Star Wars Celebration is coming home to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Star Wars.
The massive Lucasfilm fan convention will hold its next edition in Los Angeles, timed to commemorate the release of the very first Star Wars movie, it was announced Sunday in Tokyo, Japan, the site of this year’s event.
A source close to Lucasfilm told The Hollywood Reporter that the Los Angeles Convention Center will likely play host to the 17th Star Wars Celebration. The venue previously held the fourth edition of Star Wars Celebration in May 2007, which honored the 30th anniversary of Star Wars.
The 2025 Star Wars Celebration returned the event to Japan for the first time since 2008, marking just the second time it has been held in Asia in its 25-year history. The Tokyo event was the fastest Star Wars Celebration to sell out, with over 105,000 guests in attendance, an 8 percent increase from the 2023 convention in London, according to Lucasfilm. Demonstrating the truly global appeal of the Star Wars franchise, 55 percent of this year’s guests came from the Asia-Pacific region, with 47 percent from Japan and an additional 31 percent from the U.S. Altogether, fans traveled to the event from 125 countries, compared to 64 countries for the previous edition.
Despite the sellout and increasing visitor numbers, there were some grumblings. The feeling in and outside the convention was that this year’s edition was not as expansive as the Celebration held in London in 2023.
“There is not enough vendors and not enough to do,” said one man from Los Angeles, who has been to London and twice to the Anaheim editions, who declined to give his name. The man voiced what Celebration veterans had noticed themselves. The breadth of product and merchandise wasn’t as large as previous years, there were fewer interactive installations or even the life-size starships that loomed over the attendees. There were also fewer panels and less in the way of major news announcements, at least of the broad audience variety.
“But I got to sing “Happy Birthday” to Hayden so that was cool,” piped in the man’s British friend, referring to Hayden Christensen, the actor who played Anakin Skywalker in the prequel Star Wars movies and who proved to be perhaps the most popular of Star Wars actors that populated the autograph and photo op line.
Fans lined up for over two hours for a moment with Christensen, who has not acted in any major production and even took a break from screen work since wrapping up his Star Wars work in the aughts. The actor was also charging the most, by a significant margin. A photo with the Christensen cost around $208, with the next closest being Ahsoka star Rosario Dawson, who had an asking price of $181. An op with Diego Luna was around $160. Not that was a deterrence for fans, whether first-timers or veterans. For non-Asians, the faraway destination was “geek tourism,” and quite frankly, nothing was getting in the way of their fandom.
Sam Dungey and his fiancée Alisha, who flew in from England, partook in the photo op with Christensen, and were over the Yavin moon with their experience. Dungey told the actor of his recent engagement and got a hearty “Congratulations” from him (these being hardcore fans, the wedding is planned for, appropriately enough, May 4, 2026).
“He was my childhood,” Dungey said of Christensen. “I grew up with the prequels, that was my Star Wars. I get emotional just thinking about it.” His fiancée said that the couple hope to one day bring their kids to a Celebration.
The power of Force was definitely on show across generations and across cultures. Some attendees spent hours getting into costumes and make-up just to parade the convention center and pose for photos. One local man spent two months creating an AT-ST Walker, a two legged armored transport, from cardboard.
That kind of passion does not go unnoticed to the actors. Dawson, who has spent countless hours getting in and out of make up for her role in Ahsoka, said during a panel she understood the dedication it took for someone to do that, especially if they were modeling themselves after her character, and was thankful for that kind of impact the show has had.
The Tokyo Star Wars Celebration featured over 26 hours of franchise programming across 3 main stages, plus some 100 hours of fan panels and podcast content on supporting stages and convention spaces. Several major franchise announcements were made in Tokyo. Ryan Gosling made a surprise appearance with director Shawn Levy to reveal the name and release date for their upcoming spinoff feature, Star Wars: Starfighter. Jon Favreau, Kathleen Kennedy, Star Wars guru Dave Filoni, and stars Pedro Pascal and Sigourney Weaver also lit up the event on its first day by showing the first footage of The Mandalorian & Grogu, the Star Wars film spun off from Disney+’s hit The Mandalorian TV series.
Other highlights included Andor creator Tony Gilroy and stars Diego Luna, Kyle Soller, Adria Arjona, Genevieve O’Reilly, Alan Tudyk and Denise Gough premiering the first episode of season two of the critically acclaimed Disney+ series. And Hayden Christensen also drove the fans wild, turning up to Ahsoka panel and revealing that he will reprise his fan-favorite role of Anakin Skywalker for season two of that Disney+ show.
On the animation side, Lucasfilm revealed that a Darth Maul animated series, Maul: Shadow Lord, will arrive in 2026. And the critically-acclaimed Star Wars: Visions animated anthology project is expanding, with a new banner, Star Wars: Visions Presents, giving animators a longform showcase, with The Ninth Jedi being the first spinoff standalone limited series.
Kathleen Kennedy, Tony Gilroy, Diego Luna, Shawn Levy, Ryan Gosling, Sigourney Weaver, Pedro Pascal, Jon Favreau, Grogu, Rosaio Dawson, Hayden Christensen and Dave Filoni pose for a photo for a Star Wars Celebration Japan photoshoot at Tokyo’s Zojoji-temple.
Lucasfilm
Staging this year’s Star Wars Celebration in Japan was its own homecoming of sorts. Famously, Japanese cinema — and the work of Akira Kurosawa in particular — was a profound influence on George Lucas as he created Star Wars. Lucas drew heavily from Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress while shaping the narrative point of view and character archetypes for Star Wars, and he repeatedly returned to the Japanese master’s filmography for shot ideas and storytelling inspiration across the franchise. Examples of Japanese iconography abound throughout the series, such as the samurai armor basis of Darth Vader’s imposing helmet or “Jidaigeki,” the Japanese word for samurai period drama, serving as the spark for the name “Jedi.”
“Japan’s rich storytelling, history, art, and popular culture have influenced Star Wars for nearly 50 years, and Star Wars has made its own mark in Japanese storytelling,” said Carol Choi, evp, APAC integrated marketing & Japan managing director at Disney.
“Elements like the Jedi, modeled after samurai, and the spiritual aspects of the Force, influenced by Bushido, highlight the profound impact of Japanese culture on the series,” Choi explained
This ongoing cultural exchange was highlighted throughout this year’s Star Wars Celebration, with various panels dedicated to Kurosawa’s influence on Lucas, and Star Wars‘ influence on Japanese anime.
Choi added, “Star Wars has drawn deep inspiration from Japan and, through its storytelling and visual design, introduced aspects of Japanese culture to global audiences across generations.”
