World Fantasy Con 2026 Oakland: A Beacon of Becoming and Belonging
Why Oakland, and why now? Because Oakland has always made room for the future while living inside the pressure of the present.
Because people have migrated here for generations carrying entire universes. Legends. Folktales. Songs. Prayers. Grandmother stories and survival knowledge stitched into language.
Because Oakland doesn’t archive those inheritances.
Oakland activates them.
Lets them meet. Clash. Remix.
Turns them into new myths.
Because in Oakland, culture is not decoration.
It is infrastructure.
Because Oakland is also a city shaped by resistance.
By Communities of Color building power, beauty, and belonging.
By queer and trans visionaries making new ways to live, love, organize, and create.
By people who refuse to disappear.
And in this moment, that matters.
When forces around us try to shrink humanity into categories, borders, and silence,
speculative literature widens the doorway.
It insists that the magic of imagination belongs to everyone.
It refuses the lie that the future is only for the safe, the comfortable, the sanctioned.
Fantasy has never been simply about escaping from reality.
It is rehearsal.
It is resistance.
It is a lantern in the hand.
It is the sacred practice of saying:
We are still here.
And we are still becoming.
Oakland understands becoming.
This is a city forged by movement.
By mutual aid.
By art as lifeline.
By communities who know how to build tomorrow with their bare hands.
Here, the struggle has always been real.
And so has the vision.
Octavia E. Butler foretold a future on fire in Parable of the Sower.
But the truth is: the present is on fire, too.
Which means the future has already begun.
The future is not a distant horizon.
The future is a long now.
It is what we practice.
It is what we choose.
Butler taught us the future is shaped by choices.
By preparation.
By community.
By the courage to name what is happening and still insist on what could be.
So this October, we will honor Octavia and gather in her lineage: clear-eyed, unsentimental, determined.
Her work does not ask us to be naive.
It asks us to be brave.
That is why the World Fantasy Convention belongs here.
Not as a backdrop.
As a statement.
So yes, the convention will stand.
It must.
As a welcoming beacon.
As a signal fire.
As a refuge for the weird, the wondrous, the feral, the tender.
As a room where strangers become comrades through story.
As a space where new, brighter futures can be imagined, and then carried home in our bodies.
In this spirit we invite you to join us October 22–25, 2026, at the Oakland Convention Center in downtown Oakland, California.
We will celebrate the full breadth of speculative genres and spotlight visionary writers, poets, publishers, illustrators, and world-builders shaping the field right now.
Centrally located and accessible by public transportation from all three Bay Area international airports, the downtown convention center will be our gathering ground for four days of craft, community, and audacious possibility.
Full program details, guest announcements, and registration information will be posted here in the coming weeks and months.
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We look forward to seeing you in Oakland in 2026 and in the meantime, should you have questions or comments, please reach out at info@wfc2026.org
Be well,
Rina Weisman, Co-Chair, chair1@wfc2026.org
Audrey Williams, Co-Chair, chair2@wfc2026.org