San Diego Comic-Con 2026 opens with exclusive merch, cosplay, Funko

San Diego, California– Comic-Con has made San Diego its home base for 56 years, drawing tens of thousands of fans daily to the convention center to tour the grounds, shop merchandise and take in the sights.

For the first four days of the conference, Citizen had its latest products on sale, including a new “Doctor Doom” watch tied to the release of Marvel’s “Avengers: Doomsday.” The watch will not be available for purchase until October.

“I mean, the minute the door opens, people wonder: What’s an exclusive? Can I buy an exclusive? I need an exclusive.” certainly. We’re here for you!” said Beth Miller, Citizen’s Director of Marketing.

The convention hall was packed with fans, including many who put in the time and effort to create elaborate costumes.

“I was inspired by ‘Saturday Night Fever’ and John Travolta,” Andrew Ganadian said. “The head itself was quite a challenge. I can barely see through the tape here, but it’s worth it to be able to remove it.”

“There are a lot of male characters and I wanted to put a feminine touch on them,” Crystal Aquino said. “This took a lot of work. I made all of this by hand. So it’s all foam that I sculpted and it took about a month.”

Luke Peppler said his costume was inspired by a video game.

“This is from a video game called Death Stranded,” he said. “It came out a few years ago and I love the game and I thought it was so fun that you could assemble your character so high up. I thought this could make a really cool, big costume for Comic-Con.”

Costume characters were everywhere in the convention hall, along with hundreds of vendors.

Ray-Ban also made an appearance at Comic-Con for the first time, with a new Ray-Ban from the “Star Wars” series on sale.

“There are other IPs that we’ll be launching under the Disney banner as well, which I think is really exciting,” said Boyd Wilson, Ray-Ban’s senior brand manager. “So, there’s a little asterisk around that. There’s a lot more to the brand over the next little while.”

Funko remained a popular stop at Comic-Con, with fans purchasing products as soon as the doors opened.

“We try to release a certain amount every day just to make sure that fans, you know, who are arriving all weekend long can get their hands on some of the special products that we have,” Funko CEO Josh Simon said.

The Walt Disney Company is the parent company of Marvel and this ABC station.