Signs ups for the Masquerade are OPEN UNTIL 10PM Monday 16th February*
The Cosplay Masquerade is your opportunity to strut your stuff on a stage before your fellow fans. Inspire the audience with your craftsmanship, your creativity, or both! Show your work with pride and get some snazzy photos pulling your best poses while doing so. No experience is necessary. Whether your cosplay is bought or made, from anime or comics, in a group or flying solo, all are welcome here.
If you anticipate
needing any help getting your costume or yourself to the stage, let us
know in the extra requirements section.
For HaruhiCon we're introducing the Cosplay-Up-Close Prize and Judging Experience. Like HotaruCon we want to keep our Masquerade as inclusive, friendly and fun as possible but we know some of you put a lot of effort into your craft so we want to recognise that too. This prize is exclusively available to entrants who have made 80%+ of their Cosplay. If you would like to be considerred let us know in the 'What are you most proud of on your cosplay?' section. Entrants for Cosplay-Up-Close will be allocated a judging slot in a room seperate from the green room, it is mandatory to attend your judging slot to be considered. The Cosplay-Up-Close judging aims to give you the experience of being judged as if this were a big cosplay competition but in a friendly environment with our experienced judges Tabby, Mariam and Bex. If you've never been in front of a judging panel, this is your opportunity to try. Entering for Cosplay-Up-Close does not exclude you from any of the other prizes the judges may award.
The Masquerade will be on Saturday late afternoon. All entrants will need to assemble in the Masquerade Green Room that will be open an hour before the show. The green room is attended by a gopher and will remain open before, and during the show with chairs, water, mini cosplay repair kit and places to store your bags while you're doing your thing. The Masquerade and Cabaret show briefing/tech check Saturday morning is mandatory so we can check you in (you don't have to be in your show outfit though), take you through the set up, tech check and make sure we have your details right. If you need to make any last-minute changes, this is your time to let us know! If you can't make the briefing because you're running a panel, manning your vendor pitch, volunteering at another part of the convention or for any other reason, just let us know asap and we'll work something out.
We like to think of our Cosplay Masquerade as non-competitive but our judges have the discretion to award prizes for things that stood out to them. That may be something about your costume, your stage presence, your act, it could be anything.
You can enter both the Cosplay Masquerade and the Cherry Cabaret if you wish.
Confetti and bubbles are strictly prohibited.
When planning your act please keep in mind others will use the stage
after you so don't drop anything that can't be easily picked up. We'll
have volunteers on hand to help you set up and take down, you'll never be
on your own, just let us know what support you need.
Please note that while we’d love to accommodate everyone, not all applications can be guaranteed a place, as we aim to keep sign-ups as accessible as possible. With this in mind the HaruhiCon sign ups are going to be a lottery system. If we have an excess of applicants that we cannot fit into the timing of the show all entrants will be enterred into a lottery. Priority for show order will be given to those with accessibility needs with or without their costume.
Signs ups for the Masquerade are OPEN UNTIL 10PM Monday 16th February*