Anime Central 2026

My friend summed up Anime Central in one word: "chaos." I get it. But the word I couldn't shake after the weekend was a stranger one: disconnected.

That's an odd thing to say about an event with more than 36,000 attendees. Anime Central is the biggest anime convention in the Midwest. To an outsider, that can sound like a backhanded compliment, like owning the world's largest ball of yarn, but I don't mean it that way. It outperforms the vast majority of its peers and consistently ranks among the largest anime conventions in North America.

Anime Central has all the trappings of an anime convention. It has the vendor hall, artists alley, gaming hall, events, panels, contests, cosplay, dances, and viewing rooms. At a ripe 28 years of age, it's a mature, established anime convention in the third largest city in the USA. Despite this, I find myself asking silly questions like "If it's in the third-largest city in the USA, why isn't it the third-largest anime convention in the USA?" Well, by my count it's the fourth largest anime convention in the USA, which is close enough, right?

Maybe I'm being picky, but after attending the biggest and arguably best conventions in North America, I have high expectations. This isn't to say that "bigger" always means "better." While larger events have more resources, they also have the potential to fail in more spectacular ways. At this scale, professional execution is required to back up the hype. So, how does Anime Central hold up?

As it turns out, not particularly well. Crowding is a common issue at large cons, and Anime Central is no exception. Combined with aging facilities and pedestrian traffic hazards, the convention faces significant challenges. Perhaps its greatest hurdle, however, is environmental dissonance. The programming promises a vibrant, connected community experience, but the fractured, aging venue forces a drab, disconnected reality.

It starts before you even get through the door. Attendance grew in 2026, which is great for the convention's bottom line. On the ground, though, it mostly meant bigger crowds and all the problems that come with managing them.

Entry to the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center was limited to the main entrance and the skywalk. Lines formed early and wound down N. River Road, and metal detectors slowed everything further. That would have been tolerable if anyone had been managing the lines, but no one was. It was a free-for-all: pick a line, stand in it, and hope it leads somewhere useful. I didn't see any signage or staff giving directions. I wisely waited until the morning rush died down, and on Saturday I used the skywalk entrance, which was a much shorter wait than the street. Plenty of people weren't so lucky. They stood outside in the elements with no guidance, and what should have been an exciting arrival turned into an exhausting ordeal. It sent a message early: what happens to attendees outside the venue isn't Anime Central's concern.

Two related problems make getting in even worse, and they should worry attendees and Anime Central's staff alike.

First, those entry lines form on sidewalks right next to N. River Road, a six-lane arterial with a 35 MPH speed limit. There are no barriers between thousands of pedestrians, many of them in bulky, restrictive cosplay, and fast-moving traffic only a few feet away. One misstep by an attendee or one distracted driver could turn into a tragedy.

Ironically, security is part of the problem. The metal detectors probably do make the convention center safer, but they also slow entry to a crawl, and that's what pushes thousands of attendees into long lines beside N. River Road. Safety inside the building comes at the cost of safety outside it. And with no checkpoint at all at the Hyatt next door, which hosts thousands of the same attendees, the whole setup feels inconsistent, more like theater than a plan.

Second, the main intersection between the hotels and the convention center is uncontrolled. No traffic lights. No pedestrian signals. Uniformed police direct traffic during peak hours, but once they leave, attendees are on their own crossing six lanes of active traffic. At night, when visibility drops and everyone is exhausted after a long day, it becomes a real-life game of Frogger that no one should have to play.

This hazard isn't Anime Central's fault, but it is their problem. I'm surprised the venue hasn't worked with the Village of Rosemont to upgrade that intersection. Convention centers and local governments usually share a symbiotic relationship: what's good for the center is good for the city. But human safety shouldn't come down to economics, and the lack of safe pedestrian infrastructure suggests a certain apathy from everyone involved. Anime Central doesn't control the roads, but it brings serious economic impact to the area, and it should be using that leverage to push for permanent changes.

I'm usually a sucker for vintage things, so I want to love the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. Mostly, it just makes me chuckle, because it isn't so much vintage as a time capsule with no single era. It's a patchwork of buildings added and remodeled at different times, each one frozen in whatever style was popular when it was built.

The main lobby looks like a 1980s sci-fi movie set: chrome, mirrors, and a red-and-gray color scheme. It's functional, and it's certainly a look, but it's a cold one. It feels more like a forgotten relic than a celebration of fan culture, and it's not doing an anime convention any favors.

The Golden Girls Hall is also awash in 1980s goodness, only this time it's bleached oak paneling, crystal chandeliers, and pink marble. Show up as Dorothy, Rose, or Blanche and you'd fit right in. Picture big teased hair, shoulder pads, and blue eyeshadow. It's the warmest space in the building, which is saying something.

