PAX East 2026 Cosplay Meetups – Final Fantasy
OK, I screwed up. This gallery was from the “Final Fantasy series cosplay meetup” that took place Friday evening, not the “Final Fantasy XIV Cosplay and Fan Meetup” that was held late Saturday afternoon at PAX East 2026. So, Friday had four galleries and Saturday just three. It’s been long enough that I forgot that the Saturday event turned out to have very few cosplayers and leaned more into the player fan base, so Jibrii didn’t take any photos of that event.
Part of my confusion was that the Friday event was held in Room 109, the Community Meetup room and last year’s room for both community and cosplay meetups. Of course, that explains why there is no PAX East step-and-repeat backdrop in these photos. That backdrop was in Room 206, where all the other cosplay meetups were held. It also explains why, in my opinion, these photos look better than the other galleries. I’ve already stated how much I dislike logo backdrops, but I think that since the room is smaller than Room 206, the lighting is more dispersed from bouncing off the white parts of the walls, making for a softer overall available light than the very much overhead lights of Room 207.
This meetup was hosted by matchamind, seen in the photo below as the Cloud with the broad-bladed sword with a backward-curving hilt. That should have been another clue to me as to the fact this event was on Friday — that evening was when I took his photo and photos of many of the cosplayers in this gallery. Kudos to our PAX East hype man, Nana, seen in the photos as Tifa, for convincing so many of the meetup attendees to make the trek up from Room 109 to Room 207.
Cosplayers in this (actually) fourth of four Friday meetup galleries include floris_lilium, matchamind, ryosuke91kc, nanaakaonasis, faith.fit.blerd, nomvirus, rosen.queen, uju_cosplay, ellevishh, vlibzixz, ixneedxaxlife, and many more.
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