Animazement returns to downtown Raleigh for Memorial Day weekend

Animazement brought a dense crowd of anime fans, cosplayers, gamers and cultural enthusiasts back to downtown Raleigh for a Memorial Day weekend that centered on the Raleigh Convention Center, with a Thursday, May 21 setup day and public convention days running Friday through Sunday, May 22-24.

The biggest visible impact landed on the blocks around Fayetteville Street and South Salisbury Street, where the convention’s hotel demand and foot traffic spilled beyond the event floor. Animazement named the Raleigh Marriott City Center, across Fayetteville Street from the convention center, as its official hotel for 2026 and said it arranged additional discounted hotel blocks, a setup that usually pushes more activity into nearby restaurants, bars and storefronts as attendees move between panels, concerts and evening gatherings.

Animazement describes itself as Raleigh’s “premier Japanese animation and culture convention,” and its programming stretched well beyond cosplay and merchandise. The event included concerts, educational panels, limited merchandise, unique artwork and more, while the 2026 guest list featured voice actors Hiroaki Hirata, Toshio Furukawa, Shino Kakinuma, Sarah Wiedenheft, Aaron Dismuke and Lisa Ortiz, along with music and cultural guests.

The convention has deep roots in Wake County. Animazement’s history page says it began in 1997, when Triangle Area Anime Society, the North Carolina State University student-led anime club, staged a 36-Hour Anime Marathon that drew more than 200 fans from across North Carolina. Other historical references place the convention’s opening in 1998 and its move to the Raleigh Convention Center in 2009, showing how long it has been part of downtown’s event calendar.

For Raleigh, the return was also a reminder of the economic weight of recurring conventions. The Raleigh Convention Center says it has welcomed more than 6.5 million guests and generated more than $963 million in economic impact since opening in 2008. It says it hosted 163 events over 332 event days in the past year, drawing 379,431 guests, numbers that help explain why a single weekend convention can still give downtown a meaningful boost.