LAS VEGAS
The doors at The Expo at World Market Center open at five on Friday afternoon, and for four hours the only people allowed through them are holding VIP badges. That is not a velvet-rope gimmick. At DesignerCon, Friday night is when the good stuff moves.
The show — designer toys, limited editions, artist signings, customs — runs Friday through Sunday, November 13 to 15, and it turns 21 this year. It started in 2005 as the Vinyl Toy Network, in a 1,100-square-foot meeting room at the Pasadena Convention Center. This weekend it takes over the Expo with more than 700 vendors and 350 artists, and DesignerCon's own announcement puts 30,000 fans in the building across the three days. Las Vegas has hosted it since 2024. The meeting room is a story the founders tell now.
The Japan-only problem, solved for one weekend
The headline material this year is stuff that does not ordinarily sell in the United States. Tsuburaya Productions is bringing an Ultraman 60th anniversary celebration with convention exclusives and products that have previously been available only in Japan. TOEI's ART FES makes its sole American stop for Kamen Rider's 55th anniversary — ultra-limited figures from Japanese creators that normally never leave the Japanese market. MEDICOM TOY, the BE@RBRICK company, marks its own 30th anniversary with exclusive items otherwise sold only in Japan.
DesignerCon has not published edition sizes or prices for those pieces, and anybody quoting you a number before the doors open is guessing. What is published is the shape of the thing: three Japanese institutions, one weekend, a convention floor in Las Vegas as the only American place to buy any of it.
Even the badge is a drop
Vandy The Pink designed this year's attendee badges — every credential at the door is one of his pieces, burger boxes and all. It is a small detail that explains the whole show. At DesignerCon the merchandise logic goes all the way down to the thing hanging around your neck.
The collaborations keep going from there. Saturday Morning Cards and Ron English's POPAGANDA have made a limited run of designer art cards — “Sugar Frosted Fat” — built around English's characters. CarTuned is bringing two exclusives and a new Lowriders die-cast series, which puts designer-toy money and car money on the same floor. Fitting, in a city where a thousand collector cars cross the Mecum block the same weekend across town.
How the floor actually works
Friday, 5 to 9 p.m., is VIP only. Saturday the doors open at 10 for everyone else — 9 for VIPs — and Sunday runs 10 to 5. That one-hour head start is the whole economy of the show in miniature: exclusives are limited, lines form, and the people who paid for the early door get first pick of the pieces that will be gone by lunch. If you are not in the building, Palmstreet's partner brands livestream drops during show hours, which has become the official way to buy from the couch.
Between the booths there is a poster show with its own gravity — the Fear & Loathing section, built with Flatstock, the poster-art institute — plus Secret Walls running live art battles on the stage. The artists DesignerCon itself name-checks for this year include Ron English, Louis De Guzman and Scott Tolleson, who created Vincent, the character on this year's key art; founder Ben Goretsky has also pointed at Matt Gondek exclusives. Previously's DesignerCon drops guide tracks the drop-by-drop picture.
The building helps. The Expo sits on Grand Central Parkway with a covered garage attached, and the show fills it in layers — booths up front, the poster section and stage drawing their own crowds, lines at the exclusives tables bending around all of it. DesignerCon publishes a floor plan for a reason: veterans plan the morning the way shoppers plan a doorbuster, because by Saturday afternoon the scarce thing is not money, it is stock.
Tickets are $45 for a single day, $80 for the weekend and $150 for the VIP pass; kids 12 and under get in free with a paid adult. The badge keeps working after the floor closes, too — it gets holders into the official parties, Steve Aoki at OMNIA on Friday night among them.
Twenty-one years ago this was a meeting room in Pasadena with vinyl toys on folding tables. This weekend it is the only place in America selling some of these objects at all — and the first four hours belong to the badges.
Sources · 4 sources
- DesignerCon — official show information, FAQ and VIP pages (designercon.com): the November 13–15, 2026 dates at The Expo at World Market Center, the Friday VIP-only hours and weekend hours, ticket prices ($45 / $80 / $150; early bird $36 / $64 / $120; children 12 and under free), the 700+ vendors and 350+ artists figures, the 2005 Vinyl Toy Network founding in a 1,100 sq. ft. Pasadena meeting room, the Vandy The Pink badges and the official nightlife program.
- DesignerCon (GlobeNewswire) — “Designer Toys and Collectibles Take Over Las Vegas as DesignerCon Returns With Its Biggest Lineup Yet” (October 6, 2026): the Ultraman 60th Anniversary and Kamen Rider 55th TOEI ART FES collaborations, MEDICOM TOY's 30th anniversary exclusives, the CarTuned exclusives and Lowriders series, the 30,000-fan figure, and founder Ben Goretsky on the third Las Vegas edition.
- DesignerCon (official Instagram) — the Saturday Morning Cards × Ron English POPAGANDA “Sugar Frosted Fat” art-cards announcement and the 2026 countdown key art.
- Photos and video — DesignerCon (designercon.com and @designercon): 2026 key art, 2026 Flatstock poster art, Vandy The Pink portrait, the art-cards announcement frame, and recent-edition floor photography, captioned by edition in the article. Video: DesignerCon's official 2025 Las Vegas recap via YouTube, captioned as 2025 footage.
