Four new cities have been added to the Comic Con India schedule this year, creating space for cosplayers from further corners of the country to join in the fandom fervour. With Pune, Kolkata and other cities already having held Cosplay 101 workshops ahead of the Comic Con events in the respective cities and Kochi having attracted cosplayers from all over the country in its maiden event alone, the upcoming Comic Con events and cosplay collectives can expect steady participation from fans in costume.
Comic Con hosts competitions for cosplay in two categories, solo and group, across its events, with on ground or online registrations depending on the city and organisers. Typical categories for cosplaying include comics or graphic novels, movie/TV or animation characters, anime or manga, sci-fi or fantasy and gaming characters. The participants are judged on craftsmanship, likeness to the character and attention to detail, and presentation of the character.
Craft of the Character
Prizes for cosplay events can range from anywhere between Rs 30,000 at Comic Con for state-level competitions, to the tune of Rs 1-2 lakh for national-level cosplay competitions. Apart from Comic Con, India saw another large-scale cosplay event take place last year in Hyderabad, endorsed by the ministry of information and broadcasting, organised in collaboration with other departments and private players. This, the WAVES Cosplay Championship was touted to be the biggest all-India cosplaying competition of the country. However, a repeat edition has not been announced for 2026 yet.
Mizoram has its own cosplay culture. A group of cosplayers started out as a small Facebook group, and in a matter of years snowballed into a significant community hosting cosplay events and competitions of their own. The group has now grown in size and is known as the Mizoram Cosplay Organisation (MCO) since 2023. They partner with government departments to join in on initiatives such as drives against drug abuse, among others. The last event held by the MCO was in 2024, the All India Cosplay Showdown, which attracted more than a hundred participants and gave away a prize of Rs 2 lakh. The Mizoram tourism department has partnered with the MCO, seeing it as a tourist attraction.
The cosplay fever is catching on, with the popularity of period dramas, anime content and fantasy fiction all rising by virtue of social media. Comic Con also declares the Indian Championship of Cosplay (ICC) winner every year, a crown coveted by serious cosplayers across the country.
Scaling of Fandom
About 150 enthusiasts turned up at the Cosplay 101 Workshop held by Comic Con in Kolkata recently, where attendees were taught about wig styling, prop priming and more such costume design skills. A similar workshop was held in Pune with over 120 in attendance. Reportedly, the footfall at the Pune Comic Con this year hit 25,000 attendees, while Chennai pulled about 500. However, all seven venues so far have drawn significant participation, with three more Comic Con events coming up this year.
Although the Kerala cosplay community got a platform in their home state to showcase their enthusiasm and skills for the first time this year, with Comic Con’s first ever event in the state being held in Kochi, the state has a history with cosplay. Kerala cosplayers boast four consecutive ICC wins from when they represented their state at the Bengaluru Comic Con. Kochi also hosted a workshop ahead of the event. The coming of Comic Con’s flagship event to the city was hugely welcomed by the fandom community of Kerala.
This year at the Bengaluru Comic Con, among the guest speakers was Hiro Kawamoto, the founding director of Ota Tokyo 2026, an immersive anime festival, where cosplay plays a big part. The Bengaluru event also had globally renowned cosplay duo Mioshi and Mamemao performing at the event (winners of the World Cosplay Summit 2024). The duo were also on the judging panel of the cosplay competition at Comic Con Bengaluru, to which Kawamoto had applied a twist. The cosplayers were to go a step further than doing a regular rampwalk for the judges, they would have to recreate scenes and fight sequences of their characters. Many other notable guests from the cosplaying world also graced the event.
From Optimus Prime to regional comic characters, Marvel superheroes, anime characters and fantasy fiction characters—you can be a human, a demon, a machine, an object or even an animal — cosplaying draws no lines or boundaries on the extent of imagination in a costume. Costume and makeup design are imperative skills for any cosplayer worth their salt, and that fact is gaining recognition with events and groups such as the aforementioned dotting the annual calendar more and more. Its role as a social tool for coming together and connecting over shared interests and literature too is being recognised. Clearly, cosplaying has graduated from a ‘nerdy hobby’ to an up and coming art form.