Most widely known super-heroes work a traditional job by day and take to the city skylines and streets by night. They dress and equip themselves with gear to protect their identities along with the people of the city. At comiccons, people can celebrate their beloved characters and fictional worlds, stripping away their conventional uniforms and step into hand-crafted costumes.
Providing accessibility for local in Cyprus to a growing community of creatives, fans, and artists all started from a shared passion, and quickly grew to a calendar placeholder for students, professionals, families, and friends.
A shift in cultural perspective
In Cyprus, appearances have been upheld to fulfil socially constructed norms that can be restricting. A uniform, of sorts. Social life, from the classroom to the boardroom, unfolds under a gaze sharpened by tradition.
Polished shoes, neatly pressed shirts, well-behaved children, presentation often acts as a proxy for pride. Families take it seriously. Not simply for status, but for what status signals: dignity, propriety, success. Relatives often live one street away and reputations stretch across generations, how one dresses, behaves, and associates is rarely just personal.
This cultural scaffolding - respectable, established, sometimes stifling - left little room for the unconventional. Cosplay was not a word heard often in Cypriot households. Nor were Dungeons & Dragons, K-pop, or anime art prints. These things, while beloved across the globe, were once met here with raised brows and sideways glances. They didn’t fit neatly into the visual lexicon of presentability.
From taboo to tradition
And yet, since 2014, something unexpected has taken root. That year, a group of friends created the first Cyprus Comic Con with Nicosia as its cradle. They didn’t know how many would show up. A few hundred at first. The campus of the European University of Cyprus filled with fans dressed as Jedi, elves, comic protagonists, and masked vigilantes. The sidewalks buzzed with people who had waited years to attend an event like this and make like-minded friends.
What began as a modest gathering became a movement. Now entering its 11th year, Cyprus Comic Con (CCC) has developed local culture to be more inclusive and created another avenue for creative expression.
Peter Hvass, co-founder of Cyprus Comic Con, shared with Politis to the point that, “childhood in Cyprus often felt lonely for many of us, trying to find companionship by forcing ourselves into games of football in the playground, only to realise it never spoke to the dreams and wild thoughts rushing through our minds.
That search for something more, for people who shared our passions and creative sparks, never really left us. Bringing people together through those very things has always been the dream at our core, woven into who we are. It’s what we love, what we recognise in each other, and what we’ve cared about so deeply that we’ve given thousands of hours as volunteers for more than a decade”.
Each November, the Cyprus State Fairgrounds in Nicosia transforms into a centre of creative and artistic expression with students, young professionals, parents with toddlers, and international guests. In 2024, the crowd surpassed 30,000, with 22,000 ticketed attendance, 7% of which were people travelling to Cyprus from abroad to attend Cyprus Comic Con. Today, CCC stands as the island’s largest celebration of pop culture. Its Renaissance Fair spin-off in October draws just as much enthusiasm. For many locals, it is a highlight of the year, meeting people from other countries and making new friends every year.
A celebration of expression
No longer seen as eccentric, the event is now a proving ground for talent and expression. Cosplay competitions send Cypriot winners abroad through the Europa Cosplay Cup (formerly EuroCosplay) circuit at the enormous Toulouse Game Show in France.
Local illustrators debut their work next to renowned comic artists, panels, Q&A sessions, and workshops run from morning until night, all fuelled by local and international food and beverage businesses who set up shop for the weekend. Themed zones recreate medieval taverns, gaming arenas, and anime markets. Entire families spend the weekend immersed.
The shift is not accidental. The organizing committee of CCC has carefully cultivated a festival that is both globally recognizable and deeply local. Though the lineups include Star Wars actors and YouTube celebrities, the heart of CCC lies in its community: locals who once felt sidelined for their interests, now celebrated for them.
An official trailer released earlier this year captures it best with the protagonist of the short story crunching a tight deadline for work, receiving encouragement from her cat, Pixel. Suddenly, her Nintendo Entertainment System whirs up, and when she picks up the controller, she’s transported to another realm, where cosplayers meet her and walk through a gate to Cyprus Comic Con. It’s precisely this kind of escape from routine and embrace of community that is found at Cyprus Comic Con
There is something telling about how Cyprus Comic Con has evolved. In a country where polished appearances once crowded out eccentricity, a festival of costumes, comics, and capes has become a new kind of normal. Not by erasing tradition, but by broadening what it allows. Presentable no longer means predictable.
Now, when a child says they want to be a wizard or a space pilot or a sword-wielding knight, their parents might smile and take them shopping for fabric and foam.