Nobody Expected GalaxyCon San Jose 2026 to Open Like This

True story: I have a rule about convention Fridays, and the rule is that Friday is the day you actually get to enjoy yourself. You walk in a little after doors, the hall is half empty, you talk to the artists while they still have their energy, and you knock out your autographs before the lines turn into something that requires a folding chair and an emotional support friend. Friday is the easy day. That has been true at nearly every convention I have walked into for close to two decades, and I have built entire weekends around it.

GalaxyCon San Jose opened at 2 p.m. on Friday, August 28 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center, and by four in the afternoon I was standing in an aisle I could not physically move through, wondering what exactly had happened to my rule.

The Friday That Refused to Behave Like a Friday

Here is what I think happened, and I say this as somebody who drove into downtown San Jose on a weekday afternoon and made a series of choices about it. People got off work, looked at what was waiting for them on the freeway, and decided that a convention center full of Funko Pops and cosplayers was a considerably better use of the next four hours than sitting in traffic. The hall filled up in waves rather than all at once, which somehow made it more noticeable, because every time I thought the crowd had settled another wave came through the doors.

I have never seen an opening day move like that. Not once. And I want to be clear that I am not complaining about it, because a packed Friday means the show is healthy and the vendors are making money and the local fan community actually showed up for something in their own city, all of which is good news. It just meant the day I planned for and the day I got were two different days.

A Floor That Was Big and Somehow Still Tight

GalaxyCon spread this show out, and on paper the footprint was generous. Wide aisles, real spacing between booths, a floor plan that clearly anticipated volume. And it was still crowded to walk through, because a floor plan can only do so much once the people arrive, and this floor plan was doing its absolute best with what it was handed.

The vendor mix was the part I keep thinking about. Real variety, which is not something I say about every show. Comic dealers next to independent artists next to toy sellers next to at least three booths selling things I could not have described to you before Friday afternoon and now desperately want. It did not feel like fifteen versions of the same booth, which is the trap a lot of conventions fall into once the floor gets big enough. One of our favorite Funko friends, Rahul from Garlic City Collects, had a booth there. It’s always great to see friends at a convention and catch up!

The Kids Area That Nobody Else Is Going to Write About

Tucked into the show was a kids area that somebody clearly put actual thought into rather than just roping off a corner and calling it family friendly. There were activities scheduled throughout the day, and they rotated, which means a kid who came back after lunch was not handed the same coloring sheet twice. There was a television running kid friendly movies and shows. There were places to sit down.

I want to spend a minute on this, because I have spent over fifteen years working professionally in childcare and I have watched a lot of families come apart at the seams in exactly this kind of environment. A convention floor is a sensory nightmare for a four year old. It is loud in a way that does not stop, it is bright, it is wall to wall with strangers at eye level, and it is absolutely packed with fascinating things that a child is not allowed to touch. Kids do not melt down at conventions because they are badly behaved. They melt down because nobody gave them anywhere to put all of that input, and a child who has been holding it together for ninety minutes in a room like that has been working harder than most of the adults around them.

So when a show gives that kid twenty minutes with a craft table and a screen and a chair, what the show is actually giving the parents is another two hours of a functioning family. That is not a nice extra. That is the difference between a family that stays until close and spends money and a family that leaves at four in tears. Most conventions treat children as a logistics problem to be managed. This one treated them like attendees who happen to be small, and I noticed.

Anakin Had a Room, and He Had Police Before He Even Showed Up

If you looked at the guest list before the show, you already knew the heavy hitters were mostly back loaded. Hayden Christensen was scheduled for Saturday only. Ian Somerhalder, George Takei, Cheech Marin, and Tommy Chong were all Saturday and Sunday. Cassandra Peterson, Scott Patterson, Sean Gunn, Tyler Hoechlin, and Bitsie Tulloch were on for Friday and Saturday, which meant Friday still had plenty to offer, but the biggest name on the marquee was not in the building yet.

You could tell how big he was going to be anyway, because on Friday afternoon there were already police posted outside his signing room, and there was nobody in it. GalaxyCon gave Christensen his own dedicated room rather than a table on Celebrity Row, and the security was staged a full day before he arrived. Fans reported the same presence around that room throughout Saturday.

