Arisia 2025 Gallery And Write-Up

I only went to Arisia this year on Saturday. My plan was to go on both Saturday and Sunday. I rarely go on Friday, and, since the convention is always held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, it runs on that Monday as well. I’ve attended once on a Monday as I recall.

One reason I didn’t go back Sunday was out of concern for the snowy weather predicted for that day. The other was the fact that I was likely to get barely enough photos to make a single gallery — as was the case on the arguably busier Saturday. Typically, I take enough photos for two to three galleries on a Saturday at Arisia. And since my break point for when to split up a block of photos into multiple galleries is 120 or above, that means each gallery is at least 60 images or more. This gallery linked below is just 52 images. From 6.5 hours of attendance.

Arisia’s attendance number have been dwindling since a peak of 4,299 actual attendees in 2017, according to the Arisia website. This year’s figures aren’t yet available, but last year the convention reported a total attendance of 1,675. It’s hard to say how this year’s attendance numbers will compare, because the hotel space was different than usual, but I would guess the numbers will be down again. About that hotel space…

At the end of last year’s convention, Arisia announced that it would not be able to return to its usual location of the Westin Waterfront in South Boston because of a scheduling conflict, and asked for input from people if it should change dates but stay at the Westin or keep the MLK Day dates and move hotels. The latter choice won out and this year Arisia was at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge-Boston — the ziggurat hotel on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, for our local readers. The interior public space available for the con to use was much smaller than at the Westin, making for a much more crowded feel, even though the actual number of attendees was seemingly lower than last year. I had to relocate late morning because the line for the cafe extended directly in front of me.

About the hotel, part deux… I took a Lyft from my home to the Hyatt, and my driver was curious about what I was doing. I explained Nerd Caliber, the convention and all that, and at one point he asked, “Is there another convention this weekend at their old hotel?”

“I don’t know, but they did say they had a schedule conflict,” I replied.

“Yeah, I picked up a couple people there last night, dressed in those … furry costumes?”

I knew the furry convention Anthro New England was around this time of year, but imagine my surprise when, later in the day, a cosplayer I was talking with confirmed it — Anthro New England was this past weekend at the Westin. In fact, its website already has the 2026 dates up — MLK Jr. Day weekend at the Westin again.

How did Arisia lose its traditional home base and date to Anthro New England? Well, it might have something to do with the fact that the decade-old ANE lists 2024 attendance numbers of “4,400+” — more than Arisia’s peak in 2017. If ANE can book more panel rooms and guarantee a larger block of attendee room registrations than Arisia, of course the Westin is going to go with that convention over Arisia.

Since 2018, Arisa has been struggling with a series of problems, both self-inflicted and external. In that year, the convention was rocked by a scandal about how it failed to adequately handle sexual assault allegations against volunteers and even high-ranking staffers, over the course of years. Major changes swept through the organization, but then it screwed up a deadline for telling the Westin that it was going to relocate due to a strike against the hotel chain’s parent and lost a judgement for contract violation that cost around $125,000.

Arisia seemed to be on a recovery track in 2020, but just six weeks after the convention that year — well, we all know what happened to the entire globe. And while I applaud its decision to do so, keeping a mask mandate in place for all attendees in 2025 must have had a negative effect on attendance.

Ultimately, I hope Arisia survives and even rebounds. It is unique in its mix of literature-focused fandom and more pop-focused cosplay. But it is now very possible that the past five years may have doomed it.

Cosplayers in this gallery include Workmaship award winner Colonial Armory, below, Best In Class Masters winners in the Masquerade caniseeurmanager, above at left, and inevitablebetrayal, pandanopants, anyajupiter, sideeyebrigade, Nerdcred Cosplay, nolightzzcosplay, odd.rolls, deerprincesscosplay, and more.

We now use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries and will post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This will allow us to give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.

To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.

If you like our work and want to show your appreciation, feel free to tip us at Ko-fi or become a patron on Patreon.

Also, High-res images for sale is back!

If you are pictured in any of our galleries and want the high-resolution (3200 pixels at its widest by 300dpi) download for yourself, we can make it available via a private Smugmug link, for $10 per image. Just send an email to editor AT nerdcaliber.com. Currently limited to only photos taken by FirstPerson Shooter (aka Rodney Brown).