Hello everyone! We hope you had a fantastic Christmas and a great New Year’s celebration, however you spent it.
As we kick off 2026, we wanted to be transparent about the journey BGCP has been on. Last year was one of our biggest learning curves yet. In 2025, we made the bold move to make 90% of our events free entry. Our goal was to keep the community accessible during a tough economic time, and while it was incredible to see attendance numbers surge, it brought its own set of challenges.
As many of you noticed, we shifted our focus toward our smaller, more specialised event, The Blackheart Market. This move, combined with the free-entry model for our larger shows, led to a significant decrease in income. Running high-quality events comes with rising costs for venue hire, licensing, and insurance—all of which hit record highs last year.
The Strategy for 2026
While our core mission remains being the most budget-friendly and accessible comic con in the UK, we have to make some adjustments to ensure we can keep coming to your towns.
- Ticketing Select Events: This year, we will be introducing tickets for a small number of events where the setup and venue costs are simply too high to sustain a free-entry model. This allows us to maintain the quality you expect without compromising the event’s future.
- New (and Old) Locations: We are planning a massive tour of our regular cities, alongside some brand-new stops and even some long-awaited returns to “vintage” BGCP locations.
- The City Centre Dilemma: We likely won’t be visiting Glasgow or Edinburgh city centres in 2026. Between the lack of appropriately sized venues, soaring costs, parking nightmares, and general market saturation, we feel our energy is better spent bringing the “Con” experience to the areas that usually get missed.
- Costumes Update: We were hoping to debut some massive new costumes this February, but due to production logistics, these have been pushed back a few months. Stay tuned—they’ll be worth the wait!
The Shift in Fandom
We’ve been watching the trends closely. 2025 showed us that while the “MCU Hype” that fuelled the last decade has started to wane, Anime and Horror are surging in popularity.
The “geek mainstream” is changing, and we are adapting our traders, guests, and activities to reflect that. Whether you’re a die-hard manga reader or a horror buff from The Blackheart Market, we’re making sure 2026 has something that speaks to your specific fandom.
Our goal remains the same: bringing the cool stuff to your doorstep and helping you create those core memories that we love to talk about.