Animefest in Brno is a big Czech festival of anime and Asian culture. It started in 2004 and it’s been running for 20 years now, excluding Covid lockdowns. Through the years it grew from a small fan made event into a big festival full of entertainment.

This year it held place in Brno Exhibition grounds and lasted for 3 whole days from 24.05. to 26.05. The program included lectures about Asian culture, cosplay shows, dance and martial arts performances, anime screenings, and plenty of places to buy anime or Asian themed merchandise and food. The program was so rich, that multiple events was going on at the same time, and visitors would choose their programme based on their preferences. Animefest crew prepared a mobile application for that purposes, so the audience would know what is happening every moment of the festival. Estimated number of visitors through all 3 days was over 35000 people.

It’s a tradition that the ambassador of Japan in Czech Republic himself joins the opening of the festival wearing a cosplay costume. Even this year new ambassador decided to preserve the tradition, and at the opening ceremony he was dressed as a character from a popular anime title. The opening show included a performance with dancers. Also it was announced that this is the first year when local cosplay contest becomes official qualification contest for the worldwide cosplay contest. This year’s winner will go to Japan to compete with the world’s best cosplayers. It was definitely entertaining to see that not only contestants was wearing cosplay at the festival. It seemed that nearly half of the people visiting the Brno Exhibition grounds these 3 days were having at least some sort of costume. The atmosphere was totally magical and most of the visitors were having fun, taking photos with each other in costumes, guessing which characters was cosplayed.

For the curious minds there were over 60 lectures and workshops over different topics related to Asian culture, anime, movies, video games, cosplay, and other. Even if a visitor wasn’t interested in lectures, workshops, shows and screenings, they could easily spend a whole day (or more!) in other activities, offered on a festival. One option was definitely browsing different merchandise, such as plushies, bags, t-shirts, jewellery, action figures and games, both from the big selling companies and small independent artists. The other option was to play games in board games section, arcade machines, VR, LAN or other. And for the lovers of good food there were plenty of options to try, from Asian fast food to dried crickets.

For more information visit Animefest.