Then there's the "Retailer Hall," as Anime Central calls it, which looks like a warehouse. This is one of the oldest parts of the complex, and it lacks the polish of newer civic convention centers. It feels more like a county fairground, with wood beams mixed in with steel girders and lighting of every color temperature and quality. There's a ramp between two sections that I'd be shocked to learn meets ADA standards. It might be quaint if it weren't so dark and dank. Instead of a thriving marketplace, it feels dim and rundown, and without decent seating, easy access to water, or anywhere comfortable to gather, attendees end up shuffling through it rather than enjoying it. People want bright, open, accessible spaces with high ceilings, plenty of bathrooms, drinking fountains, and food. This isn't that.

Words fail to describe how frustrating it is to move between the convention center and the Hyatt Regency next door.

The Hyatt is the official hotel and hosts a big chunk of the convention, including the late-night dances, 24-hour viewing rooms, and fan lounges. As an official part of the event, it should be easy to reach. It isn't. You could literally throw a stone from one building and hit the other, yet you have to walk at least a city block to get between them.

Look at a map and you'll see the two buildings sit directly across the street from each other. You'd think you could just cross over and walk into the convention center. You can't. There's no entry on that side, so you have to go around the corner to the main entrance on N. River Road. Going the other direction is a gamble. There's a small, unremarkable exit from the vendor hall through an underused cafe that leads straight to the hotel, and on some days it was open. On Sunday, though, the security guard wouldn't let anyone through. Why? Who knows.

It sounds minor, but it adds up. Staring across the street at a hotel so close and yet so maddeningly out of reach, then getting turned away and sent back around the block, drains the spontaneous energy out of the weekend. The two halves of the convention end up feeling like they're separated by a border rather than a crosswalk. Ultimately, this falls on the facility to fix with a proper entrance on that side of the building. Given its more pressing infrastructure problems, I'm not holding my breath.

A convention's personality is defined by how people interact with its space. Think about how the Gaylord National shapes the personality of Katsucon, or how the Kalahari Resorts shape Colossalcon. When a space isolates people, with no seating and fractured environments, a convention's identity shifts from "fun" to "unfriendly."

So which building is Anime Central's home: the warehouse-like convention center, or the Hyatt Regency? The Hyatt has real potential. Its striking John Portman design and brutalist architecture give it a distinct, impressive atmosphere, and it has a bar, a restaurant, and late-night programming. But it's too physically cut off from the main convention floor to draw in attendees who aren't staying there. It ends up feeling like an exclusive club, and I often wonder how many attendees even realize it's meant to be a core part of the Anime Central experience.

I realize this may read like a laundry list of complaints. I'd call it constructive criticism, or maybe tough love. My goal isn't to be negative. It's to point out obvious problems that can be fixed. Conventions do respond to this kind of pressure. Katsucon resisted mailing badges for years, leaving attendees to wait hours in line, until it finally made the change in 2024. Without pushback from the community and articles like this one, changes like that often never happen. I want conventions to succeed, and a convention that isn't improving is either stagnating or failing.

Bigger organizations than Anime Central have failed. Anime and comic conventions die quiet deaths all the time, often without the broader community noticing. Even Otakon, the third-largest anime convention in the USA, nearly collapsed during the pandemic. For Anime Central, the path forward is clear: organizers and staff need to tackle these operational problems with the same zeal they bring to the cosplay contest or the artist alley. Something as basic as how registration is handled leaves a lasting impression. If these missteps become the status quo, the convention risks losing the goodwill of the community it exists to serve.

This isn't just an operational problem. It's a cultural one. Staff are usually motivated by a genuine love for the community, but that excitement tends to gravitate toward the fun parts, like guests, cosplay, and programming, rather than the grind of logistics. The hard truth is that passion moves a convention forward, but staying successful takes the un-fun work: negotiating with local officials, fighting for infrastructure, and fixing how people move through the building. The average attendee is a casual fan, not a die-hard organizer. They don't share the staff's deep motivations. They just want to enjoy the weekend with as little friction as possible. It's up to the organizers to remove that friction.

To be fair, some of this is a matter of geography. Aside from McCormick Place, which is likely overpriced, the Chicago area doesn't offer many venues of this size. Still, the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center is reaching the end of its usefulness for an event of this scale, and as Anime Central grows, it will eventually run out of room. Until then, the organizers should fix what they can control, like registration flow, and advocate for what they can't, like pedestrian safety and a proper entrance facing the Hyatt.

Anime Central already has the hardest part figured out: tens of thousands of fans who show up every year hoping to connect. Now it needs a venue, and a plan, that lets them. Nobody should leave a 36,000-person convention feeling disconnected.

As always, thank you to all of the cosplayers who recorded video with me. Please find their social media accounts linked below.