02/07/2026
🍁We wanted to share an important update regarding the future of Anime Aki Con.🍁
Due to rising venue costs, we will unfortunately not be hosting a 2026 convention year. While Anime Aki Con 2025 was an incredible success and deeply fulfilling for our team, the financial impact of our venue, which was once a dream space for us, has ultimately became unsustainable. The cost increase placed a significant strain on our founders, and after careful consideration, we had to make the difficult decision to pause.
Anime Aki Con has always been a community-run event, built by fans for fans, and we poured an immense amount of time, passion, and personal resources into creating something special and unique for our Greater Peoria Area. This decision was not something we made lightly.
This isn’t the announcement we hoped to make following such a successful 2025 event, but in today’s economic climate, difficult decisions sometimes have to be made. We are not a large corporate entity with financial backing, we are just four passionate fans with full-time jobs who believed in building something meaningful for our community.
With that said, we are not going anywhere.
While future full-scale conventions are currently up in the air as we explore new venues, formats, and possibilities, we still want to stay connected with the community we love and grew up with. We are actively discussing smaller, creator-focused gatherings. This includes cosplay photoshoot meetups and other social events.
We don’t have concrete details just yet, but we’d love to hear from you! What kinds of smaller events or meetups would you like to see?
Thank you for your continued support, understanding, and love for Anime Aki Con.
