The 10th edition of Comic Con Portugal kicks off on Thursday with ten stages at Exponor, in Matosinhos, and for four days promises entertainment with a capacity for 160,000 people, the organization announced today.
“It’s ten years and ten stages” and the expectation is that the Comic Con Portugal 2024 venue will have the capacity to safely welcome 160,000 people over the four days of the event at the Exponor venue in Matosinhos, in the district of Porto, said the executive director of Comic Con Portugal, Paulo Rocha Cardoso, at a press conference.
According to Paulo Rocha Cardoso, the entire floor plan for the event has been designed so that everything that happens inside the venue is “an experience” and “has a message”, because the event celebrates 10 years of “many stories” and “many adventures”.
“We initially characterized the event with the motto ‘I just want to be a superhero’. All of us, when we were children, wanted to be Spider-man, all of us wanted to be Batman, all of us wanted to be the Ninja Turtles and then we grew up, but we often took the values and principles of those same characters into our daily lives,” he said.
For the executive director of Comic Con Portugal, this event has always been “challenging”.
With the motto “Be Whatever You Want”, Comic Con kicks off on Thursday at 12 noon and runs until March 24.
According to the event’s director, the line-up has not yet been finalized, but the presence of actors such as Raymond Lee, Anna Shaffer, Evanna Linch, Ed Westwick, André Lamoglia, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and Finn Jones stands out.
Asked by Lusa about the budget for this edition, Paulo Rocha Cardoso declined to talk about specific figures.
Until Sunday, Comic Con will feature panels on esports, video games, cinema, television, comics and other genres of pop culture.
In addition to actors, there will be many artists in Matosinhos, such as Miguelanxo Prado, Daniel Henriques, André Lima Araújo, Stan Sakai and Teresa Valero, as well as writers such as Stacey Halls, Samantha Shannon, Lucy Angel and A. R. Ruano, among many others.
Comic Con Portugal was held for the first time in 2013, at Exponor in Matosinhos, where the first four editions took place.
After signing an agreement with Oeiras City Council, the convention took place in 2018 at the Passeio Marítimo de Algés. The protocol was for three editions (2018, 2019 and 2020) and provided for the municipality to provide financial and logistical support of 330,000 euros per edition.
In 2020, the first year of the covid-19 pandemic, instead of a physical edition, the organization decided to hold a free online event. In 2021 and 2022, the event took place in Lisbon, but not in 2023.