Which are the largest geeky conventions in the world?

You would have every reason to believe your local gaming convention is a big one if tens of thousands of people rock up to it. In the tabletop gaming landscape names like Gen Con, Origins and UK Game Expo are huge. The fact is, though, on the global scale and in the wide ‘geek convention’ definition, there are far larger events.

This treemap doesn’t show all the geeky conventions in the world. It shows enough to illustrate the vast range of sizes.

Geek conventions

[Full screen chart]

100+ spreadsheets and a voting algorithm

More than 100 spreadsheets are running in the background to generate this image. You can change the data and redraw the chart.

If you don’t think a convention is in the right category, then find it in the list below and click on its name. You’ll open a profile poll in which you’ll get to describe the convention as you see fit.

Algorithms run in the background to weigh your response to the other data collected, and as a result of your vote, you may reposition the convention on the treemap above. Clicking on a convention name will also reveal the data sources used.

What about cosplay? Cosplay happens at most geeky conventions. Pick the topics that most people cosplay characters from if you think the convention is dominated by cosplayers. Anime, computer games or movies are all likely candidates.

I want to add a convention to this chart

If you know of a geeky convention that fits then leave a comment below. To qualify the convention should get a few thousand attendees. Please write the name with a link to a trustworthy website (or a Wikipedia page with references) to show the attendance figures.

I don’t think these attendance figures are right

You may well be right. It turns out attendance figures are a murky science at best. This diagram has been made using overall attendance, which tends to be the most commonly published figures. Some conferences de-dupe their data to produce a smaller, more accurate, unique visitors and some conferences are moving to RFID badges.

We’ll stick the most widely available data for now but please use the comment box to link to different data sets.