Chicon 8 Adds Worldcon Bid Q&As

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Four cities have answered Chicon 8’s call for Future Worldcon Bid FAQs.

They are Seattle (2025), Cairo, Egypt (2026), Tel Aviv, Israel (2027), and Kampala, Uganda (2028).

Now there’s a fascinating prospect — back-to-back Worldcons in Egypt and Israel.  I’m just going to spend a moment grokking that.

Cairo — PharaohCon – is the new venue proposed by the former JeddiCon committee, which started out bidding to host the Worldcon in Saudi Arabia.

Here is Chicon 8’s list of known Worldcon bids, with links to the four questionnaires they’ve received.

2025

2026

2027

2028

2029

  • Dublin, Ireland

2031

  • Texas, USA

(*) While Chicon 8 hasn’t received a Q&A from them, the equivalent information can be found here: Los Angeles in 2026 Worldcon Bid.

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9 thoughts on “Chicon 8 Adds Worldcon Bid Q&As”

  1. A bid from the entire state of Texas? I’m impressed. The commute time from one’s hotel room to the dealer room will long indeed, won’t it?

  2. Mm-in the long term, Worldcons will become truly “world” as literacy/standards of living etc, begin to rise in non-“western” societies: thus allowing better educated persons there to start reading SF. And then their wanting later to explore this special genre of ours, with others, thru Cons -as opposed to just trying to scrape a living. If we remember, all the very early Worldcons were solely in the US, then Canada held one (and subsequent) ones and then London, Brighton and Glasgow (ditto). A little later, Heidelberg (Germany), The Hague (Netherlands) and Melbourne (Australia) joined the club. In more recent years, my own home city Dublin (Ireland), Wellington (N/Zealand tho this was sadly only virtual) and now Chengdu (China) have been added to the list. We should encourage this diversification but of course is it the ability of (mainly) local fen (and as always in Worldcons, supported by other, well-experienced con-running fans from abroad) in arranging such a large event, that is the decisive factor. And perhaps also, tho IMO this is a less important aspect, there is the attraction of visiting the host country itself – esp if it is a new location. Dublin (Ireland’s) candidature/win in 2019 and its fresh candidature now again in 2029 are relevant here. Coming myself from large involvement in Worldcon’s “little brother” (the annual Eurocons, going since 1972), one of the many factors here in gaining a Eurocon vote has been the success of the host area’s own internal NatSFCon. Some of this would apply also to newish Worldcon bids. And all new venues for Worldcons will always have a “can they actually run this” aspect. But in general, widening our annual Worldcon to truly earn its name, is a good thing. Best and “Be Seeing You” at Chicon 8.

  3. I’d go to Cairo. But I am on life’s lowest difficulty setting.
    Kampala? Not sure.

  4. There are several problems with the African bids. Cairo, Egypt,( I can see a hoax bid for Cairo, IL), in the future. The main one is the same as the one in Saudi Arabia, there are no hotels on the convention site. Everyday, one will have to get a taxi or other ride to the convention. No wondering back and forth to your room from the convention. Cairo, itself, is a tolerant, cosmopolitan city. Now we get to worse African problems
    One may disagree with Florida’s bad attitude towards those who are LGBTQ+ but that is just an attitude. Uganda brings it up to a very high level of horrible oppression. Let me quote Wikipedia on this “Both male and female homosexual activity is illegal in Uganda. Under the Penal Code, “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” between two males carries a potential penalty of life imprisonment.”
    Um, a capital crime in other words.
    How the hell do we deal with that? We don’t. We look for a different sub-Saharan African nation to have this in.

  5. And for a very first world problem, Apple Pay seems to have 0% penetration in Uganda. If I were to go, I would actually have to figure out how to pay for things. I might even have to resort to using (shudder) cash.

  6. Interesting. I never thought of that. For example, in Cairo, I. had no problem withdrawing Egyptian Pounds from the ATM. My bank is generous about fees etc. So in a mostly cash society this worked well.

    And by 2028 the Apple Pay problem may not exist. As far as I know, due to corruption etc. Africans (I use the term loosely, I think this is mainly happening in the Sub Saharan area), are beginning to use their smart phones for financial interactions in order to evade kleptocracies. Globalization is bringing more of these sorts of technologies in.

  7. Cairo? I guess it would be okay, as long as it doesn’t turn out to be some sort of pyramid scheme. We’ll just have to wait awhile ’til we can follow the mummy.

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