Honestly, that was the right call and I want to give credit where it is due. An Anakin Skywalker line running through the main celebrity area would have swallowed every other table in that room, and every guest sitting anywhere near him would have spent their entire day looking at the back of somebody’s head. Putting him in his own space protected the other guests as much as it managed him, and staging the security early tells you that somebody on that team had thought about the worst version of Saturday and decided not to find out.

Cassandra Peterson, meanwhile, was a full event unto herself. Elvira had a line at that table every hour she was there, and she brought along a skeleton that stood something like thirteen feet tall, which is exactly the kind of commitment to the bit that has kept her working and beloved for forty years. People were stopping to photograph that thing who had no idea who she was, and that is a level of showmanship most guests never even attempt.

One practical note here, because this is the kind of thing that costs people money. Most of the guests working Friday were also working Saturday, and a good number were there all three days, at the same table, at the same price. The only thing that changed across the weekend was how many people were standing between you and them. Saturday is the heaviest traffic day at nearly every convention in this country, Sunday runs second, and Friday is the one afternoon where a line is still just a line instead of a life decision. Even on the busiest opening day I have ever attended, that math held.

And shorter lines do something for the experience that has nothing to do with saving you an hour of standing. When a guest has four people waiting instead of forty, they slow down. They ask you a question back. They look at the thing you brought and actually react to it instead of signing it and sliding it across the table while already making eye contact with the next person, which is not rudeness on their part, it is just what happens to a human being who has been signing for six straight hours with a line stretching out of sight. Friday is the day you get an actual conversation rather than a transaction, and if the whole reason you came was to have thirty seconds with somebody whose work meant something to you, that difference is the entire ballgame.

The other thing Friday gave you, and this is the part I really want people on a tight budget to hear, is that there were stretches of that afternoon where you could simply walk up to a table with nobody in front of it and say hello. Not buy anything. Not commit to a two hundred dollar autograph or a photo op you cannot afford. Just walk up, tell somebody you loved their work, and have them thank you for it. That happens on Friday and it stops happening by Saturday afternoon, when every table has a line and a queue manager and a hard stop. If money is tight and you were only ever going to be able to afford the badge, opening day is when the room is still generous enough to give you something for free.

I watched several people do exactly that, and every single one of them walked away looking like they had gotten what they came for.

What That VIP Badge Actually Bought You

My first reaction to the VIP area was that it was underwhelming, and I want to be honest about that before I complicate it. It was a section of floor with a barrier around it and some tables inside. That was it. If that lounge is what you pictured when you upgraded your badge, I understand the disappointment completely, because I felt a version of it just walking past.

But the lounge turned out to be one line item on a much longer list, and the full ticket breakdown tells a different story than the rope did. The 3 Day VIP Pass ran $431.34 with fees, and along with that lounge it included a separate registration booth, Fast Lane access for autographs and photo ops, entry to a Friday night VIP cocktail party with celebrity and professional guests and two drink tickets, an exclusive badge and lanyard, an expo bag, a pin, a blank sketchbook, an 11×17 limited edition art print, and 20 percent off GalaxyCon merchandise.

Sitting above that was a Premium Reserve tier at $2,873.73, capped at twenty tickets total. That one came with a concierge assigned to you before and during the show, a personal escort into the building, front of the line access ahead of even the Fast Lane holders, guaranteed seating at every main stage, two drink tickets a day, a locker every day of the show, and one item authenticated at the JSA booth.

So the value was real, and I was wrong to judge it by the one piece of it I could see from the aisle. But I also think that is a presentation problem worth naming out loud, because when the most visible part of a four hundred dollar badge is a roped square with folding tables inside it, people are going to judge the badge by the square. Every other perk on that list happens somewhere the rest of us cannot see it. The lounge is the billboard, and the billboard was not selling.

The Part Where I Get Annoyed About Money

We already wrote at length in July about how convention autograph pricing has gotten completely out of hand and who is actually driving it, and I stand by every word of that piece, including the part where I acknowledged that this is not as simple as blaming the convention. San Jose gave us some fresh numbers anyway, and one of them made me put my phone down.

