NebrasKon isn’t an anime convention: It’s A Homecoming

October 06, 2026

From a university anime convention to one of the Mid-America Center’s largest annual events, Anime NebrasKon has grown alongside the culture it celebrates. As thousands prepare to return to Council Bluffs Oct. 16-18, the convention’s organizers say its future still rests on the same thing that built it more than two decades ago: community.

There is something uniquely strange about walking through the doors of an anime convention.

Nestled just outside Omaha proper, the Mid-America Center rises from the Council Bluffs landscape in a sweep of glass and sharp angles, surrounded by hotels, restaurants and business parks near the tangled knot where Interstate 80 meets Interstate 29. On most days, it looks exactly like what it is: an enormous convention and entertainment complex.

Then NebrasKon arrives.

Walk through those doors during convention weekend and a sword-wielding knight may be standing nearby, attempting to pull a convention lanyard over their helmet while a party of Pokémon trainers waits behind them. A character from a video game released three weeks ago poses for a photograph with someone portraying an anime character from 30 years ago. Elaborately armored cosplayers turn sideways to squeeze through doors while families, artists, gamers and collectors weave between them.

For three days, nobody thinks much of it.

That may be the greatest trick Anime NebrasKon has pulled during its more than two decades of existence. The costumes are spectacular. Celebrity guests draw enormous lines. The Vendor Hall can threaten the financial stability of anyone with poor impulse control and an affection for very specific pieces of fan art. But beneath all of that, NebrasKon has built something considerably harder to manufacture: a place where thousands of people, separated during the rest of the year by geography, age and background, can occupy the same space and understand one another.

When Anime NebrasKon returns to the Mid-America Center Oct. 16-18, organizers anticipate another crowd of roughly 7,500, potentially slightly higher than recent years. Longer term, the convention has its sights set on breaking the 8,000-attendee mark.

That is a remarkable evolution for a convention that began at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2004, particularly because the culture surrounding NebrasKon has transformed almost as dramatically as the convention itself.

Twenty-two years ago, being an anime fan in America was a considerably different experience. Following a particular series could mean hunting down DVDs, finding somebody with a questionable collection of fansubs or praying the local video store stocked something beyond the handful of shows that had broken into the American mainstream. Being an anime fan could feel like membership in a relatively small club.

Today, anime is everywhere.

Streaming services place new Japanese series in American homes almost simultaneously with their original broadcasts. Manga occupies enormous sections of bookstores. Anime movies play multiplexes across the country. Video games, anime, comic books and online fandom overlap so completely that the borders between them can seem meaningless. A teenager can discover a show on Netflix or Crunchyroll, encounter its characters through TikTok that afternoon and walk into their first convention already participating in a global community.

NebrasKon has watched that transformation happen from the inside.

Organizers remember when a handful of popular shows seemed to dominate the convention floor — including years when it sometimes appeared everyone had arrived dressed as somebody from Naruto. The hallways now contain characters from a staggering variety of anime alongside video games, science fiction, comics and other corners of popular culture.

The audience changed with them.

“Anime is far more ordinary to the general public than it used to be, thanks to how widely it has spread in the internet age, and that shows in who walks through the door,” said Press Relations and NebrasKon Co-founder Becky Potter.

“More casual fans turn up every year. We are glad to see them, and glad to give them a place to learn more.”

And increasingly, those walking through the doors aren’t necessarily young people discovering conventions for the first time. They are people coming back.

Potter said the convention has effectively grown up alongside its audience. People who once attended as teenagers are returning as adults. Some bring spouses. Some bring children. Even members of the convention’s staff who began volunteering as single college students now arrive with families- including, naturally, children in cosplay.

That makes NebrasKon increasingly difficult to describe merely as an “anime convention.”

It has become a homecoming.

“It’s always like a reunion for each NebrasKon.”

I was lucky enough to attend NebrasKon last year as press, and what remained with me afterward wasn’t simply the size of the event or any particular panel. It was the almost overwhelming amount of creativity concentrated beneath one roof, and the care directed toward the people who had come to experience it.

That care was visible in the warm reception from the NebrasKon team, whose members seemed genuinely eager to help press navigate the weekend, but it was just as visible on the faces of volunteers moving mountains for attendees throughout the building.

