For three days at the end of September the Salt Palace becomes something else entirely. Hundreds of vendor tables, a hall of artists, celebrity photo lines, panels running in parallel all day, and several thousand people in costume ranging from a T-shirt with ears on it to something that took nine months and a sewing machine.
FanX runs 24 to 26 September 2026, which is next week: Thursday one in the afternoon to nine at night, then Friday and Saturday eight in the morning to nine at night.
It is forty-five minutes from Provo, a great many Utah Valley households have never been, and the reasons people give for not going — too expensive, too crowded, not really my thing — are all addressable if you know which day to pick and what the money actually goes on.
What FanX is, and where it came from
FanX is Utah's big multi-genre pop culture convention: comics, film and television, science fiction and fantasy, anime, gaming and cosplay, all in one building.
It started in 2013 as Salt Lake Comic Con, run by Dan Farr Productions, and it grew unusually fast — within a few years it was drawing crowds well into six figures, which for a state this size is remarkable and says something about the market that was sitting here unserved. It was renamed FanX after a trademark dispute over the words "comic con," which is the sort of detail that explains a name nobody can quite parse.
What it is now is a large, professionally run regional convention with a substantial celebrity guest program, a serious artist and vendor hall, and a panel program that spans everything from screen fandom to writing craft.
Which day to pick, which matters more than anything else
This is the decision that determines whether you enjoy yourself, and most people get it wrong by defaulting to Saturday.
Thursday is a half day, one in the afternoon to nine at night, and it is the best value in the building. The hall is walkable. Queues are short. Exhibitors and artists have energy and will actually talk to you. If you have never been to a convention, or you are bringing children, or you want to look at the art without being carried along by a crowd, this is the day. It is also typically the cheapest.
Friday is a full day and busy, and it is the compromise option. The programming is full, the hall is properly alive, and the crowd is manageable in the morning and not in the afternoon.
Saturday is the big one. The largest crowd, the highest ticket price, the best cosplay by a distance, the fullest program — and queues that will eat your afternoon. Saturday is the right choice if the spectacle is what you came for, and the wrong choice for almost every other reason.
A multi-day pass brings the per-day cost down and is the right answer if you genuinely intend to use it. Most people who buy three days use two.
The money, honestly
The ticket is the first number and not the largest one, and this is where first-timers get caught.
Admission is priced by day, cheapest on Thursday and dearest on Saturday, with multi-day passes discounting the per-day rate. Buy from the convention's own ticket page — resale listings for a convention pass are a way to pay more for the same wristband.
Photo opportunities and autographs are separate, and they are the real budget. These are sold per guest, and for a well-known name a single photograph or signature can cost as much as the day ticket or more. A family that walks in having budgeted for admission alone and then discovers that the one person their child wanted to meet costs another substantial sum per person is having a bad conversation in a corridor. Decide this before you go.
The vendor hall is very good at its job. Original art, prints, books, dice, models, clothing and an enormous quantity of things you did not know you wanted. Setting a number before you walk in is not being a killjoy; it is the difference between a treat and a regret.
Food and parking add up faster than people expect at a downtown convention center on a busy weekend.
The workable frame: decide your all-in number for the day, then work backwards. Admission, plus one paid experience if there is one you truly want, plus a hall budget, plus food. If the total is uncomfortable, go on Thursday, skip the paid experience and spend it in the artist hall instead — which is, for a lot of people, the better day anyway.
Bringing children
This can be one of the best days of a child's year or a two-hundred-dollar meltdown, and the variable is you.
What works in its favor. Children in costume are treated wonderfully — cosplayers will stop, pose, stay in character and make a seven-year-old's month. The visual density of the place is genuinely magical at that age. There is usually family-oriented programming. And a child who reads, or draws, meeting an artist at a table and watching them work is a memory that lasts.
What works against it. It is loud. It is crowded to the point of being physically difficult on Friday and Saturday afternoons. It is long. And everything inside costs money, in a building where a child can see all of it.
The version that works:
- Thursday. Always Thursday with children.
- Four hours, not eight. Arrive at one, leave by five, before the evening crowd and before the crash.
- One thing they actually want, agreed in the car, with a budget attached.
- Food and water from home, in a bag, because queueing for expensive food with a hungry child at a convention is its own punishment.
- A meeting point, chosen the moment you walk in, and a plan if anybody gets separated. This is a building with thousands of people in it and a lot of tall adults.
- Ear defenders for a sensitive child. Panels and the hall are loud, and this is a cheap fix for the single most common reason a child wants to leave.
- Leave while it is still good. The most common parental error at any convention is one more hour.
Older children and teenagers are a different proposition entirely and generally want the opposite: the full Saturday, the cosplay, the queue for the thing. That is a legitimate day out and worth its own budget conversation.
Cosplay, and the etiquette that matters
Most attendees are not in costume and nobody minds. If you want to try it, this is a forgiving crowd — effort counts for far more than accuracy, homemade is respected, and a simple recognizable costume gets a warmer reception than a technically superior one nobody knows.
Three rules that everybody who goes regularly knows and first-timers sometimes do not.
Ask before you photograph somebody. Every time. Nearly everyone says yes, and the asking is the point.
Ask before touching a costume, and expect the answer to be no. A great deal of work goes into these and a lot of them are fragile.
A costume is not consent to anything. This is stated in every convention's code of conduct for good reason, and FanX is no exception.
Practically: comfortable shoes underneath whatever you are wearing, water, and a plan for where to put the helmet when you want to eat.
What is actually in the building, beyond the celebrities
The celebrity guest list is what gets the news coverage and it is the smallest part of the floor space. Four other things fill the building, and three of them are free once you are inside.
