New horror convention coming to Raleigh from GalaxyCon team
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- GalaxyCon plans to launch 'Nightmare Weekend' horror convention in Raleigh in 2026.
- GalaxyCon Raleigh expects 45,000 attendees in 2025, up from 19,000 in its first year.
- Last year's show generated $9.75 million in direct economic benefits for Raleigh.
The organizers behind one of the city’s largest and nerdiest events is bringing a new horror-themed convention to Raleigh next year.
GalaxyCon Raleigh begins this week, but organizers say they plan to bring a third convention to the city starting in October 2026.
“Nightmare Weekend is our horror show,” said Mike Broder, founder and president of GalaxyCon. “That’s all focused on horror celebrities, some voice actors, horror artists. Some of it is a darker style or fun or spooky. Like ‘Hocus Pocus’ or “Nightmare Before Christmas.’”
GalaxyCon also has two smaller shows in its roster: an anime and animation focused event called Animate! that comes to Raleigh each January and a horror-themed show called Nightmare Weekend that is currently in three markets.
“Raleigh is a great, unique market,” Broder said. “We have a huge video game industry in Raleigh. There’s a lot of colleges and schools. There’s a lot of comic stores. You can kind of always tell a market by how many hobby shops there are. Comic, vintage toy stores, trading card or [collectible card games]. Raleigh has a really good, strong market.”
Raleigh was GalaxyCon’s first big expansion in 2017 and a risk for the Florida-based company, Broder said.
“The local community came out and knocked it out of the park,” he said. “We had over 19,000 people that first year, and it was phenomenal. It was an amazing launch.”
If not for Raleigh’s success, GalaxyCon would not have expanded at the same rate.
“We’ve got 18 shows this year, 24 next year,” he said. “And that would not have been possible without the success of Raleigh. If Raleigh had failed we probably would have retreated back to Florida.”
GalaxyCon expects to draw 45,000 unique attendees to this year’s four-day event, and last year’s show generated an estimated $9.75 million in direct economic benefits.
