San Diego Comic-Con International is officially taking its second year off. After cancelling in 2020 for the first time in its 50-year history, the highly-anticipated annual pop culture event has announced it would not be hosting in summer 2021 due to the continued global COVID-19 pandemic.
"While we are buoyed by the rollout of the vaccine and the growing number of individuals being inoculated, it appears that July will still be too early to safely hold an in-person event of the magnitude of Comic-Con," wrote San Diego Convention Center representatives in the announcement of the 2021 cancellation. "For this reason, we have made the challenging decision to postpone Comic-Con 2021 as an in-person gathering until our 2022 dates, and once again hold this year's celebration as the free online Comic-Con@Home. Unfortunately, the challenges of this past year and the multiple postponements of our two largest events have left us with limited financial resources, so this year the online experience will be reduced to a three-day event, spanning July 23-25, 2021. While we lament the postponement of the in-person Comic-Con, our commitment to this community of fans and our celebration of comics and the related popular arts endures as an important part of who we are."
In addition to this summer's online Comic-Con@Home, another smaller, in-person convention is in the planning stages for November 2021 in San Diego. Individuals who have purchased badges that were rolled over to the 2021 show will now have those badges automatically transferred to the 2022 event unless a refund is requested. The 2020 Comic-Con cancellation was the first time in 50 years that the convention did not take place in San Diego.
For more information about Comic-Con International San Diego, visit comic-con.org.
