Disney's largest fan gathering takes over Anaheim this week, with D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event running Friday through Sunday, August 14-16, across the Anaheim Convention Center and the Honda Center. The 2026 edition features the biggest show floor in the event's history, spanning almost 1,000,000 square feet, along with more than 120 Disney stars expected to appear and a new lower-cost ticket option aimed at making the sold-out spectacle a little more accessible to local fans.
The official fan club behind the event now counts more than 1.8 million members worldwide, according to ABC11 News. D23 launched on March 10, 2009, when then-CEO Bob Iger introduced it as Disney's first official fan club, and it held its inaugural expo in Anaheim that September for a $74.99 charter membership fee, per Wikipedia. The name nods to Disney's origins: the number 23 represents 1923, the year Walt Disney founded the company, according to the same report.
This year's convention floor at the Anaheim Convention Center will host concerts, presentations, star-studded meet-and-greets and other event activities, ABC11 News reports. Appearances across the weekend are tied to properties including Scrubs, Camp Rock 3, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Bob's Burgers, Dancing with the Stars, The Simpsons, Beauty and the Beast, and Zootopia, according to the outlet's coverage.
New Ticket Tiers Try to Ease the Crowd Crunch
Disney rolled out new ticket tiers for D23 2026 back in March, including a D23 Fan Pass — Afternoon Only option starting at $49 for entry after 4 p.m. at the convention center, alongside standard 1-Day passes at $99 and 3-Day passes at $297, according to MiceChat. At the top end, 3-Day Ultimate Preferred Fan Passes bundled with Honda Center floor seating ran between $1,299 and $2,000, the outlet reported.
Those budget-friendly afternoon passes come with a catch. D23 organizers set an advance Random Selection Process reservation window running through July 26 for the most popular convention center stage panels and signings, and holders of the new Afternoon Only ticket were explicitly excluded from that advance reservation system, according to D23's official event site.
Marquee Showcases Move to the Honda Center
The event's biggest reveals won't happen at the convention center at all. Disney permanently shifted its three marquee evening presentations off-site to the Honda Center arena starting in 2024, boosting reserved seating capacity to roughly 12,000 seats per showcase, as reported by Time Out. The arena will host three showcases this year: the Disney Entertainment Showcase, the Disney Experiences Showcase, and the 2026 Disney Legends ceremony, per ABC11 News.
The Disney Entertainment Showcase kicks off Friday at 7 p.m. at the Honda Center, featuring sneak peeks, star-studded performances and announcements from Walt Disney Studios, Hulu and Disney+, according to the outlet. Neil Patrick Harris will join Imagineers behind some of Disney's biggest projects at the arena, and he's also set to host Horizons: A Carousel of Progress, which streams live on Disney+ for subscribers at 7 p.m. Pacific on Saturday.
Disney Legends Ceremony Honors Iger, Johnson and the Jonas Brothers
The Disney Legends Award Ceremony closes out the weekend Sunday at 1:30 p.m. at the Honda Center, hosted by Ryan Seacrest. This year's inductees bring the total number of Disney Legends to 329, and the 2026 class includes Chris Berman, Jerry Bruckheimer, Susan Egan, Eric Goldberg, Anne Hathaway, Bob Iger, Kim Irvine, Dwayne Johnson, the Jonas Brothers, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Alan Tudyk, per ABC11 News. The very first Disney Legend, actor Fred MacMurray, was inducted back in 1987.
Ahead of the main event, D23 Day at Disneyland Resort takes place Thursday, offering special entertainment, dance parties and themed merchandise as a countdown celebration to the weekend's festivities. D23 membership itself comes in free and paid Gold tiers, and beyond the expo, the club offers advanced screenings and exclusive sweepstakes to members year-round. For fans who can't make it in person, D23 will provide live updates beginning Friday, and On the Red Carpet will offer its own live coverage from the event.
A Bigger Stage for Disney's Long-Term Investment Plans
The Honda Center showcases have become more than fan service — they now serve as the main public stage for Disney's 10-year, $60 billion investment initiative in its Experiences division, announced in 2023, with roughly $30 billion of that earmarked directly for theme park expansions such as Villains Land and Monsters, Inc., according to The Washington Post. Reveals made from that same Honda Center stage in past years have translated into real approvals at Anaheim City Hall; Hoodline previously reported that the city council unanimously approved a major theme park expansion after a past fan event unveiling.
The convergence of a fan convention with corporate strategy is playing out against a backdrop of record local tourism. Anaheim's visitor economy generated a record $10.4 billion in total economic impact and $6.8 billion in direct visitor spending in 2025, supporting 67,817 local jobs, according to Visit Anaheim. Disneyland Resort alone generates $16.1 billion annually in Southern California economic activity and supports more than 102,000 direct and indirect jobs, per an Oxford Economics study cited by Disneyland Public Affairs.
Nearby Development and Local Policy Shifts
The Honda Center itself sits inside the ongoing $4 billion OCVIBE development, a 92-acre sports and entertainment district financed by Anaheim Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli that is slated to include a 5,000-seat concert hall and new urban plazas by 2027, according to the City of Anaheim. Construction in the area includes expanded parking structures and transit connections near the ARTIC hub.
Convention-goers moving between the two venues and Disneyland Resort this week will also encounter recent operational and policy changes. Disneyland Resort permanently eliminated its post-pandemic 11 a.m. Park Hopper restriction on June 9, letting guests move freely between Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure at any time during operating hours, as Hoodline previously reported. And in July, the Anaheim City Council shelved a proposed 10% tax on rideshare trips like Uber and Lyft entering the Disneyland resort and Platinum Triangle areas, a measure Hoodline also covered before it was pulled from consideration.
