FFXIV: Return from FFXIV Fanfest 2026
Posted on April 29, 2026 by Aywren
Final Fantasy XIV Evercold Release Date: January 2027!
I just returned from the 2026 FFXIV NA Fanfest that was held in Anaheim last week, and boy was there a LOT revealed there! I won’t get too much into the content of the announcements – I’d rather talk about that in a different post. But I did want to talk a little about the event itself.
The Good
The last time I attended a Fanfest was back in 2016, and boy has it changed since then! Compared to ten years ago, the size of attendance was enormous! That had positive aspects (there was a LOT of energy) and some negatives. But despite the size of the crowd, I felt like the event was overall well organized.
The location at the Anaheim convention center was a good one. It was a short walk from a lot of other shops, food, and even Disney. Syn and I didn’t do anything Disney related, but we did visit the Garden Walk for food and exploration a few times. There was also plenty of food to be found at the center, and free water refills if you brought your own water bottle.
I really like the swag bag we got. It feels fairly well-made and has lots of secret pockets. I plan on using mine even after the event. The hat wasn’t really my thing, but it was neat enough. The pins are going in my pin collection, and once I get things organized, I’ll be putting my WoL stickers in the sticker book they gave us. Good swag overall!
The weather was quite nice – even a bit cool at times – and you really couldn’t ask for a nicer overall atmosphere. Especially when you compare it to what happened at the 2023 Fanfest. I’m very glad S/E took a page out of that experience and learned from the previous event. I wasn’t there, but from the stories I heard, this was far and away so much better.
The Bad
The one area that was not well organized the merch line. Really, if you want something from Fanfest, your best bet is to preorder it online. Don’t try to snag merch at the event. There were a limited number of slots on registration day that filled almost instantly. The following two days, they did RNG registration on the phone app for slots that were also filled almost instantly.
I gave up trying after Day 1 and didn’t even register for anything on Day 2. This might have been for the best because I heard stories of how folks spent most of their time waiting in the merch line even then, missing most of the event. I personally didn’t pay for tickets just to sit in a line the whole time.
Really, that’s the one thing I would say was a downer. If you wanted to participate in any of the themed activities, especially those giving out stickers on the sticker hunt, your choice was to spend most of your time waiting in line and missing the panels.
We thought that maybe things would cool down on Day 2, but even then, lines were often capped out. The only activities we were able to get into while still watching most of the panels were the photo ops.
However, those who did get into the activities looked to be having great fun. There was a neat PVP event that had something to do with rolling dice. There were small games throughout, the large wall where folks left their signatures (I didn’t because I didn’t realize you needed a paint pen for this), and some photo ops like the Honey B Lovely and the G’raha Tia.
The Groovy
But far and away the crowning fun of the Fanfest had to be Dancing Green’s dance floor activity. I was too chicken to participate, but it was great fun to stand by and watch. It was absolutely genius with so much energy (sometimes surrounded by folks with green glow sticks cheering on participants), as the dance floor imitated game mechanics that you were encouraged to avoid.
The Musical
There was almost enough seating for everyone, but not quite. And grabbing good seating was a challenge. On Day 2, once we found a good place near one of the monitors and within good hearing distance, Syn and I planted ourselves for hours before the Primals concert.
Speaking of concerts, both the piano concert and the Primals concert were fantastic in their own way! Back during the 2016 Fanfest, the music selection was far more limited. This time around, a lot of the selections came from Dawntrail – much was focused on the Arcadion fight music, which was fine. I was happy that they sprinkled other songs in there, including Long Fall, though.
Oh yeah, and there was an Ironmouse performance. That was cool, even though I wasn’t very familiar with Ironmouse.
The Fandom
I was also happy to have been able to meet up with a few folks from Tumblr and Bsky that I’ve met from over the years. I brought Allagan badges to give out, not knowing that stickers would be the focus of this fanfest – we even got an official sticker book for them.
There was a fan-run sticker exchange by the sign-on wall, and it seems a lot of folks bring their WoL stickers to put on the wall as means of a signature. Again, I didn’t know about that until it was too late. If there’s a next time, I’m absolutely going with stickers, even though people were excited to get my buttons as well, simply because they were something different.
Anyhow, the fandom is now rumbling with excitement due to announcements made in the keynote. I see so many videos on YouTube exclaiming “We are SO BACK!” “FFXIV RETURNS!” and so forth.
I have to say that I’m quite excited, too! We still don’t have all the answers to all of the features they talked about, obviously, as they want to keep some details for the other fanfestivals. But what we did get was really, really good!
I’ll leave my thoughts on that for the next post!