DashCon 2 Venue Announcement, Vendor's Hall, and More!
You've waited long enough.
Hi all,
The DashCon 2 team is thrilled to announce the concrete answers to all your biggest questions. Where it is, when it is, how to buy tickets, and more. You ready?
(Also we’re using Substack now. More on that later.)
TL;DR
Where: DashCon 2 will be held at the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre in North York, Toronto
When: July 5th, 2025
What: Tickets will go live on February 22nd. Vendor Applications will be open on February 1st, and Panelist Applications on February 10th.
As always, you can find more info at www.dashcontwo.com
Venue Location
Firstly, DashCon 2 will be held at The Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre (JCCC), in the North York district of Toronto, Canada.
[6 Sakura Way, North York, ON M3C 1Z5]
Image belongs to Bartman905 on Wordpress
The JCCC has previously hosted plenty of other fan conventions, notably the Anime North Halloween Event and Pretty Heroes. Given their experience with convention hosting and gorgeous venue space, we think they’re the perfect fit.
So, why did this take so long?
Well… the JCCC wasn’t our first pick. Our first pick, who we won’t name, dropped us unexpectedly after months of negotiations. Why? Original DashCon’s reputation. We literally got DashCon’d before the convention had even started!!
While we were expecting this and had backup plans, we were blindsided by a rejection this late into the negotiation process. After reaching out to our other contacts, we settled on the JCCC, but we had to restart the entire process. So much of our planning had to be restarted or paused, which set us way behind schedule. Naturally, we didn’t want to say anything about losing our venue spot until we’d adequately replaced it.
We’re happy to say that the Classic DashCon Venue Struggle is over and done with - and our rental with the JCCC is paid in advance. No $17k hostage situation necessary.
However, all this provokes another obvious question: why did you go public with the project when you hadn’t signed with the venue yet? In short: Strange Aeons’ DashCon: An Extensive Oral History video. We were already knee-deep in the project behind the scenes before finding out she was making a YouTube video about DashCon, pushing the story into the public eye again. The team was concerned that declaring we were organizing DashCon 2 soon after Strange Aeons’ video would imply it was a rush-job inspired by her video. We were far enough along in the initial venue negotiations that we decided to go public with the video rather than after it.
Date & Time
DashCon 2 will be held for one day: Saturday, 5th July 2025. We alluded to using the same weekend as the original DashCon when we first went public, but unfortunately this date wasn’t available at our venue. This does mean it’s pretty close to the American 4th of July - in our defense, we didn’t really think of that, we’re Canadian.
The convention will open to the public at 9:30 AM and close at 9:30 PM. All this information and more will be available on our website.
(These hours may be subject to change, please always check our website for our most recent info!)
Admission
Ticket sales to in-person DashCon 2 will open on Feb 22nd! Mark your calendars…
We’ll be processing ticket sales through Simpli Events, an all-Canadian competitor to Eventbrite. You can click here to find the events page.
We’re working on the feasibility of expanding DashCon 2 into a hybrid event, with live-streams of the most anticipated panels/events and some other informal online panels hosted on a private Discord. More information on those will come at a later date.
Vendor and Panel Applications
DashCon 2’s Artist Alley/Vendor's Hall is a space for independent artisans who create print media, handmade crafts, or other merchandise. If you want the opportunity to sell your merchandise at DashCon 2, then you’ll be excited to learn that vendor applications will open on February 1st!
Please see www.dashcontwo.com/dealers-hall/ for more details about tables, prices, and merchandise. The link to the application form will be posted there.
We’re also happy to say that we’re opening panel applications on February 10th! We have a few guest panellists already lined up (including a few we can’t talk about yet), but we’re excited to open applications to everyone with a good idea! All DashCon 2 panels will be moderated by our volunteer team, and we’ll put out more info soon about volunteer sign-ups soon!
Substack…?
A big thank-you to all you guys on Tumblr who let us know if you received our newsletter. Due to problems with our newsletter not arriving to all subscribers, we’ve ported our email listing here to Substack. You can still subscribe through the link on our website, and unsubscribe here.
Thank you for your patience with us :) Starting a brand-new convention is hard enough without the everpresent vengeful spectre of DashCon 1. Your excitement never fails to motivate us to make DashCon 2 the best it can possibly be.