For one weekend in late October, the hangar bays of the Fargo Air Museum will trade propellers for cosplay. ValleyCon, the Fargo-Moorhead region's long-running science fiction and fantasy gathering, runs Friday, October 23 through Sunday, October 25, 2026, at 1609 19th Ave N in Fargo. The convention's organizers are billing it as the 51st anniversary edition, which makes it one of the older fan conventions in the upper Midwest, and older than most of the franchises its attendees will be dressed as.
The origin story is a good one, and the convention tells it on its own website. ValleyCon traces back to the Red River Science Fiction and Fantasy Club, known as R2SF2, which the club describes as having crawled out of the primordial ooze of 1970s fandom, out of the basements and into the public arena. The first incarnation was a local convention organized by Rudy Sigmund, described as the ersatz owner of a local comic book and collectible shop called the Fantasy Collector. That gathering was held at North Dakota State University in the fall of 1976, and it inspired the creation of the ValleyCon Association.
The first official convention, ValleyCon 1, was put together in a three-month sprint by the group's initial members, notably Bruce Rudd and Dan Hillstrom. It was held in March 1977 and was a success, bringing in new members and pushing the fledgling organization toward a second event. ValleyCon 2 followed in November 1977 and also went well, which set up what the club's own history calls the ill-fated Fabulous Film Night in 1978. The club is candid about that one, describing it as merely the first debacle in the organization's checkered history, though it taught some valuable lessons and instilled a certain conservatism in future planning. ValleyCon 3, in the fall of 1978, was another success and this time drew television coverage, even as the founding members dreamed of greater things.
Nearly five decades later, the convention is still running, and it has settled into a venue that suits its genre-blurring sensibility. The Fargo Air Museum is a nonprofit dedicated to promoting aviation through education, preservation and restoration, and it doubles as an event center that hosts galas, weddings and grad parties. Parking a comics and gaming convention among vintage aircraft is an unusual pairing, but a fitting one for a fandom that has always been happy to mix its references.
The 2026 guest list leans hard on nostalgia. John Ratzenberger is the headliner, best known for playing mail carrier Cliff Clavin on Cheers, a role the convention's own guest page describes with some affection as an overall pretentious blowhard known for outlandish stories of plausible half-truths, irrelevant trivia and ignorant misinformation. Tim Jacobus is the artist behind the original Goosebumps covers, 62 of them according to the convention, and has run Jacobus Studios for more than 35 years, producing well over 100 pieces of commercial and book art, including special edition books, calendars and promotional work for the R. L. Stine series. Andrew Bowen began in TV and commercials before landing the lead in Capcom's interactive game Fox Hunt and appearing on MADtv; he later moved into directing and producing, with festival recognition for films including Along the Way. For a generation of gamers he is also the voice of Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat. The convention has scheduled a Goosebumps trivia session ahead of Jacobus's Saturday panel and a Mortal Kombat trivia session ahead of Bowen's.
The guest roster extends beyond the marquee names. Cosplay guests Ryan Drury, the Witcher Safehouse and CarlyDoesCosplay are on the bill, along with artists including Dave Wheeler, Travis Bentley and Dylan Jacobson, a Midwestern comics writer and illustrator whose debut series is Champions. Panels, photo sessions and autographs run all weekend.
The programming is broader than a signing line. Laser tag opens at 8:30 Friday morning and runs into the evening. The opening ceremony is at 1 p.m. Friday on the main stage. Friday night brings a Night Quest at Kingpinz and Suite Shot and a Drink and Draw session, and the convention runs past midnight before closing out Friday. Saturday includes a Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament running from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., a live draw tournament, a furry parade photo op, and the cosplay contest, which is open to all ages. A Warhammer 40K tournament has its own dedicated pass for players who want to spend the weekend proving their strategy.
The vendor hall is the other center of gravity, packed with comics, exclusive collectibles, original art and memorabilia, and it closes at 7 p.m. Friday. Tickets are sold through the convention's own shop, with three-day passes for ages 14 and up, single-day passes, youth passes for ages 8 to 13, a family pass covering two adults and two youths, and a VIP weekender that adds early entry, reserved seating, convention merchandise, a free celebrity autograph and VIP entry to the Fargo Vampire Ball. Kids 7 and under get in free. The three-day and family passes also include Friday Night Quest and adult passes to the Vampire Ball, which is 18 and over.
There is something quietly remarkable about a fan convention in Fargo reaching its 51st edition. ValleyCon predates the modern comic-con boom by decades, and it survived the Fabulous Film Night, the checkered chapters and the long stretch of years when a sci-fi gathering in the Red River Valley was a genuinely niche proposition. In 2026 it will fill an aviation museum with cosplayers, tabletop generals and Goosebumps readers, which is roughly what Rudy Sigmund and the R2SF2 crowd were after in the first place, minus the aircraft.