DRAGON CON ATTRACTS 70,000 FANS FOR FIVE DAYS OF POP CULTURE CELEBRATION

More Than $200,000 Raised for CURE Childhood Cancer, And Still Counting

ATLANTA – September 4, 2023 – Dragon Con, Atlanta’s internationally known pop culture, fantasy, sci-fi, and gaming convention, attracted 70,000 attendees for the five-day celebration and raised more than $200,000 for its official 2023 charity, CURE Childhood Cancer.

Initially estimated at 65,000 people, fan attendance reached 70,000 and sold out all five days. Fans travelled from all 50 states and a handful foreign countries, including Canada, Brazil, Australia, and several European nations.

With monies still being collected, the convention’s charity efforts have raised at least $200,000 for CURE Childhood Cancer, which works to advance promising research, lobby for important legislation, and provided tangible support to thousands of childhood cancer patients and their families in the Atlanta metro area and across Georgia. The final total will likely surpass the previous record of $206,000 raised in 2022 for Open Hand Atlanta.

Over the past decade, Dragon Con has raised more than $1.23 million for its annual official charities.  Funds are raised through convention-based auctions, special merchandise sales, special events, and a dollar-for-dollar match from the convention up to an additional $125,000.

Dragon Con will return in 2024 for the five-day Labor Day Weekend, Aug. 29 to Sept. 2.

“This year’s convention was just joyful. Our fans, like Americans everywhere, have made the most of post-COVID travel worries and brought the best of themselves to Atlanta,” convention co-chair Rachel Reeves said.  “They brought all their awesomeness – great attitudes, enormous generosity, and spectacular cosplays – to help make this year’s Dragon Con one of the best in recent memory.”

Some of this year’s top guests included cultural icon George Takei, fan favorites Sean Astin and Elijah Wood, and Andy Serkis, the performance capture specialist known for bringing monsters to life. They were joined by Mythbusters’ Adam Savage, children’s television creator Marty Krofft and his creation H. R. Pufnstuf, and 1970s action tv stars Lee Majors and Lindsay Wagner, along with a legion of actors well known to fans for their work in television, animation, and movies.

In the Dragon Awards, the only fan’s choice award in fandom, The Icarus Plot by Timothy Zahn won the Best Science Fiction Novel, the first of 11 categories of fiction, comics, art, gaming, and filmed entertainment.

LifeSouth, which celebrated its 20^th annual Robert A. Heinlein “Pay It Forward” blood drive at Dragon Con, attracted more than 3,700 donors donated to the drive – including its 50,000^th donor – resulting in about 10,000 blood components. The annual drive, consistently ranked as the largest convention-based blood drive, benefits LifeSouth, which serves more than 25 hospitals in the Atlanta area and 125 hospitals in the Southeast.

About Dragon Con

Dragon Con is the internationally known pop culture convention held each Labor Day Weekend in Atlanta. Organized for fans, Dragon Con features more than 3,500 hours of comics, film, television, costuming, art, music, and gaming over four days. For more information, please visit www.dragoncon.org and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.