Animate! Orlando wrapped its three-day run at the Orange County Convention Center’s West Concourse this past weekend, drawing thousands of anime, animation, and pop culture fans for a lineup that mixed voice acting legends, cosplay spectacle, and late-night programming.
The convention ran August 14 through 16, with the exhibit hall open Friday from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Presented by GalaxyCon, the event brought together fans of anime, animation, comics, manga and cosplay for the three-day weekend, with programming that included voice actors, creators, panels, Q&A sessions, gaming, costume contests and late-night events.
The guest roster leaned heavily on animation history. Daniel Ross, known for voicing Donald Duck and Grimace, greeted fans at his table alongside Pixar veterans Mary Gibbs and Jeff Pidgeon, who worked on the Toy Story franchise. Veteran animator Willie Ito, whose decades-long career touched Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera productions, sat for photos and signed prints of his work. Video game voice actor Sean Chiplock, recognizable from titles across the RPG and anime dub space, posed for photos at his booth, while Michael Kovach brought along plush versions of his original characters for sale alongside his autograph table. The creators of the webcomic Cyanide & Happiness also made an appearance, drawing a steady stream of fans to their bright orange booth.
Other featured guests across the weekend included Alyson Stoner, Vincent Martella, Cristina Vee, Brandon Rogers, Erica Lindbeck, Colleen O’Shaughnessey and Janet Varney, among dozens of other voice actors and creators. The guest lineup also featured Christian Borle, Richard Horvitz, John DiMaggio and Adam McArthur.
Beyond the autograph tables, the weekend’s real spectacle played out in the hallways and concourses, where attendees turned the convention center into a runway. A squad of armored troopers in matching black and gold trim, plus a white-and-orange scout trooper variant and a red-and-white caped figure, marched through the atrium as a unit, stopping regularly for photos with passersby. A maid cafe-style group posed together near the vendor hall in matching black-and-white maid uniforms with cat ears, each wearing a name tag identifying their character. Elsewhere, a full Ghostbusters crew, complete with proton packs, slime, and a captured Terror Dog, set up a photo backdrop modeled after the firehouse from the films, with members repping the “Orlando Ghostbusters” fan group.
The exhibit hall itself stayed packed for most of the weekend. Aerial shots of the concourse showed lines of costumed attendees stretching the length of the building during peak hours Saturday, a reflection of the strong turnout the show has built a reputation for in recent years. Vendor booths ranged from oversized Pokemon figures wearing sunglasses, tagged with “please ask before touching” signs to keep the merchandise intact, to hand-painted anime and manga prints selling for as little as ten dollars apiece. One booth stacked with folded t-shirts and vibrant character artwork prints drew a steady crowd of browsers picking through the racks.
Fully custom astromech droids also lined up for a group display, with builders showing off R2-D2 units finished in everything from screen-accurate white and blue to custom purple and yellow color schemes, each one built from scratch by members of the droid-building hobbyist community that regularly appears at conventions like this one.
In a lighter corner of the show floor, a playpen of Pembroke Welsh Corgi puppies became one of the weekend’s unexpected crowd favorites, with attendees lining up for a chance to watch (and occasionally pet) the litter tumbling around on artificial turf.
The weekend’s schedule also included a packed lineup of fan panels, creator Q&As, an exhibit hall stocked with pop culture vendors, cosplay competitions and meetups, both tabletop and video gaming, and a “tattoo row” where artists inked custom designs on attendees willing to make it permanent. After-hours programming leaned into adult-oriented entertainment, including burlesque, cabaret, and cosplay pro-wrestling, giving the convention a different energy once the exhibit hall closed each night.
Cosplay remained the central draw for many attendees, as it has for years at GalaxyCon’s animation-focused shows. The event’s costume and cosplay contests offered more than $4,000 in cash prizes, along with medals, trophies, and judging from well-known cosplay guests. That competitive spirit showed up throughout the weekend in the sheer variety of builds on display, from screen-accurate armor sets that clearly took months to construct to simpler, more whimsical costumes assembled from convention hall finds.
This year’s show followed a version of the event held in the same venue last August, when the convention spotlighted some of the biggest names in voice acting, animation, and pop culture writing in a similar format. The consistency in venue and structure has helped Animate! Orlando build a loyal, returning fan base that treats the August weekend as an annual tradition .
Organizers describe the show as transforming the Orange County Convention Center into a gathering place where thousands of fans share their favorite stories, characters, and creative passions, with exhibitor halls filled with collectibles, artwork, apparel, and merchandise from both independent creators and established franchises. That description held up across the weekend, as attendees moved between celebrity autograph lines, packed panel rooms, and rows of independent artists selling original work .
With the 2026 edition now in the books, GalaxyCon’s Animate! brand shows no signs of slowing its expansion. The company already has its Philadelphia edition of Animate! scheduled for October at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center, continuing a live events calendar that also includes GalaxyCon stops in cities like Raleigh and San Jose throughout the year. For Central Florida fans, though, the West Concourse of the Orange County Convention Center remains the annual home base, and based on the crowds that filled its halls this past weekend, that arrangement looks likely to continue for the foreseeable future. For individual photos click here .
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NocedoPhoto Media Group is an innovative and creative consortium that unites photographers, writers, cosplayers, event promoters, vendors, costume and prop makers, and other creatives under one roof to use their collective skills to maximize their distribution and presence on digital media platforms. Their goal is to create a well-rounded and successful network for all involved.