Hayden Christensen’s advance autograph on an 8×10 was $219.25 with fees. The quote add on was another $219.25.

I need you to sit with that for a second the way I did. Two hundred dollars for the signature, and then the exact same amount again if you want him to write a line of dialogue on the item you already paid to have signed. One quote, one item, no exceptions. That is not a premium experience. That is charging twice for one pen stroke, and it works because a Star Wars fan standing at that table with their childhood in their hands is not going to do the math until they are already back in the parking lot.

Coffee with Kirk and Luke, the Saturday morning sit down with Scott Patterson and Sean Gunn, ran $273.97. What that got you, according to the listing itself, was a special event badge and coffee or tea. No autograph, no photo op, no print, and admission to the convention sold separately, which is a detail that appears on every single one of these listings and that people miss constantly. Ian Somerhalder’s advance autograph landed at $142.62, and Tyler Hoechlin’s autograph and selfie combo came in at $197.35.

Now, in fairness, and I made this same argument in July so I am not going to abandon it now, the guests set their own rates, the agencies negotiate them in advance, and the resellers wheeling forty Funkos at a time through the autograph line are a genuine force pushing those numbers up for everybody. GalaxyCon is not inventing these prices in a back room somewhere. But the convention still builds the menu, still prices the tiers, and still made a decision at some point that a quote is a separate product from a signature. The individual prices come from the talent. The structure comes from the show, and the structure is where this stops feeling like a market and starts feeling like a strategy.

For a little perspective on what a normal family walks into: four Saturday single day badges came to $312.60 before anybody bought so much as a bottle of water. Add one mid tier autograph and a single photo op to that and you have cleared five hundred dollars for one afternoon.

The Guest Who Did Not Make It

Jaime Pressly was on the announced guest list for this show and did not appear. GalaxyCon moved her over to its cancellations page.

The Thursday before the convention opened, Pressly was asked to leave the Signia by Hilton San Jose, where she had been staying ahead of the show. TMZ reported the incident on August 31, the day after the convention closed, citing multiple witnesses who described her as appearing intoxicated in the hotel lobby and who said she made physical contact with another guest. Sources told the outlet that she was dealing with family matters at the time and that this contributed to her behavior. A hotel spokesperson declined to comment, citing privacy obligations, and her representative had not responded as of that reporting.

The Signia sits a few blocks up from the convention center, in the cluster of downtown hotels where guest talent almost always books for a show like this one, and for the obvious reason. When your signing table is a short walk from your room, you are not sitting in a car in downtown San Jose traffic twice a day trying to make a 10:30 session.

I am including this because she was a booked guest and because fans who bought tickets specifically to meet her deserve an explanation for why she was not at that table. Beyond that, what this looks like from the outside is a person having a genuinely hard week in a very public place, and I am not going to pretend to know one thing more about it than what has been reported.

Would I Go Back Next Year

Yes, and I already know how I would do it differently.

Buy the three day pass if your budget can absorb it, because the guest schedule at this show was noticeably lopsided and a single day badge is a coin flip on whether the person you came for is even in the building that afternoon. Read the guest pages before you buy anything at all, and then read them again a week out, because these lineups shift. Set your autograph budget at home, at your kitchen table, where nobody is standing three feet in front of you holding a Sharpie and a stack of glossies. That last one sounds obvious and I promise you it is not.

And still go on Friday. Even on the most packed opening day I have ever walked into, the lines at Celebrity Row were shorter than they were going to be for the rest of that weekend, the vendors still had their full stock on the tables, and the floor had not yet been picked over by three days of very motivated shoppers.

GalaxyCon put on a good show in San Jose. They also put a two hundred dollar price tag on a single sentence. Both of those things are true at the same time, and when they come back to the McEnery next August you get to decide which one matters more to you.

GalaxyCon San Jose 2026 ran August 28 through 30 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. The show is expected back in San Jose next summer, with dates and guest announcements posted at galaxycon.com. GalaxyCon produces shows in eight cities across the United States.