The thing about Cubs Convention is that you can be as big of a Cubs fan as anyone you know, a rabid poster on various Cubs communities like Bleed Cubbie Blue, the type of person who gets notifications for multiple teams and players, and odds are the crowd at Cubs Convention will out-fanatic you. It won’t be one or two people, either. It will be 95 percent of the crowd, at all times. In 2026, however, it was hard to get to the point of feeling overwhelmed by any one else’s fandom because the size
of the crowd itself was overwhelming at virtually every moment.
To be clear, there is always a crowd at Cubs Convention and waiting in line for a bit is part of the game whether you want seats on Friday night or an autograph from a player. But 2026 was orders of magnitude different from every other year I’ve attended Cubs Convention. This year’s lines and crowds strained the capacity of the Sheraton Grand and resulted in large numbers of disappointed fans being turned away from events. It’s a perfectly reasonable assumption for fans that buying a pass to the Convention means access to those events, and for marquee events this year that simply wasn’t the case.
As I was heading to Cubs Convention at approximately the same time I have every year since I began attending in 2017, I was stunned to get a call from a friend, Ken Schultz. He just heard he wasn’t getting into the Opening Ceremony. That struck both of us as odd, he’d been at the Sheraton for a couple of hours and neither of us are new to this gig. In fact, we’ve attended every Cubs Con together since it returned after the pandemic. My curiosity was piqued.
I walked towards the hotel entrance and saw more than a few disappointed fans calling ride shares to take them back to their hotels. I stopped to chat with a couple guys, one on crutches. They’d been there since about 2:30 p.m., and while they weren’t sure what time they finally joined the line to get into the Opening Ceremony when doors opened, they both estimated they’d been standing in line for at least an hour when they were told the room was full. It was their first Cubs Convention, the tickets had been a Christmas present. You could sense their disappointment that they’d spent $150 on each pass, not to mention money on travel and a hotel room, only to be turned away from the first event 45 minutes before it was scheduled to start.
I headed in to meet Ken and the line still snaked through the lobby with Cubs staffers at the escalators to keep fans from heading up to the at-capacity fourth floor. I didn’t do a head count of the number of people in line, but I was stunned at how long it still was:
To be clear, there are always some diehard fans who get in line at 8 a.m. on Friday to ensure they are seated at the front of the room. However, in the years I’ve attended Cubs Convention getting there when the doors opened at 4:30 p.m. for a 6 p.m. start was adequate to get in the fourth floor ballroom. You might be able to snag a single seat, you might have to stand in the overflow, but you’d be in the ballroom. According to a Reddit thread about this year’s convention, that was not the experience in 2026:
Ken and I opted to head to Lizzie McNeill’s for dinner and watched the Opening Ceremony on the TV over the bar. That pub is traditionally a late-night hub for Cubs Convention activity and 2026 was no exception. Friends and other bloggers trickled in all night. The crowd was a topic of conversation with almost all of us agreeing the convention was oversold considerably, along with speculation about what that could mean for the activities on Saturday.
For those who have never been, Cubs Convention happens in more than the ballroom on the fourth floor. There are autograph signings, a vendor expo on the first floor and side events all weekend long. The only times almost everyone is in the ballroom are the Opening Ceremony on Friday and Bingo on Saturday night. At previous iterations of Cubs Convention that capacity seemed to cap the event. In 2026 it certainly did not. Saturday’s sessions featuring the front office, conversations with the Cubs coaches and players and more have historically been relatively easy to attend with plenty of seats available.
There were a smattering of seats available for the 9 a.m. front office panel, but as it started to fill in, Ken and I opted not to leave our seats through the 1 p.m. 2016 Cubs alumni panel. That turned out to be a smart move, as by mid-morning the overflow in the ballroom was 10+ deep:
I attempted a bathroom break between panels and just getting to the line for the ladies’ room was an unpleasant experience. There were throngs of people trying to fight their way to any number of lines (the elevator, both bathrooms, concessions, the escalator). An older woman trying to push her companion in a wheelchair seemed completely stuck in place as people crowded around them. I cannot stress enough that this was unique to the 2026 Cubs Convention experience. There are always crowds at Cubs Convention, but they usually are not the type of crowds that feel like you’re being pushed and pulled in directions you didn’t choose. As I headed back to my seat after fighting my way to the bathroom I wondered how many additional tickets had been sold this year, because it seemed clear there were a lot more people everywhere. Turns out I’m not the only one who was wondering:
To be clear, I’m not sure where this Reddit poster got these numbers, so take them with a hefty grain of salt. However, as I was texting with Al and spitballing with friends who attend the convention every year, I backed into similar numbers based on the number of people overflowing some of these events relative to previous years:
Right after the 2016 alumni panel I decided to call it a day and head home. The crowds were too much and I needed some air. Ken was sticking around but agreed to walk me out. As we started to fight our way to the escalators the crowd was unrelenting. Literally. Midway from the ballroom to the escalator, I stopped for a Cubs employee who was pulling a dolly of boxes through the crowd. Or should I say, I attempted to stop. The crowd pushed behind me with enough force that I wound up moving forward anyway, and my foot was run over by the cart. Luckily, it wasn’t all that heavy and the result was just a bruise. Well, a bruise and being chewed out by the gentleman behind me for stopping. Ken and I lamented the state of manners with another lady in the crowd on the way to the escalator — which stopped abruptly mid-way to the third floor, possibly from reaching a weight limit. Our new friend was flung forward, fell down a couple stairs and luckily got up unharmed, but a bit shaken.
I recognize everyone’s tolerance for crowds is different and this post could come off a bit as that Simpson’s GIF where Grandpa Simpson yells at clouds. I want to be clear, the Cubs staff does an incredible job and are experts on running large events. I’ve never felt unsafe at a Cubs game where 10 times as many people navigate their way through a 112-year-old concourse to their seats dozens of times a year. But a key difference between the Cubs games I attend and the 2026 Cubs Convention seemed to be venue size and pushing the limits of capacity. I imagine if a Postseason game were oversold by the same factor it would have also been chaos.
As I already indicated above, the line situation from the Opening Ceremony on Friday was about to repeat itself for Bingo on Saturday Night:
I’d already left at this point, but was still on text threads with friends trying to coordinate seats and tables. Danny Rockett sent me these pictures of the “line” to get in for Bingo:
Here’s a 360 video view of the Bingo “line” experience:
I certainly understand the economics of trying to ensure every room is as full as possible at a fan convention, but these crowds look more like an event that has outgrown its venue. There are a number of locations in Chicago that can safely accommodate the number of people who purchased tickets to Cubs Convention this year. If the Cubs are going to continue to sell the number of tickets they sold in 2026, they should consider moving the event to a different location in the future.
