Reflections on World Fantasy Con 2025

Programme for “World Fantasy Convention 2025” featuring a haunting blue forest background, shadowy trees, cobwebs, and a hooded figure with many glowing eyes.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about attending Bristolcon, which I try to do every year. This week, I wanted to reflect on the second convention I went to this October, one I’ve never been to before. The World Fantasy Convention is an annual event that, as the “world” in the name suggests, takes place in different countries or cities – though rarely outside of the USA and Canada. This year it joined forces with Fantasy Con, run by the British Fantasy Society, and took place in Brighton on the weekend of Halloween.

This is not the first large international convention I’ve been to – my first was actually Worldcon in Dublin in 2019, and I went to Worldcon again last year when it came to Glasgow. I was curious, however, to see how WFC would differ, especially being a more UK-focused affair with the inclusion of Fantasy Con, and perhaps also a more fantasy-focused affair, given that Worldcon’s full name is actually ‘The World Science Fiction Convention’ and that it has a strong science-fiction focus.

I was also simply curious what it would be like to do two cons back-to-back, and wanted to join other friends who were going. So I set off to Brighton, keen to find out.

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Reflections on Bristolcon 2025

Blue front cover of a printed convention programme reads "Bristolcon: booklet of mildly useful facts and fiction of dubious value, best before Nov 2025."

I’ve been a bit quiet recently, but for a good reason at least – a few weeks ago I attended two fantasy and science fiction conventions in the UK. The first, Bristolcon, is a favourite I attend pretty much every year. This October, however, the stars aligned to put the World Fantasy Convention only a week later in Brighton. What’s more, this particular World Fantasy Con joined forces with Fantasy Con (an annual UK-based convention run by the the British Fantasy Society) in a sort of extra-large affair, so it seemed worth going to both.

If you’re getting confused by all the extremely similar con names, you’re not the first… a few times when drafting this post I accidentally wrote “Worldcon” instead of “World Fantasy Con”, which would be an entirely different con yet again.

Anyway, I wanted to share a few personal reflections and highlights from both conventions, but in this post I’ll just focus on Bristolcon to keep things short. I’m also not going to write extensively about everything I attended, because the mere thought is exhausting and because I didn’t take diligent enough notes, so I’ll simply pick out a few highlights that stayed with me.

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