Planet Comicon returned to Bartle Hall in Downtown Kansas City March 27-29th for their 2026 event. This round brought a few changes, but an overall vibe of familiarity to the popular event.

The main source of change centered around entrance proceedures. Over the past couple years, the line to enter Barle Hall for Saturday stretched down the street and took upwards of an hour to get through. In an effort to make the line more orderly, Planet Comicon blocked off the street soutside of the main entrance point and added stantions. Fans ziz-zagged through the traffic cones and caution tape to get to the door. One line was meant for will call/wristband pickup and another for entrance if you already had your wristband.

However, for those who arrived early, this led to some confusion. It was incredibly easy to find yourself in the wrong line and not know that you were heading the wrong direction for a while. Eventually, volunteers did get in place to direct attendees the correct way. Overall, the lines moved well, but the pace left some attendees stewing in impatience for an hour before even entering the building. The process could use continued tweaks for improvement, but getting 50-70,000 people into a building will always require people to spend at least some time waiting in a line.

Planet’s celebrity lineup provided quality panels for attendees to meet, get photos and autographs, and hear from on the main stage. The Hazbin Hotel, Supernatural, and Twilight panels were among the most popular and most unhinged, scoring high with audience members. Lord of the Rings also saw an on-stage reunion for Elijah Wood and Sean Astin.

The Twilight panel even included a sneak peek of an upcoming movie. Peter Facinelli, who played Carlisle in the iconic movie franchise is doing more work behind the camera these days. He directed the upcoming film “Grace Period”, which stars fellow Twilight alum Ashley Greene. They shared an early look at the trailer for the film, which had the audience laughing and looking forward to the movie.

Attendees who wanted to spend time on the vendor floor were treated to a mix of new and returning faces. Planet makes it easy to find retuning vendors by often keeping them in their same location year to year, which is both a blessing and a curse. I’d love to see more of a shake-up in the map to help encourage attendees to explore other areas and meet new vendors along the way.

One popular vendor booth was Soundbooth Theater, which is the KC-based company behind the popular audiobooks for Dungeon Crawler Carl. Narrator and owner Jeff Hays was on hand to meet fans of the beloved LitRPG series.

Planet Comicon will return to downtown Kansas City in 2027, with dates scheduled for April 2-4. Fans of animation won’t have to wait as long for the next event. Planet Anime is August 21-23 of this year and tickets are on sale now.