MCM London - October 2026
With the wedding slowly getting closer and closer, I really didn't intend to go to MCM again this year. However, with the announcement that Travis Baldree was attending I scraped the money together to fly over for a couple of days.
Storm Boelo came thundering across the UK and Ireland as I set out to travel. Given I've spent the last year trying to get back to flying - and stuffing myself with Xanax to get through those flights - I wasn't ecstatic to be hearing about high winds, delayed flights and go-arounds at Heathrow. Thankfully, especially since I couldn't find my Xanax, I seemed to get away with flying during some of the breaks in the storm.
My itinerary for this trip is probable the lightest I've had in London in many years. I'm not sure if this is because of a lack of interesting things to do or if I'm just feeling a little bit unmotivated. Work has not been very energising recently and I think I was quite content to spend my evenings in London just lazing around.
The convention itself was very busy. MCM London always sells most of their tickets in advance of the day but this time it was notable that the show was completely sold out before doors opened on Friday. In the 15+ years I've attended, I don't think I've ever seen them sell out all 3 days in advance of the show. I suppose having the cast of Critical Role, Daredevil and Resident Evil along with the likes of Rick Riordan and Veronica Roth created a bit of a fervour for tickets. Genuinely the line-up was excellent and was the kind of list I had hoped that Reedpop would attract when they bought the event years ago.
Having met the cast of Critical Role before, I wasn't interested in lining up for half a day to meet one or two of them again. I was excited about the Resident Evil cast - particularly Leon - but that ended up a bit of a dud. His line was insanely overcrowded all three days and I think it was poorly managed. Nick (Leon's VA) was late to his sessions and, even when the queue was clearly longer than he had time for, staff didn't cut the line off. I ultimately got a refund for my signing and decided to focus on enjoying the show and meeting other guests.
Travis Baldree, author of Legends & Lattés, was the headline guest for me. His books fill me with such warmth and I was delighted to get all of my books signed along with some thematically appropriate Magic the Gathering cards. Something that I really admire about Travis is the breadth of his creative endeavours. He worked on Torchlight, writes cozy fantasy and also reads for the audiobooks. I mentioned to him that he did a wonderful job on the audiobooks, and he said he prefers to do them than try to teach a narrator how to pronounce his character names.
It was also really cool to meet Young Maylay who voiced CJ in GTA San Andreas 22 years ago... I am rapidly turning to dust. Maylay was incredibly nice and it was cool to meet an actor from the PS2 era. MCM often relies heavily on the flavour of the month so it's cool to see the likes of CJ or older Lara Croft actors attending the event.
Speaking of flavour of the month, Richard Summers-Calvert was a very last-minute addition to the guest list. He's the voice of the galactic racing champion Biddy Blas and is an absolute gem of a human being. Wrestler, actor and all-around handsome man, Richard stood out as being incredibly humble and just great fun. There was a lady cosplaying as Biddy in front of me. Her costume was one of those horrible rubber alligator masks and a skateboard helmet just slapped on top of it. It was honestly brilliant and the helmet falling off her head every time she tried to adjust her mouth (the eye holes were inside it) just made it so comical. What a legend she is for throwing that cosplay together on such short notice!
Scrib Doooooon
On Saturday night I went to see Avenue Q. Similarly to when we went to see the Book of Mormon, I didn't have much of an idea of what to expect going in. All I knew was there were puppets involved. The show is wonderful though. It's full of heart but also has that similar vulgarity that the Book of Mormon does. It's super fun and full of laughs. I highly highly recommend it.
View from my Seat
Nintendo and Square both had presences but I wasn't too interested in the wait to see the Final Fantasy presentation. It was a 15 minute experience so the queue moved really slowly and I haven't finished Rebirth yet so didn't want too many spoilers. Bandai had Xenoverse 3 and Rogue Orbit playable and both seem really cool. I'm particularly interested in Rogue Orbit, I would love a really good Gundam game.
A lovely Ginny commission
Of course, the majority of my time at the con was spent shopping the exhibitors and artist alley. I loved that custom Pokémon cards have become such a big thing in the Artist Alley as the art that those artists produce is so wonderful. I have way too many art prints from all the years of attending so the cards are a great way to support artists and sit so nicely in my binder. Other particular good pickups were the DS Ni No Kuni collector's edition and Absolute Batman Volume 1 which was an absolutely amazing read on the plane home.
Overall this hasn't stood out as my favourite convention experience of recent years but I did have a good time overall and it is amazing that I flew solo without Xana. We take the little wins!
Haul photos