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SDCC Could Be Seriously Impacted by 2028 Summer Olympics, Trump Plans

Though it's been less than a month since SDCC 2025 wrapped, it's not too early to start looking at how 2028 could end up being an issue.

The 2028 Summer Olympics have been in the news lately… primarily for all of the wrong reasons. Earlier this week, Trump trotted out an executive order that established a task force to coordinate Olympics planning – with Trump in charge, of course. If you were wondering how that will work with city and state officials in California, look no further than this vow from Trump this week: "We'll do anything necessary to keep the Olympics safe − including using our National Guard, or military. I will use the National Guard or military − this is going to be so safe − if we have to." While that doesn't necessarily bode well for the Olympics and the City of Los Angeles, it was Popverse's coverage of the "Comic-Con Talkback" panel that was held toward the end of this year's San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) that got us thinking about how the five-day pop culture extravaganza could be impacted.

Setting aside the fact that the deal between Comic Con International (CCI) and San Diego is only through 2027, meaning that a new deal or an extension to the current SDCC agreement must be hammered out, there's the considerable matter of the calendar. The 2028 Summer Olympics are running from Friday, July 14, through Sunday, July 30, and will make a large chunk of Southern California a very busy place to be, especially with San Diego County hosting the surfing competition. In addition, if Trump does decide to send in the National Guard or the military to Los Angeles, it will create an entirely different set of complications.

"There are real, practical things that we have to consider and those are anything from possibly having to move to a location that may not be impacted by the events in LA, like you said, the potential of sitting out the year, [or] any number of things," CCI chief communications and strategy officer David Glanzer shared during the panel when asked about the potential impact that the Olympics and everything that comes with it would have. "The real determining factor, I think, is the impact the decision may have on unions and also the financial impact we will take."

Could that mean SDCC skipping 2028? Or could we be looking at a different date? Glanzer offered November 2021's Comic-Con Special Edition, which marked CCI's return to the convention scene after the COVID lockdown, as an example. "I think what a lot of people don't realize is it was a very expensive show. That was a show where we actually lost revenue, but it was worth it to us just trying to get back into the program," he explained. "Whatever decision we make will not be made lightly," Glanzer added, looking ahead to 2028. "And hopefully, everyone will support us in whatever that decision happens to be. But we really don't know where we are here on that."

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