There were costumes that clearly represented hundreds of hours of painstaking work walking alongside outfits that had probably been assembled that morning. Independent artists handed their work to customers discovering them for the first time. Friends who knew one another primarily as usernames and profile pictures suddenly occupied the same physical space.

In an increasingly digital culture, there is something surprisingly powerful about that last part.

Fandom largely lives online now. It thrives on Discord servers, Reddit threads, TikTok videos, group chats and social media feeds. NebrasKon’s organizers don’t dismiss those spaces- they actively use them to keep their own community connected throughout the year- but there remains something the internet cannot replicate about several thousand people sharing the same room and discovering they aren’t as alone in their passions as they might have thought.

“Fandoms are a community you mostly see online,” Potter said, “but being able to be in the same space and speak on the same level of passion for the things we love makes a huge difference,to know that there are people out there like you, and to be able to connect and share the same loved hobbies together.”

That is the part of NebrasKon Potter wants someone contemplating their first convention to understand.

“You can be yourself and be welcomed.”
— Becky Potter, Anime NebrasKon co-founder and public relations chair

No convention experience is required. You don’t even need encyclopedic knowledge of anime. Potter said someone could walk through the doors knowing virtually nothing about the fandoms represented and still have a blast wandering the halls, admiring costumes, examining props and watching the creativity unfold around them.

That atmosphere doesn’t happen accidentally.

Growth presents an unusual problem for any convention built on intimacy. Every additional thousand attendees makes an event more successful while simultaneously making it more difficult to preserve the personal connection that made people fall in love with it.

Potter acknowledges that tension.

“This is definitely a challenge as we continue to grow, as the personal touch we are best known for can sometimes get buried under the weight of our growth,” she said. “It’s a great problem to have, to be perfectly honest.”

NebrasKon attacks that problem from several directions. Its Attendee Relations department exists specifically to make guests feel included. The convention maintains an active social media presence and a relatively new Discord community and hosts a free summer barbecue where staff and attendees can interact away from the frenzy of convention weekend.

More importantly, organizers ask attendees what they want — and then actually use those answers.

There is a feedback panel near the end of each convention. Attendee surveys follow. Staff members hold their own feedback meetings. Fans recommend guests, submit panels and ideas, and even compete to create artwork for the convention. A newer badge-ribbon scavenger hunt gives attendees another excuse to approach staff members, introduce themselves and build collections along the way.

Sometimes feedback produces exciting new programming. Sometimes it produces better signage.

Both matter when you’re trying to turn an enormous convention center into a temporary home.

“Without our community we’d be nothing, and we dearly love our attendees.”

For 2026, that philosophy has resulted in a convention less interested in throwing out what worked than in giving successful ideas more room to breathe.

Midwest Mirai, NebrasKon’s homegrown Vocaloid concert-style event introduced last year, is moving to the main stage. The Japan-inspired Maid Cafe, itself a returning favorite in 2025, will offer more this year. The relatively new Car Show and Gunpla Contest are continuing to grow, while the guest roster expands further into the online spaces where modern fandom thrives through a VTuber and YouTube content creator. Pasted text

Midwest Mirai appears to have made a particularly strong impression during its debut.

“This is a Vocaloid concert of our own,” Potter said. “It’s a great vibe and a ton of fun!”

Cosplay, meanwhile, remains inseparable from NebrasKon’s identity.

Its annual cosplay contest is one of the convention’s marquee events, drawing thousands of spectators while professional judges evaluate craftsmanship that can be astonishing when seen up close. Yet NebrasKon isn’t merely interested in putting finished costumes beneath stage lights. It increasingly wants attendees to understand how those creations are made.

The 2026 Cosplay Academy expands the convention’s educational offerings with guests and workshops covering wig basics, makeup, machine embroidery, sewing a witch hat and weathering props with acrylic paints.

That distinction matters. It transforms cosplay from spectacle into craft. The person staring at an impossibly elaborate costume in the hallway might leave NebrasKon understanding how to begin making one themselves.

And if organizers’ predictions are correct, attendees should prepare to see more than a few Carls and Princess Donuts roaming the Mid-America Center this year as Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl continues its rapid rise through fandom culture.

Panels offer another window into just how broad the word “fandom” has become.

These frequently fan-run events can take the form of interactive games, comedy, trivia, demonstrations, discussions and surprisingly scholarly examinations of popular culture. One of the most mind-blowing things about attending NebrasKon for the first time in 2025 was the variety, followed immediately by the passion of the people leading them.

