More than 3,600 fans are expected to pack the Baltimore Convention Center this week for Supernova, an 11th-annual Super Smash Bros. tournament series that spent years in Chantilly, Virginia, before losing its longtime home to a new furniture store. The event runs Thursday through Sunday, bringing friendly sparring, live broadcast commentary, panel discussions, and cash-prize brackets to the Inner Harbor for the first time in the series' history.
Supernova was launched in August 2015 and, for years, operated under the name Super Smash Con at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly. According to The Baltimore Banner, the tournament relocated to Baltimore this year, and the shift lines up with the Dulles Expo Center's permanent closure at the end of December 2025, when the longtime Northern Virginia trade-show venue was converted into a 110,000-square-foot IKEA store that opened in June, according to Northern Virginia Magazine. The Dulles facility had operated for over three decades as the region's primary venue for consumer trade shows and fan conventions.
The name change to Supernova wasn't voluntary either. Per Grokipedia, Nintendo released updated Community Tournament Guidelines in October 2023 that restricted unlicensed commercial events from using official game titles in their names and capped unlicensed tournament prize pools, forcing the organizers to drop the Super Smash Con name in 2024. Justin Wykowski launched the first Super Smash Con, with Michael Brancato, known by the alias Nintendude, and Robin Harn, known as Juggleguy, helping organize that original event celebrating fans of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 64.
A Bigger Stage Than Ever Before
The move puts Supernova inside a venue with dramatically more room to grow. The Baltimore Convention Center offers 300,000 square feet of contiguous exhibition space across 1.65 million total square feet, a major capacity upgrade compared to the Dulles Expo Center's roughly 130,000 to 140,000 square feet of exhibit space, per the Baltimore Convention Center. It's not the first gaming-adjacent fan convention to find a home downtown — Otakon, one of the Mid-Atlantic's largest anime and gaming conventions, drew over 30,000 annual attendees and generated more than $10 million in local economic impact at the Baltimore Convention Center from 1999 through 2016, according to Baltimore Fishbowl, before departing for Washington, D.C. over venue space constraints and aging facilities.
Sheila Moore, an event producer based in Fairfax County, Virginia, known by the alias DaPurpleSharpie and part of the New York-based broadcast production team House of 3000, is producing this year's Supernova. Moore told The Baltimore Banner that the event is a grassroots gathering organized by people who grew up playing the game. Supernova shares its Mid-Atlantic gaming-convention region with MAGFest and Otakon, and organizers say a complete event schedule will be released soon, per the official event page.
Cash Prizes and Classic Consoles
The competitive stakes are real money. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournaments at Supernova offer more than $15,000 in prizes, per Liquipedia, while Super Smash Bros. Melee tournaments offer nearly $10,000. Ultimate entrants pay $10 entry fees and will compete on Nintendo Switch 2, while Melee competitors will battle it out on the Nintendo GameCube, keeping alive a game that debuted on the Nintendo 64 in Japan in January 1999 and in North America that April, created by game director Masahiro Sakurai and programmer Satoru Iwata. Tournament registration has already closed, but friendly sparring across all six Super Smash Bros. titles remains open to attendees.
Masaya Chikamoto, known by the alias aMSa, traveled from Japan and returned home victorious from Supernova 2024 in Chantilly, a reminder of the international pull the series has built over more than a decade. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate itself had sold 38.14 million copies worldwide as of June, making it the best-selling fighting game in video game history and the third-best-selling title on the original Nintendo Switch platform, according to Nintendo Life.
The Original Combo Contest Returns
One of Supernova's most beloved traditions is making the trip to Baltimore too: the Original Combo Contest, staged inside the 1999 edition of Super Smash Bros.' practice mode. Competitors chain together the largest, flashiest hit combos they can devise, and judges award a grade from 1 to 10 based on style, technical difficulty, and creativity rather than a straightforward win-loss bracket. Established in 2016, the contest has been dominated by a competitor known as Prince, who has won four of the five contested years, per SmashWiki.
David Lapkoff, a 39-year-old financial analyst from Silver Spring who goes by the alias MC David, has attended every Supernova since 2015 and has mastery of Peach, a playable character from the Super Mario Bros. franchise. Lapkoff has lived in Laurel since 2020 and told The Baltimore Banner that platform fighting games encourage the tight-knit, in-person nature of these events. He described the crowd's cheering at Supernova as sounding like a jet engine.
Building a Space for Women and Nonbinary Players
Supernova's Smash Sisters event, held this year on Saturday, is intended to foster belonging among women and nonbinary people in the fighting-game community. One version of the initiative's origin traces to 2016, when community members milktea and emilywaves established it as a dedicated crew-battle format, while The Baltimore Banner reports Smash Sisters was established in 2010; both accounts describe an emphasis on community-building and mentorship over cash prizes rather than a straightforward competitive bracket.
Tali Henry, a 28-year-old transgender woman and Laurel-based Smash competitor who moved to the area from New Jersey, will compete in Saturday's Smash Sisters event. Henry, known by the alias Talitetra, has mastery of Sheik, a playable character from The Legend of Zelda, and has been part of the Super Smash Bros. community for more than a decade. She first attended Supernova in 2024 and told The Baltimore Banner that the event helped her gain confidence by building a network and forging friendships.
Ties to Camden Yards and the Inner Harbor
Supernova is leaning into its new downtown neighborhood by courting Orioles fans directly. Ticket holders for Thursday's Orioles game will receive free admission to Supernova, and organizers will set up a photo booth, free trading cards, and open-play gaming sessions at Legends Park before and during the team's 12:35 p.m. game on Thursday.
That kind of downtown crossover comes as Baltimore's Inner Harbor convention corridor navigates its own upheaval. The 337-room Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel, directly adjacent to the convention center and connected via an indoor walkway, permanently closed on December 31, 2025, eliminating guest rooms long used by both convention visitors and Orioles fans. The closure comes amid ongoing discussions around a proposed $1 billion modernization of the Baltimore Convention Center.
Beyond the Brackets
Supernova isn't only about competitive brackets. The event also includes an art marketplace, arcade games, independently developed video games, live music performances, and a costume contest, per the event website. Attendees who didn't register for tournaments can still purchase single-day spectator passes or four-day weekend passes, with prices ranging from about $22 to $116.
Between the console-era nostalgia of the Combo Contest and the modern Switch 2 brackets drawing entrants from as far as Japan, Supernova's move to Baltimore marks a new chapter for a tournament series built by fans who, as Moore put it, grew up playing the game — even as the community adapts to corporate licensing rules and a shifting convention-center landscape around it.
