relevant? Anime/Manga is more concerned with aesthetics literally as explicitly visual media and enticing character designs are just the way things work in order to get eyes on your series. Games obviously do need to be concerned with this to a degree as well, but it's less of a focus I think. In any case, the perceived cultural differences between conventions made for a nice break, though I don't intend on stopping going to ACEN or other anime themed cons any time soon. Variety is good.
I am a bit annoyed at myself though, as I intended to take many more photos and then just didn't, so here's to doing better at that next time. Have a stadium shot in closing.
That's all for now- until next time!