Another August, another UniCon. Normally, this is the point where I disappear for several days to process an unreasonable number of photographs before writing the event report. This time my GPU had other ideas and decided to burn itself shortly after the convention, while I’m also packing for Gamescom almost immediately afterwards. Perfect timing, as usual.
The giant photo gallery will therefore have to come later, but I didn’t want to leave without writing down some impressions from UniCon 2026. After covering UniCon and WinterCon for several years, there is also little point in explaining the entire convention from scratch every time. UniCon hasn’t dramatically changed, and I don’t think it needs to. What is more interesting now is watching how the communities and activities inside it continue to evolve.
Table of Contents
UniCon Is Still UniCon
If you’ve read my previous UniCon 2025 recap, UniCon 2024 report, or my reports from the very last WinterCon, you already know the basic formula. Cosplay and anime remain at the heart of the event, surrounded by K-pop, artists and crafts, video games, tabletop games, tournaments, fandom meetups and all the other pieces of geek culture that have accumulated around UniCon over the years.
That formula hasn’t fundamentally changed in 2026. Instead, I noticed smaller shifts: some areas grew, some moved, some disappeared from my radar, and several communities became much more visible. More importantly, UniCon continues to develop into an event where the visitors themselves provide a substantial part of the entertainment. The official programme is enormous, but quite a lot of what makes the convention memorable happens somewhere between its scheduled activities.
Cosplay Got More Room — And Filled It
One of the most obvious changes this year was the hall arrangement. The K-pop and cosplay areas switched places, giving the cosplay stage and its audience considerably more room. By my rough estimate, the cosplay area was around 25% larger than before, yet it was still very well occupied whenever I passed through it. Considering how crowded the cosplay programme has become during previous events, giving it more breathing room was probably inevitable.
There were also changes to the cosplay programme and its format, but what interested me more was the variety away from the stage. I honestly can’t remember seeing many identical costumes this year. With franchises such as Genshin Impact, League of Legends, Hazbin Hotel and the usual collection of enormous anime properties around, some repetition is unavoidable, but the overall selection felt remarkably diverse.
At the same time, I recognized several familiar faces from previous UniCon and WinterCon events, except they were now wearing completely different costumes. That’s one of the nice side effects of attending these conventions year after year: eventually you stop recognizing only the characters and begin recognizing some of the people behind them.
Minecraft Skins and a Team Fortress Mob
One cosplay trend caught me slightly off guard this year: Minecraft. Not simply characters from Minecraft, either, but people portraying recognizable skins and personas belonging to well-known Minecraft content creators. We’re apparently now at the point where a skin used by somebody making videos about a game has itself become a recognizable character worth cosplaying.
I actually find this fascinating. Cosplay traditionally borrows characters from games, anime, comics and films, but internet culture has been producing its own recognizable characters for a long time now. A character no longer necessarily needs a studio, publisher or fictional universe behind it. Sometimes a blocky Minecraft skin and an audience on YouTube are enough. Another example – memes, which apparently now can be also cosplayed!
The other surprise was the amount of Team Fortress 2 cosplay. For a game released in 2007, TF2 had a surprisingly visible presence this year, and a number of those cosplayers eventually found each other and formed something resembling a roaming TF2 mob. They cruised around the halls together, joking, jackassing, photobombing people and occasionally acting out small scenes wherever they happened to stop. I can swear, some of the participants were younger than the game itself!
I enjoyed this far more than I probably should have, because it illustrates something important about these events. None of it was an official performance, nobody needed to reserve a stage, and there wasn’t an announcement telling visitors when to watch it. A bunch of people dressed as characters from an almost twenty-year-old game met each other and started creating their own entertainment in the hallways. That spontaneous interaction is increasingly becoming as much a part of UniCon as whatever happens on its stages.
Artists, Crafters and a Lot of Paper
Another trend I’ve mentioned in previous reports continues: independent creators are taking up more space. Artists’ Alley was once again packed with artists, crafters and small creators selling prints, stickers, handmade accessories and increasingly elaborate physical creations. This isn’t particularly new for UniCon, but the sheer amount and variety of creator-made work continues to impress me.
One booth in particular caught my attention with an enormous collection of paper models. These weren’t simply a few folded figures decorating a table; there were what looked like hundreds of familiar characters, creatures and objects. It was the kind of booth where you could spend quite a while simply scanning the collection and recognizing things.
This growing creator presence remains one of my favourite parts of UniCon. Mass-produced fandom merchandise is extremely easy to find online these days, so I’m much more interested in discovering the strange little thing somebody designed, printed, painted, folded or assembled themselves. UniCon continues to provide plenty of that.
Tabletop RPGs Continue to Grow
Tabletop RPGs also continue their quiet expansion at UniCon. Last year I already noticed how serious this part of the convention was becoming, and in 2026 I counted somewhere around 15 tables, possibly more, running games during the event.
