May 27, 2020
It Took Longer, but May 2020 Is the Second Conventionless Month Since 1974
by Patrick Delahanty, FanCons.com Administrator
On April 9th, we announced that April 2020 was the first conventionless month in over 40 years as the final convention scheduled for that month was cancelled. After some research, we found there hadn't been another calendar month without any sort of fan convention since at least January 1974.
Most May 2020 conventions had already been cancelled or postponed by the start of the month, but the second half of the month still had some conventions that were holding out and had not announced cancellations. The final convention on the calendar was a comic convention in Miami, Florida that was still scheduled for May 30th. Yesterday, on the 26th day of May (or what feels like the 87th day of March), they updated their web site and social media with their new date for the increasingly popular weekend of October 10th while never actually mentioning the old date was cancelled.
Although our database of old conventions is incomplete, the last time we have a record of there being two consecutive calendar months without any conventions was back in December 1973 and January 1974. If you know of any conventions held in those months (or any we're missing in our database from any year), please let us know!
This weekend will be the 11th consecutive weekend without any conventions taking place anywhere on the planet. As of publication time, the next scheduled convention is North Texas RPG Con, a gaming convention being held June 4-7 in Irving, Texas. According to their Facebook group, they still plan to move forward with the event, but have moved most games online and estimate that in-person attendance will be under 100 people with games limited to no more than 6 people per table.
The following weekend in June also only has a single convention. Currently, there are only 16 conventions left on the calendar for all of June 2020. Keep checking our convention listing on FanCons.com for the latest updates on cancellations, postponements, and new dates.
