This year marks the 20th anniversary of New York Comic Con, the mega convention held in October at New York City’s Jacob Javits Convention Center. If ReedPop, the organizers of NYCC, has its wish, this year’s NYCC will be the most attended NYCC in its 20 year history…and fans will be paying more money than ever to attend. ReedPop recently announced 2026 NYCC ticket prices, leaving many fans with a feeling of sticker shock.
NYCC prices are once again rising, but by how much?
Comparing ticket prices for NYCC is more difficult this year than in past years. You’ll notice the odd dollar amounts for this year’s tickets. That’s because NYCC is listing this year’s tickets with fees and taxes built into the price. This is due to NY state’s law requiring ticket sellers to include all fees up front. This has been law in NY since 2022, so it’s strange that ReedPop has been able to avoid listing fees ahead of time in the years between 2023 and 2026. The fees and taxes were there in past years, but NYCC was able to get away with not tacking them on until the end of the transaction.
Let’s compare prices from 2025 to 2026.
TICKET TYPE
2025 LISTED PRICE
2025 ACTUAL PRICE
2026 ACTUAL PRICE
% ACTUAL PRICE CHANGE SINCE ’25
4-DAY
$260.00
$287.07
$321.17
11.88%
THURSDAY
$80
$91.10
$93.09
2.18%
FRIDAY
$80
$91.10
$98.53
8.16%
SATURDAY
$80
$91.10
$109.42
20.11%
SUNDAY
$80
$91.10
$98.53
8.16%
VIP
$800
$875
$990.75
13.23%
SUNDAY KIDS
$30
$36.66
$49.54
35.13%
While the sticker shock of the near $1,000 VIP ticket has garnered the most attention since prices were announced, you can see in the chart above that the biggest increases percentage wise are in the Sunday Kids ticket and the Saturday ticket. Not only is this a dramatic jump in the cost of the Kids ticket, but it marks the first real increase in price over the $30 base fee for that ticket in over two years. In 2024, the Sunday Kids ticket also had a base price of $30, and the in 2023, it had a listed price of $25. At $50 per child, many children may be staying home on Sunday this year.
While it didn’t have as big a percentage price increase as Saturday and Sunday Kids, the $990.75 VIP ticket is worth mentioning. It has nearly doubled in price in two years. The VIP ticket had a listed priced of $575 ($625 actual) in 2024 before jumping to $800 ($875 actual) last year. That’s an increase of 58.5% in only two years.
The lone new discount is the expansion of the Kids ticket. Previously, Sunday was the only day that parents could buy a discounted ticket to NYCC for their child. But this year marks the introduction of the Thursday Kids ticket for $33.21. At that price, it’s slightly cheaper than the Sunday Kids ticket was last year. Kids tickets are limited to kids aged 6-12. If you have a teenager, they have to pay full price to get into NYCC. Kids under 5 get in free. All children must be accompanied by a paying a adult.
Clearly, NYCC is banking on people looking at these new prices and still saying shut up and take my money. That said, anyone who monitored ticket sales last year saw that NYCC wasn’t the immediate sell out it was in previous years. Yes, VIP tickets still sold out instantly. But other ticket types took longer to sell through. Most ticket types sold out in days, not hours, with some days available for weeks after they first went on sale. At what point do fans start asking if NYCC is worth the price of getting in the front door?
