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AnimeCon 2019 June 14th - 16th 2019 at Rotterdam Ahoy

The Anime, Cosplay and Game festival expands to 15.000 m2 of exhibitions space, filling five convention halls with ninjas, catgirls, maids and fans.

AnimeCon 2019, the 21st edition, will take open at Rotterdam Ahoy on Friday the 14th of June and close on Sunday the 16th 2019. AnimeCon grows every year and Ahoy offers the space to keep growing, thanks in part to Rotterdam's “Heart of South” plan for a new convention centre, hotel, cinema and an improved metro and bus station. Rotterdam Ahoy now gains a unique new 55 hour non-stop fan festival, that will literally pitch up it's tents next door.

The theme for AnimeCon 2019 will be announced during the Closing Ceremony of AnimeCon 2018 at the King Willem Alexander Theatre of World Forum The Hague on Sunday the 17th of June 2018.

In 1999, a small group of Japanese pop culture fans organised a festival in Rotterdam for other fans. Few people took notice. The next few years the location declined and was later demolished. Meanwhile the group of fans was cast loose and swarmed around lost in the forgotten outskirts of the country. But slowly... almost unnoticed… they started to grow. In 2013, the horde suddenly moved to the centre of the country. At the World Forum The Hague they found a bountiful pasture and suddenly the group started to increase with over 2,000 visitors a year.

The small group of fans has now changed in a horde of 25,000 fans who will descend on Rotterdam in 2019. So… close the doors and bar the windows! Keep women and children inside or they might escape and join the swarm! Because when the fans come, and come they will, they will send their best people! Cosplayers in costumes that seem to have come straight from a film set! Gaming zombies that will spend the whole night playing board and card games. Comic book artists, video game developers, Asian caterers, martial arts masters and sellers of addictive merchandise! They won't stop, continue all through the night… you can't stop it!

We advise drivers to avoid Rotterdam, due to the risk of being distracted by the visitors. Commuters in public transport are requested not to stare (too much). Ninja, Spiderman and Deadpool cosplayers are requested not to perform stunts or hang from the ceiling, even during busy times, because of the danger posed by falling objects. In short, AnimeCon 2019 will be coming to Ahoy!

Twenty-one years after the first festival in 1999, AnimeCon returns to Rotterdam. AnimeCon is a festival organised by fans for fans. It is run by volunteers. Since the move to The Hague in 2013, AnimeCon grew with more than 2000 visitors each year, thanks to the support of the World Forum the Hague. However, this year 18,000 visitors are expected, so the festival is reaching the maximum capacity of the venue. The World Forum The Hague and the board of J-POP Foundation (AnimeCon's organiser) therefore decided that AnimeCon 2018 is going to be the last one at The Hague and to leave with a grand party!

The board of J-POP Foundation is looking forward to the possibilities at Ahoy, such as the space of the conference halls, a temporary camping in the adjacent “Zuiderpark” and the accessibility by metro. However, we will regret to lose the theatre, the many rooms and the three hotels at walking distance of World Forum The Hague.

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