From Nov. 7 to 9, the halls of Mesquite Event Center were bursting with over 2,000 Sonic fans cosplaying, clashing in intense video game tournaments and moshing to live music at the 2025 Sonic Expo.
Sonic Expo is a three-day fan convention dedicated to showcasing content creators, musicians, artists and game developers who love and are inspired by the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. This year’s iteration of the expo attracted around 2,200 attendees, the most people to have attended in the convention’s seven-year lifespan. According to the programming coordinator of Sonic Expo, a UTD alum who goes by the screen name Vic, the expo has grown significantly since its humble origins as a local Sonic-themed arts festival.
“Sonic Expo was called Chaos Creators,” Vic said. “It was a small arts festival here in Dallas. It first started out as just a simple art meet up between Sonic fans, but it slowly grew more and more, and every year it’s been getting bigger and bigger to what it is today.”
The theme for the event was “Neo Mobius,” a futuristic spin on the Sonic the Hedgehog aesthetic created by the organizers specifically for the convention. All of the event badges, maps and standees scattered about the expo were adorned with the theme’s sci-fi fan renditions of the Sonic the Hedgehog cast. Once in the event hall, attendees could choose to visit a number of different attractions. In the main hall and the panel room were the panels, which featured various speakers discussing topics such as analyzing the relationship between the Sonic franchise and the neurodivergent community; evaluating the cultural accuracy of songs from a globe-trotting Sonic game; creating a character bible for fan-favorite character Shadow the Hedgehog; and an introduction to creating Sonic cosplays.
Attendees also had the opportunity to visit their favorite Sonic artists and voice actors in the exhibition hall. The hall was filled with vendors selling their wares, peddling everything from stickers and charms to cosplay props and tattoos. The side wall was lined by official Sonic the Hedgehog comic artists selling prints and signed editions of their work. The back of the hall had a wide array of current and former voice actors who had worked on the Sonic franchise signing merchandise and taking photos with excited fans. Animation and games freshman Clara Wakefield, a Sonic fan artist cosplaying at the event, said she was ecstatic about the variety of other artists at the event.
“It’s just amazing to see so many artists come together, especially artists you recognize from the Internet and from the comics and stuff and get art and stuff [from them],” Wakefield said.
The expo also featured a game room where attendees could chill out and play a variety of games. There were various consoles, such as a Sega Genesis, a Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo GameCubes where attendees could play Sonic games with friends in addition to tables of gaming PCs in case they wanted to play solo. Various fangame and indie game developers were tabling around the hall, giving passersby the opportunity to play early builds of their game. Tournaments were held for the recently released “Sonic Racing: Crossworlds” and the in-development “Sonic Riders Tournament Edition,” with dozens of gamers vying for the chance to prove themselves as the best at each game. According to Chaomix, a prominent Sonic content creator and director of featured indie game “Star Garden,” Sonic Expo gives indie game developers an opportunity to connect with an audience who might enjoy their games.
“We chose this event because our game is very inspired by Sonic, so we think that it makes sense to bring it here,” Chaomix said. “One of [our] biggest inspirations is the ‘Chao Garden’ [from ‘Sonic Adventure’] … [and] we hear a lot of people talk about the ‘Chao Garden’ and how they want it back, and we kind of have an answer for that now with our demo … [It’s] in a state where we can show it off and get people excited for what’s to come.”
One of the main draws of the convention was the live music. In addition to the constant stream of musicians playing renditions of popular Sonic tunes in the music hall, the nights of the convention featured a rave and a concert that drew shoulder-to-shoulder crowds feverishly awaiting the live performances. The rave and concert featured both musicians playing fan remixes of Sonic songs and artists featured on official soundtracks of Sonic games playing the songs they wrote for the franchise. At the rave, the night burnt away as artists blasted high energy sets with frenetic tunes and eclectic visuals to the light of kinetic neon spotlights. Attendees flowed in and out of dance circles, ran conga lines and cheered to the music up until the final set came to an end.
The expo was overflowing with hundreds of cosplayers dressed up as their favorite Sonic the Hedgehog character, with attendees waltzing through the convention center hallways wearing everything from closet cosplays of series favorites to intricate hand-sewn regalia of obscure series one-offs. The final day of the expo featured a cosplay competition where dozens of cosplayers came together to compete for the title of best Sonic cosplayer. Shire Bear, the victor of the cosplay competition, said cosplaying heightens the experience of going to a fan convention.
“I love to learn how to do things,” Shire Bear said. “I love to sew. I love to make things. I like to take a pile of fabric and turn it into something real … [And] wearing a costume definitely adds to the [convention] experience. It makes it a little more fun.”
Even with all the attractions and activities, animation and games sophomore Kenneth Maithya said his favorite part of the expo was getting to talk to other members of the Sonic the Hedgehog fan community.
“I was looking on my phone and I saw a Kickstarter for this Sonic Expo thing,” Maithya said. “The fact that an opportunity like this was happening, I couldn’t not go. So I got my ticket … [And] it was some of the best moments of my entire year, to be honest. It kind of changed my life in terms of me being a part of fan culture and being a fan … Just on that scale of friendship, especially, I didn’t have a lot of friends that I could talk about Sonic with, so that was something that rekindled my love for Sonic and being a Sonic fan — because that’s really what Sonic Expo did to me. It made me enjoy being a Sonic fan.”
