Hi all – our Cosplay Department has been hard at work, and we’re excited to share some updates to our lineup of Contests this year!

We’re highly focused on ensuring there is an opportunity for all ages, skill levels, and a variety of talents to be able to show off their amazing abilities! We’ve revamped our contest lineup to include the following:

The METRO Cosplay Championship

This contest is a hybrid performance/craftsmanship competition, with both pre-judging for costumes and a live-judged skit performance session. This event is our major cosplay contest and is considered the “main event” of the contest line-up, featuring cosplayers who are both serious creators/fabricators AND amazing performers – double-threats of all kinds are encouraged to apply!

Cosplay Craftsmanship Competition

Our Cosplay Craftsmanship Competition (CCC) will be a pre-judged costume construction/craftsmanship/creativity competition – no skits, no performances, and strict requirements about the percentage of construction vs purchase. The selected entrants will be featured in a walk-on runway show to exhibit their costumes for the crowd after pre-judging has been completed up close and personal with our panel of judges.

Cosplay Performance Showcase

The Cosplay Performance Showcase is our performance-only skit competition – this is where cosplayers who love to perform but may not focus as much on making costumes themselves get a chance to shine! Pre-recorded tracks allow lip-syncing, dance routines, and full-blown sketches to shine in this performance power hour!

What about Lip Sync Battle and The METRO Voice?

We’ve decided to hybridize several of our competitions and ensure that we are opening up both competition slots to the widest variety of cosplayers, as well as making sure we are putting out highly-demanded, highly-attended entertainment in our limited three-day schedule. To that end – we have decided not to bring back Lip Sync Battle and The METRO Voice for 2024. Hopefuls who are disappointed those contests will not be returning are highly encouraged to submit for the Cosplay Performance Showcase if they weren’t planning on making their costume themselves, or for our Cosplay Championship if they would like to compete in a hybrid performance/craftsmanship event! We also have the IdolFest by NextStage and our KPop Dance Competition by KJunkies returning this year, and we encourage our musically inclined folks to group up and participate in those events as well!

Pre-Convention Contests – TikTok Challenge and Picture This!

Want to start the competition early?? We’re bringing back our TikTok Challenge and our Picture This! Photo Contest this year as well! Submissions will be taken prior to the convention, and you could even win free passes to THIS YEAR’s event for submitting! We’ll showcase the photo and video submissions on our social media as well as showing them at the convention during other events. We know there’s lots of talent out there who may not want to spend their whole weekend dedicated to cosplay contests, so we’ve decided to get our content creation folks to collaborate BEFORE the con and show off what they can do!

Okay, so how can I enter this stuff?!

Details, rules, applications, and more can all be found on our Cosplay Contests page, by clicking here: https://metroconventions.com/cosplay-contests/

Details for the TikTok Challenge and the Picture This! Contests are coming soon!

Thanks all, and best of luck! On your mark, get set, make!

– Alex, CEO/Owner

Check out our new logo up in the header, METROCON fans! You’ll see us using this new logo on our website, our merch, and all over the convention and social media this year. We wanted to not only modernize and clean-up our logo as we continue to grow and define our community even further, but we wanted to symbolize several different things with our new logo. We’ve also expanded our color palette (which you may recognize from our 20th Anniversary branding). If you’re a design geek like me, you might have picked up on a few key notes, but we love letting you in behind the scenes when we can so you can see what we’re going for when we work on things like this. Some of the things featured in our new branding:

The famous sunset pinks and golds of Florida’s Gulf Coast.

The strength, solidarity, and boldness of our community.

The walls of safety we’ve built up around “the gear” to keep this community safe.

An emphasis on “METRO” (who we are) over “CON” (what we are).

A distinct Japanese touch, to show our love for the culture that our favorite fandoms generate from.

The Japanese wave pattern featured in the “O” balances the high-technology approach we take to putting on events with the very traditional, human element we know makes a community like this thrive (as well as pay homage to the Bay that our convention center sits on).

We hope you love the new branding as much as we do – we can’t wait to see how it looks on the badges this year!

From 2004 – 2023, we had a “Versus” theme – pitting two ideas or aspects of fandom against each other, in the tradition of great fan debates and crossover video games.

As METROCON continues to evolve, we have introduced a new style of “Theme” for 2024 and beyond. We have often had a secondary theme at the event that we talk about at closing ceremonies – some idea or concept that has resonated with our team and our interactions with the community throughout the year, or some message we want to bring to the forefront of the event. We want our event to more accurately reflect that overarching “theme”, and not be based inherently on conflict and divisiveness like a “versus” theme. Even if the competition was always friendly and playful, it’s just not at the core of what METROCON is trying to do anymore. You’ve got plenty of reasons to argue with strangers on the internet – let’s not go around inventing more of them lol.

We’ve also opted to retire our METROCON Mascots starting in 2024. You’ll see some new, amazing faces and cosplay guests from around the convention community hosting events and participating throughout the weekend, and we’re working closely to bring you our NEW mascot, a character we intend to keep in the 2D world – you should be meeting them very soon!!

We’re excited to theme the event in a new way – it probably won’t affect your METROCON experience much, but maybe you’ll take just a little more away from your time at the event!

Check out 2024’s theme “Legacy of Dreams” and more info about the convention on our About Us page by clicking here.

Past “Versus” themes included:

2004: Schoolgirls vs Catgirls – 2005: Ninjas vs Pirates – 2006: Kawaii vs Kowaii – 2007: Anime vs Video Games – 2008: Light vs Dark – 2009: Sci-Fi vs Fantasy – 2010: Ninja vs Samurai – 2011: Monsters vs Hunters – 2012: Agents vs Outlaws – 2013: East vs West – 2014: Old School vs New School – 2015: Brains vs Brawn – 2016: Order vs Chaos – 2017: Faithful vs Fallen – 2018: Guardians vs Invaders – 2019: Virtue vs Vice – 2021: Mortals vs Machines – 2022: Weird vs Wild – 2023: Anime vs Video Games: Remastered

We’re excited to announce METROCON’s 2024 dates – we’ll see you next summer, July 5-7, 2024 for an amazing 4th of July weekend! We look forward to having you back at the best party in the multiverse, and thanks for an AMAZING 20th Anniversary year. Be sure to follow us on social media for updates, and check out our Facebook for albums from our official photographers!