Fan Expo Philadelphia 2023 Gallery And Write-up
Fan Expo Philadelphia returned to the Pennsylvania Convention Center on June 2-4, 2023, for their second annual show – or their 21st show, depending upon how you’re counting. In 2021, Fan Expo HQ acquired six events from Wizard World, which included the Philadelphia show. If you’re counting Wizard World Philadelphia and Fan Expo Philadelphia as the same event, that brings them to 21 total shows, but this is the second show under Fan Expo’s banner.
Fan Expo is a multi-genre convention that features entertainment focusing on a variety of aspects of pop culture including comics, television, movies, anime, gaming, and more. The show definitely features entertainment and programming that covers a broader variety of topics and fandoms than it did when it was Wizard World. In particular, I noticed more meetups, programming, and guests related to anime fandoms than in prior years. This appeared to bring in more fans from the 18–21-year-old age demographic than I had seen during the Wizard World days.
Celebrity guests have always been one of the biggest draws for Fan Expo events, and this year’s show in Philadelphia certainly continued that trend. Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Joseph Quinn, Hayden Christensen, Sean Astin, Giancarlo Esposito, Katee Sackhoff, Sam Raimi, Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Steve Burns, Tom Welling, Bonnie Wright, and Henry Winkler were among the many stars of television and cinema in attendance in Philadelphia for fans to meet.
There were also numerous voice actors at the show including Tara Strong, Shameik Moore, Jodi Benson, Kathleen Herles, Dante Basco, Peter Cullen, Christopher Sabat, David Hayter, Maggie Robertson, and Steve Burton, among many others.
Fan Expo of course offers much more than just celebrity autographs and photo ops. The show featured a wide array of panels and programming, covering topics including comics, anime, horror, cosplay, movies, gaming and much more.
The show also featured cosplay guests including alisonbirbz, sarahisloading, vaultfox, thattallcosplayer, and cobaltcosplay. Fan Expo also welcomed a number of cosplay and community groups including the Philadelphia Avengers, Philadelphia Ghostbusters, the Amazing Spiderlings, and 501st Legion: Garrison Carida.
The main show floor was home to a massive dealer’s hall and artist’s alley. Attendees could shop and browse a huge variety of wares including comics, collectibles, clothing, video games, artwork.
A Japanese Arcade, maid cafe, gaming zone, and cosplay contest were among the other show features that entertained guests throughout the weekend.
The only complaints I had heard over the course of the show were pertaining to general crowding, and line management for the celebrity photo ops. While I did not personally venture down to the photo op area, I can say that the main show floor was jam-packed on Saturday. Fan Expo does not utilize the entire convention center, and I believe that acquiring more space for next year’s show could alleviate both of these issues.
That aside, this year’s Fan Expo Philadelphia appeared to be a huge success. Attendance was very strong, and in general the attendees that I spoke to seemed very happy with the guest lineup and entertainment at the show this year. I expect Fan Expo Philadelphia will continue to grow and become a staple of the Philly convention scene for many years to come.
Our wait for next year’s show will be a bit shorter than usual, as Fan Expo Philadelphia is set to return to the City of Brotherly Love on May 3-5, 2024.
For full disclosure, I want to end this article by mentioning that I only attended the show for a single day this year (Saturday). While this is a common thing for most media outlets, we at Nerd Caliber take pride in covering most conventions from start to finish. Sadly, I was unable to do so this year, and as such, my cosplay photo gallery does not accurately represent the quantity of talented cosplayers in attendance throughout the convention.
Cosplayers in this gallery include Majestic Misato Cosplay, gamegoddess4ever1, LadyJ_Cosplay, christoforos_sassaris, zombiesam.cos, mistletoad, rexa_cosplay, huniebeebaby, postachild323, ck_disl, heatherelizabethxoxo, scottyb_cosplay, starlightgoddess_cosplay, void_berry_247, jennyjuiceboxxx7, mandybars, and many more.
We use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries and post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This allows us to give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.
To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in your cosplay costume in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.
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