Anime NYC expects 150,000 people and has added a Scholastic family zone
The convention runs August 20–23 at the Javits Center, with organizers projecting 150,000 attendees across the four days.
New for 2026 is a Family Zone presented by Scholastic — a dedicated area for younger fans and the parents accompanying them. Alongside it: a Destination Cosplay zone, a Japanese Food Hall, a PLAY.nyc gaming section, and the Otherworld Parade. On the music and internet-culture side, yama played a first East Coast concert and Club Ironmouse handled the VTuber showcase.
The exhibitor list reads like a full industry census: Aniplex, Shueisha, VIZ Media, Kodansha, Warner Bros. Japan, Bandai Namco Filmworks, Crunchyroll, GKIDS, HIDIVE, Yen Press, Penguin Random House and Scholastic. Netflix took the Thursday evening headline slot on the Main Stage and packed every announcement it had into one panel rather than spreading them across the weekend.
A Scholastic-branded family zone at an anime convention is the clearest available evidence that this stopped being a subculture some years ago and nobody circulated the memo.
Worth remembering that Anime NYC was launched in 2017 and drew around 20,000 people in its first year. The current figure is more than seven times that. Whatever the North American anime market is doing, it is not slowing down.