What makes this interesting isn’t simply the number of tables. Many of the sessions were approachable one-shots intended to introduce people to tabletop role-playing games: sit down, learn enough of the rules to get started, play through a compact adventure and, if you enjoy it, discover one of the local clubs or communities where you can continue afterwards.
That’s quite different from watching a stage performance or browsing a shop. These groups are actively using UniCon to bring new players into their hobby, and the convention gives them access to exactly the kind of audience that might be curious but has never had an opportunity to try.
I remember being a teenager and playing tabletop RPGs with friends in obscure local bars, where the bartenders could never quite decide whether we were some kind of satanic hobby club or simply doing math homework after school. Back then, getting into tabletop RPGs usually required knowing the right nerd personally. Seeing more than a dozen tables at UniCon openly inviting complete newcomers to sit down, roll some dice and discover the hobby feels like quite a change.
The Gaming Area Has Changed Shape
The gaming side of UniCon felt somewhat different this year. One thing I personally didn’t notice was the dedicated game developer section that had appeared at previous events. It’s entirely possible I simply missed something in a convention this large, so I wouldn’t claim that game developers were completely absent, but there wasn’t a distinct developer area that caught my attention this time.
The rest of gaming certainly wasn’t gone. The programme and venue map included esports and mobile competitions, fighting-game tournaments, regular gaming activities and a dedicated Retro Zone. From walking around the event, the general video game and retro presence actually seemed larger than before, so this felt more like the gaming part of UniCon changing shape rather than shrinking.
The retro section in particular fits this convention rather nicely. There is something amusing about watching one generation cosplay Minecraft content creators while another part of the hall celebrates games older than some of those cosplayers. UniCon increasingly spans several generations of gaming culture at once, and they seem perfectly happy occupying the same building.
More Fandoms Find Their Corner
Fandom meetups continue to expand as well. Looking through this year’s programme shows just how scattered modern fandom has become, with organized meetups covering franchises including DC, Hazbin Hotel, Genshin Impact, Chainsaw Man and Touhou alongside plenty of others.
On paper, a fandom meetup may look like one of the smallest items on an already enormous programme, but socially it can be one of the more important parts of the convention. For many visitors, UniCon isn’t really one giant community. It’s a place where dozens of much smaller communities that mostly exist online suddenly have a physical location for a weekend.
You find people who know the same characters, play the same games, follow the same creators and understand the same stupid jokes. Sometimes, apparently, enough of those people find each other that they form a Team Fortress squad and spend the rest of the afternoon causing harmless chaos in the hallways.
Still a Very Friendly Place
After several years of covering UniCon and WinterCon, there is one thing I’m particularly happy hasn’t changed: the atmosphere remains remarkably friendly and open. This year I also experienced that from a slightly different perspective, not only as someone covering the event but as a parent.
My kids were attending and moving around the convention completely on their own, and I was comfortable with that. Obviously, no large public gathering of thousands of strangers exists inside some magical safety bubble, and normal common sense still applies. But after spending years around this event and seeing how the community behaves, I felt confident letting them explore UniCon and have their own experience instead of following me around while I worked.
For me, that’s probably a more meaningful description of the atmosphere than simply calling the convention “welcoming.” When you’re comfortable enough with a place to let your children disappear into it for a while and only occasionally wonder where the hell they went, the event is doing something right.
The Best Parts Aren’t Always on the Programme
UniCon didn’t reinvent itself in 2026, the convention already knows what it is, and the more interesting changes are now happening inside that established structure.
Cosplay needed more space and received it, while artists and independent creators continue spreading through the venue. Tabletop clubs are putting complete newcomers around tables and teaching them how to play. Gaming has shifted somewhat toward tournaments, while new fandoms continue finding enough people to justify their own meetups.
Perhaps that’s the most noticeable evolution of UniCon after all these years. The organizers provide the framework: the venue, stages, competitions, meetups and a rather intimidating programme of scheduled activities. But once the doors open, the convention increasingly belongs to the communities filling that framework with their own ideas, characters, jokes and spontaneous nonsense. The programme tells you what is happening at UniCon; it doesn’t necessarily tell you where the best moments will happen.
And if you missed UniCon this time, the next one isn’t that far away. Tickets for UniCon Winter 2027 are already on sale, with the event opening its doors on January 8–10, 2027. That’s a little over four months away, which means it’s probably already time to start planning those costumes.
Meanwhile, I’m packing the last bits before heading to Cologne for Gamescom. I already have more than 20 interviews scheduled, along with several days of games, hardware and whatever else I manage to squeeze into the schedule. So while the full UniCon photo gallery will have to wait until I’m back — and until I have a working GPU again — keep an eye on my socials. Gamescom is next.
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