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