Japan’s Biggest Cosplay Event Returns After 5 Years

The organizers of Osaka’s Nippombashi Street Festa, which they promote as “Japan’s biggest cosplay event,” announced on Tuesday that the event will return in 2024, for the first time in five years. The event will run on May 12.

The event was canceled completely in 2020 due to concerns over the outbreak of COVID-19. It was then canceled in 2021, 2022, and 2023.

The annual parade runs Nippombashi’s Den Den Town area (Osaka’s shopping district known for anime, game, and manga goods, similar to Tokyo’s Akihabara). Over 200,000 people attend the outdoor event every year.

ANN covered the event in 2016, 2017, and 2018. The year 2020 marked the second cancellation in the event’s history; the parade was cancelled after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. An unexploded World War II-era bomb was excavated at a construction site next to the parade route in 2015, just five days before that year’s Nippombashi Street Festa, but the parade went on as scheduled that year.

Source: Nippombashi Street Festa via Hachima Kikō