San Diego Comic-Con will be going virtual once again in 2021. The team behind the annual pop culture convention has confirmed that, due to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, SDCC will be held as an online-only event from July 23 to 25. Although we’d all hoped to be able to flood the hallows of Hall H again soon, it looks like for now, staying home is the safest route for everyone, at least for the foreseeable future.
"Never could we have imagined what the world experienced in 2020 and continues to experience today," Comic-Con stated, via a press release on their official site that was also shared to their official Twitter account. "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."
Additionally, due to purported "financial challenges" and "multiple postponements" that have unfortunately contributed to "limited financial resources," per Comic-Con, this year’s Comic-Con@Home will be scaled down to a three-day event from what had previously been a five-day schedule.
When Comic-Con 2020 was initially cancelled in April 2020, there was speculation as to whether the event would later be held online — speculation that was confirmed only a few weeks later with the creation of Comic-Con@Home. This led to some impressive maneuvering in order to bring the SDCC experience to fans who would no longer be able to travel for pandemic reasons — panels were hosted online, as well as trailer reveals and additional programming, and all free to watch (including Collider’s very own Constantine reunion panel, which saw star Keanu Reeves reunited with director Francis Lawrence and producer Akiva Goldsman)!
However, while Comic-Con may be canceled for the summer, there are still plans to move ahead with a potential in-person event:
As the timing and scope of our larger event factored greatly into our decision to postpone, we believe that launching a smaller in-person event at a later time may be a safe alternative. For this reason, we are happy to announce that San Diego Comic Convention is planning to present a three-day in-person convention in San Diego in November. At this time, we are still working on specific details as to attendance capacity, badge cost, and related information, and those details will be forthcoming.
The statement also included a reassurance that fans who have already purchased a badge that was rolled over to 2021 from last year will automatically have those badges confirmed for 2022 instead unless a request for a refund is issued. Confirmed exhibitors will also either have the option to request a badge refund or apply their payments to next year, although the team confirmed they are also working on an alternate option in case exhibitors wish to attend the planned November event later this year.
Comic-Con@Home 2021 is scheduled to take place from July 23 to 25, 2021. Check out San Diego Comic-Con's official statement below. We'll keep you posted as details on Comic-Con@Home 2021 develop.