The artist area. Rows of tables where illustrators, comic artists and printmakers sit with their own work, frequently drawing while you watch. This is the part of any convention that most rewards slow walking, and it is where the money you spend goes directly to the person who made the thing. Original pages, prints, commissions. Talking to an artist about their process costs nothing and they are generally delighted to be asked.
The vendor hall. Retail, at volume — books, models, dice, clothing, props, collectibles, games. Some of it is the same stock you would find online and some of it is genuinely hard to find anywhere else. The specialist stalls are the ones worth your time.
The panel program. Rooms running in parallel all day, on everything from a specific show to the craft of writing to the mechanics of prop-making. Panels are included with admission, which makes them the best value in the building and the most consistently under-attended thing at any convention. If a queue is forming for something with a famous name on it, the room next door frequently has ten people in it and somebody excellent talking.
The gaming space. Tabletop and video gaming, usually with open tables, demo games and organized play. For a certain kind of attendee this is the whole convention and they never see the main hall at all.
And the corridors, which are not a joke. At a convention this size, a meaningful share of what people remember happens in the space between rooms: the costume you stop to photograph, the queue conversation, the person who recognizes your shirt. Building slack into the day is not wasted time; it is where the day actually happens.
Accessibility, and managing a long day in a large building
A convention center is a hard environment for a lot of people, and the fixes are mostly practical.
Distance. The Salt Palace is very large and a full day at a convention is several miles of walking on hard floor. This is the single most underestimated physical demand of the day. Comfortable shoes are not a style question.
Seating is scarce. Outside the panel rooms there is very little of it, and what exists fills. Anybody who needs to sit regularly should plan their day around panels, which are the only reliable seats in the building, and should treat a panel as a rest as much as a program item.
Noise and crowding. It is loud and it is dense, and Friday and Saturday afternoons are the peak of both. Ear defenders help. So does the simple tactic of stepping out of the hall for twenty minutes rather than pushing through.
Mobility. The building is accessible and the crowd is generally considerate, but a crowded hall is a crowded hall, and a wheelchair or a pushchair moves far better on Thursday than on Saturday — another argument for the quiet day.
Food and water. Convention food is expensive and the queues are long at the obvious times. Eating at an odd hour, or bringing what you can, solves both.
A charged phone and a backup battery. The whole day runs on it: tickets, schedule, meeting points, photographs. Somebody in every group runs out by four.
Take the train
This is the strongest single piece of advice on this page for a Utah Valley reader.
Downtown Salt Lake parking during a convention weekend is expensive, fills early, and still leaves you walking at the end of the night. FrontRunner from Provo, Orem, Vineyard, American Fork or Lehi runs into Salt Lake Central, and the Salt Palace is a short walk or a single light-rail stop from there. You arrive rested, you do not drive home tired, and the whole cost question changes.
The trap, and it catches people every year: the last southbound train is earlier than the convention is. A hall that runs to nine at night and a rail timetable built for commuters are not the same clock. Check the last train before you commit to the car-free version, and if you want the full evening, either drive or plan a different way home. Our guide to FrontRunner from Provo covers the fares and the timetable in detail.
Costumes on the train, incidentally, are entirely normal in the week of the convention, and half the carriage will be going to the same place.
The part Utah Valley people should care about most
If you come for the actors, you will have a good time. If you come for the writing, you may find the best value in the building — and this is the part that connects most directly to where you live.
Utah Valley produces an unusual amount of science fiction and fantasy. There is a real center of gravity around BYU for the writing and teaching of it, a dense local community of authors, editors and illustrators, and a publishing and podcasting ecosystem that is disproportionate for a county this size. A number of the writers on the FanX program are not visiting Utah; they live here.
The consequence is that the writing-and-publishing side of the program — craft panels, agent and editor sessions, author signings — is frequently staffed by people at the top of their field who happen to be your neighbors, and it costs nothing beyond the admission ticket. For anyone who writes, or wants to, that is the single best reason to buy a Thursday pass.
Our guides to bookstores in Provo and Orem and to BYU's campus cover the year-round version of the same scene.
If you have never been to a convention at all
A few things that are obvious to regulars and genuinely disorienting the first time.
Nobody is judging your level of knowledge. The stereotype of a gatekeeping crowd is largely a myth at a general-audience convention like this one. People are there because they like something and they are pleased when somebody asks about it.
You do not need a plan for every hour. The instinct is to schedule tightly because the program is enormous. Resist it. Two or three fixed points and a lot of drift is the format that works.
The program changes. Rooms move, times shift, guests cancel. Check the schedule on the day rather than relying on what you screenshotted a week earlier.
Buy the art when you see it. Artists sell out of specific prints, and the table you meant to come back to on the way out is frequently sold down by then. This is the one regret people report most consistently.
You will be tired in a way that surprises you. Eight hours of noise, crowd and stimulation is genuinely draining even if you have been sitting in panels. Plan the evening accordingly, and do not schedule anything for straight afterwards.
The short version
Go on Thursday. Buy from the convention, not from a reseller. Budget for the extras, because the autographs and photos are where the real money is. Take FrontRunner and check the last train home. With children: four hours, one thing, snacks in a bag, and leave while everybody is still enjoying it. Ask before you photograph anybody.
Related Guides
- The Wasatch Front's annual events, from Provo — the full year of things worth the drive
- FrontRunner from Provo — fares, timetable and the last-train trap
- A Salt Lake City day trip from Provo
- Bookstores in Provo and Orem — the year-round version
- Arcades in Provo and Orem — for the gaming half of the same interest
- Festivals and celebrations in Utah Valley
- Salt Lake and beyond
Dates, hours, ticket prices and the guest list are set by the organizers and change every year, and guest appearances are subject to cancellation. Everything here was checked against the convention's own published information on 17 September 2026. Confirm at the convention's own site before you buy.
Frequently Asked Questions
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