This year looks to be no different with panels ranging from the comically crass (Monster Girls Encyclopedia) to the socio-politically profound (Metal Queer Solid) and of course the family-oriented (A Pokemon Halloween spectacular)

It is the sort of programming where two rooms separated by a hallway can contain completely different worlds, and both can be packed.

The guest lineup follows the same philosophy.

Rather than simply deciding internally who attendees should want to see, NebrasKon polled its community and used those responses as the starting point for booking. Availability remains a challenge- industry guests can be booked a year or more in advance -but organizers said this year’s roster is the result of balancing that availability with what attendees told them they wanted.

The resulting roster stretches across anime and video game voice actors, cosplay, DJs and online content creators.

Some of this year’s major stars include Resident Evil and Overwatch’s Keith Silverstein, Hell’s Paradise Alejandro Saab, and Attack on Titan lead Eren Yeager’s voice actor Bryce Papenbrook.

DJ acts include Naka-Kon heavyweight TsundereBoys, Virginia-based Kill Screen, and K-pop DJ IMYOONOTYOU.

Cosplay guests include Kentucky’s Casey Renee, returning Stay at Foam Dad Creations, Folxy Cosplay, and Midwest convention icon Diana The Great among numerous others.

It’s a stacked year, to say the least.

Then there is the Vendor Hall.

Laid out across the Mid-America Center’s main floor, it becomes an ocean of merchandise: artwork, candy, stickers, toys, plushies, clothing, collectibles and the sort of extraordinarily specific objects that make perfect sense only after you’ve been staring at them for 30 seconds.

Anyone who has attended a major convention knows the moment when sound financial judgment disappears somewhere between the first artist booth and the realization that, yes, apparently you do need that extremely specific piece of fan art.

More than 140 booths are expected this year, with NebrasKon attempting to balance artists and vendors, newcomers and returning sellers, and businesses from both inside and outside the region. Competition is fierce enough that fewer than half of applicants ultimately make the cut.

For independent creators, those booths can mean considerably more than convention spending money.

Organizers describe spotlighting independent artists as one of their favorite parts of the event. Artists contribute work seen in program books and signage, and NebrasKon views its marketplace as another way to keep what organizers called the “flame of creativity alive.”

For some vendors and artists who travel the convention circuit professionally, NebrasKon has become one of their top events.

The convention’s footprint extends far beyond the Mid-America Center itself. Organizers say it is now one of the largest events hosted by the venue, and Council Bluffs hotels regularly sell out during NebrasKon weekend. Attendees come from across the Midwest and far beyond it — California, Chicago and even England have been represented. Some staff make the trip from Florida and Minneapolis. Others moved away years ago but continue returning.

The visible economic impact is easy enough to imagine.

Organizers state that the convention is one of the biggest events held at the Mid-America Center annually - not bad for a venue that regularly hosts rodeos, sell-out comedy tours, and billboard-topping musical acts.

Ontop of that, the surrounding hotels regularly sell-out every year for the convention, and then there’s the Door Dash drivers, Uber Eats, restaurant deliveries, gas stations, and more. It is not a stretch to say that nearly everyone in the area feels the impact of this little convention that could.

But NebrasKon’s organizers are more interested in cultural impact than economic impact.

Their goal, they said, is to nurture the community while encouraging education and creativity. A cosplayer might learn a new technique. Someone wandering into a panel may discover a show they never would have watched. A tabletop gamer can stumble into another hobby. An aspiring artist can encounter somebody who turned the same passion into a livelihood.

Sometimes the impact is even more tangible.

Perhaps the most meaningful measurement of NebrasKon’s growth isn’t the number of people coming through its doors.

It’s what those people have been able to give away.

Since 2008, Anime NebrasKon has raised more than $148,000 for charitable causes.

That history stretches across organizations addressing cancer, mental health, hunger, autism, childhood needs and other causes. In 2022, the convention raised $18,300 for The Trevor Project. In 2023, more than $15,000 went to Extra Life. NAMI Nebraska received $12,622.26 in 2024 and another $15,071.02 last year.

For 2026, NebrasKon selected Voices of Hope, a Nebraska organization serving people affected by sexual assault, domestic violence and childhood abuse. Attendees can support the organization through the convention’s charity auction at 1 p.m. Saturday in Ballroom A or contribute directly to the organization.

That $148,000 figure tells another story about what NebrasKon has become.

A gathering created around things people love has developed enough weight to materially help people outside the walls of the convention itself.

None of it happens by magic, although from the convention floor it sometimes looks that way.

Last year, roughly 200 to 220 staff members were involved in putting NebrasKon together, and organizers expect a similar operation in 2026. Many have staffed the event for years.

“The thought of not staffing the event rarely even crosses our minds,” organizers said. Pasted text

Attendees see the finished product. They don’t see the months of meetings required to produce it.

General staff meets formally every month. Leadership meets more frequently. Individual committees communicate and work throughout the year, often through Discord. For some members of the leadership team, the time commitment approaches that of a full-time job. Pasted text

That work becomes increasingly complicated as the convention grows.

Multiple off-duty law enforcement officers provide additional security and visibility. NebrasKon operates a First Aid team, conducts bag checks and maintains a weapons policy that includes inspection of cosplay weapon props. Staff members are trained for potential security concerns and work alongside the convention center’s own procedures.

Accessibility has become part of that planning as well. Attendees who need accommodations can receive accessibility ribbons through First Aid to assist with appropriate seating, while a quiet room and other amenities provide places for those who need to escape the sensory overload that can accompany thousands of people sharing one building.

And, yes, there will be more signs this year.

It sounds almost comically mundane compared with Vocaloid concerts and celebrity voice actors, but anybody who has wandered through a convention center wondering whether Ballroom B is somehow both above and below them knows the value of good signage. Organizers specifically identified navigation as one of the areas targeted for improvement following 2025.

Those details matter because conventions are peculiar little ecosystems.

For three days, a convention center stops being merely a collection of ballrooms, corridors and concrete floors. It becomes a temporary city populated almost entirely by people who have agreed to be enthusiastic about things.

There is something refreshing about that.

We live in an era in which enthusiasm is frequently treated as embarrassing. The internet encourages people to perform detachment, to turn everything into irony and to prove they care slightly less than the person they’re arguing with.

Anime conventions operate on the opposite principle.

Nobody spends six months constructing a costume because they don’t care.

Nobody drives eight hours to meet friends, waits in line to hear an actor discuss a cartoon, spends hundreds of dollars supporting independent artists or gives up an entire weekend to teach strangers how to sew a witch hat because they are terrified of appearing enthusiastic.

Conventions are built almost entirely out of people caring too much.

About art. About stories. About games. About music.

About characters who aren’t real but nevertheless meant something very real to them.

About friends they may see only a few times each year.

About making something with their own hands and having another person stop in the hallway and ask for a photograph.

About finding somebody else who understands.

And NebrasKon has spent more than two decades giving those people somewhere to find one another.

“Every year rocks.
We thank our vendors, artists, industry guests, cosplayers, hobbyists, attendees — of course! — and more for making our event spectacular year after year.”

It would be easy for a convention that began in 2004 to look around in 2026 and wonder whether mainstream acceptance had made it less necessary. Anime isn’t obscure anymore. Gaming isn’t confined to one demographic. Cosplay has developed into an extraordinary artistic discipline with professional makers and international competitions. Online creators have become celebrities. Independent artists can build audiences without waiting for traditional gatekeepers to discover them.

But perhaps that makes places like NebrasKon more important rather than less.

The internet gave fandom unlimited places to talk.

Conventions give those people somewhere to be.

The kids who once had to explain what anime was have grown up. Some of them are now walking through the Mid-America Center with children of their own. The teenager who once nervously wore a homemade costume may now be the professional cosplayer teaching someone else how to make one. An artist who once sat behind a tiny convention table hoping somebody would stop may now have customers who search the Vendor Hall specifically for their booth.

NebrasKon grew because those people grew.

The fandom changed.

NebrasKon changed with it.

Yet when thousands descend on Council Bluffs Oct. 16, when that magnificent glass building beside the interstate fills with wigs and armor and music and merchandise, underneath the celebrity guests, elaborate costumes, concerts, competitions and spectacle will remain the same basic impulse that caused a much smaller collection of fans to gather in Nebraska more than 20 years ago.

They wanted somewhere they could find people who loved the things they loved.

For one weekend every year, they built it.

And then they kept coming home.