PAX West 2026: Badge Prices, Hours and the 6 PM Rule

PAX West 2026 is open for 50 hours. The Expo Hall is open for 32 of them.

That gap is the single most useful number on this page, and it is sitting in plain sight on PAX's own homepage: the show runs 10:00 a.m. to midnight on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but the Expo Hall runs 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. every day. Eighteen of the show's fifty open hours — 36 per cent of it — happen after the booths have gone dark. If you buy a badge expecting demo queues and only demo queues, you have paid for a show you are planning to leave halfway through.

Here is what PAX West 2026 costs, when it is actually open, which building your thing is in, and the rules that will get a prop taken off you at the door.

The dates, the hours, and the two buildings

PAX West 2026 runs Friday, September 4 to Monday, September 7, 2026 at the Seattle Convention Center. September 7 is the first Monday of the month, which makes the closing day Labor Day in the United States — worth checking against your flights, because the Monday of a US holiday weekend is not a normal travel day.

Monday is the outlier in both directions: it is the only day with no evening block, and the only day where every open hour is an Expo Hall hour. Hold that thought.

The other structural fact is that PAX West is two buildings, and they are not interchangeable. The show spans the Arch building at 705 Pike Street and the Summit building at 900 Pine Street — a short walk apart, per PAX's own travel page.

• Arch holds the video game Expo Hall: AAA booths, indie studios, the PAX Rising area, hardware and merch.
• Summit holds tabletop. The tabletop exhibitor hall sits on Summit Level 2, with Tabletop Freeplay on the same level and a Tabletop Events area on Level 0 covering RPGs, TCGs, miniatures, Crokinole and the Deception Zone.

If you came for board games and spend Friday in Arch, you spent Friday in the wrong building. Check the level as well as the address — Summit's tabletop content is split across Level 2 and Level 0.

The Seattle Convention Center concourse during PAX West. The show occupies two buildings two blocks apart, and the tabletop hall is not in the same one as the video games. Photo: Zak via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

What a badge costs

Straight off the registration page. Every price shown includes the badge, a $4.00 service fee and 5 per cent Seattle event admission tax — PAX lists the base price alongside it, so both are reproduced here.

Two notes before the arithmetic. The BYOC badge is an add-on, not an entry ticket — it buys you a seat in the private Bring Your Own Computer area and must be accompanied by a day badge, so the real cost of a BYOC Saturday is $88.20 plus $56.70. And PAX does not refund badges, but it explicitly allows you to trade, gift or sell them on to friends or family.

Buying all four single days costs $311.85. The 4-Day badge is $264.60 — a $47.25 saving, or 15 per cent, for the same four days.

Run the three-day case though, because it goes the other way. The most expensive three-day combination is Friday, Saturday and Sunday at $252.00, which is still $12.60 less than the 4-Day badge. Every cheaper combination widens that gap. The 4-Day badge only wins if you genuinely attend all four days — at three, singles are the cheaper buy, and you keep the option of skipping a day without having paid for it.

If you want badges mailed rather than collected, PAX charges $22.00 for expedited shipping with tracking and recommends it specifically to skip the on-site Badge Pickup queue.

The Monday arithmetic

Now put price and hours in the same table, because this is where the cheap badge stops looking like the consolation prize.

Monday costs the most per hour of show and the least per hour of Expo Hall. At $7.48 per Expo hour it undercuts Saturday's $11.03 by roughly a third, and it beats the 4-Day badge's $8.27 as well.

The trade is explicit rather than clever. Monday buys eight hours of show floor and nothing else — no evening panels, no late tabletop, no concert. Saturday buys the same eight Expo hours for $28.35 more, and hands you six extra hours of everything that is not a booth. Which of those is the better $88.20 depends entirely on whether you intend to still be in the building at 11 p.m.

One thing a Monday badge does get you: the Omegathon's secret final round, which PAX runs in the Main Theatre to close out the show.

What the badge already covers

PAX's pitch is that the badge is the whole cost, and the registration page is unusually specific about it: no extra charge for the biggest panels, autograph sessions, demos or concerts. What the badge includes, as listed:

• Both Expo Halls — Arch and Summit — plus exhibitor demos and brand activations
• Panels, special events and industry interviews, all first come, first served with no ticketing
• Autograph sessions, where the first autograph is free; a stack of them may not be
• Bandland, the merch-and-meet area for musicians, artists and creators performing at the show
• Tournaments, plus the PAX Arena esports stage
• The Omegathon, PAX's weekend-long mega-tournament, played by randomly selected pre-registrants
• Freeplay areas carrying over 2,500 games across current and classic consoles, handhelds, PC, VR and tabletop

That freeplay number is the answer to the 6 p.m. problem. When the Expo Hall shuts, the console and tabletop freeplay rooms, the theatres and the concerts are what the remaining six hours are made of. The Friday night concert is Magic Sword headlining with Seattle woodwind quintet Winds5 opening — Winds5 are returning after a 2025 appearance, and PAX notes they placed second in the 2025 American Prize.

Tabletop freeplay at PAX West. Since 2024 this has lived in the Summit building, with roughly twice the seating of the old space. Photo: Zak via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Tournament sign-up has a timing rule of its own. It is first come, first served starting at 10:00 a.m. on the day of the tournament — not the day before, and not at the tournament itself. A 7:00 p.m. Saturday console tournament wants you at the sign-up desk at 10:00 a.m. Saturday. Exhibitor-run and PAX Arena events can use their own method, so read the event description.

One more scheduling quirk worth knowing: PAX clears the theatre after every panel, and names exactly one exception — Friday morning, between the Storytime session and the Penny Arcade Q&A, you keep your seat. The FAQ allows that other exceptions exist but calls them rare, so treat that Friday pairing as the one queue that reliably buys you two shows.

Who is exhibiting

PAX published the full Expo Hall line-up in mid-August, and the reporting on it puts the count at more than 300 exhibitors across video games, tabletop, hardware and merch.

Named in that announcement: SEGA, Larian Studios, Double Fine Productions, Konami, Bandai Namco Entertainment America, Atari Interactive, JOYCITY, NIS America, Hooded Horse, GIANTS Software and Stern Pinball, alongside hardware from AMD, Razer, Corsair and Sandisk, Seattle-area studios including Innersloth, Batterystaple Games and Snowfall Games, and merch vendors Fangamer, Limited Run Games and iam8bit. Bleeding Cool's write-up notes that neither Nintendo nor Wizards of the Coast appears in the announced line-up.

The show opens with a keynote rather than a showcase. Marc Merrill — co-founder, co-chairman and chief product officer at Riot Games — delivers the Storytime keynote on Friday, September 4 in the Main Theatre, billed as a personal retrospective across two decades that produced League of Legends, Valorant, Teamfight Tactics and Arcane. Also on the schedule: a live Daggerheart show from Acquisitions Incorporated.

A tinyBuild demo setup at PAX West 2019. The indie end of the Arch hall is where the booth budgets get strange. Photo: Sergey Galyonkin via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The TCG Zone is its own convention

Buried in the tabletop pages is the line-up that makes PAX West worth a Summit-only day for card players. The TCG Zone runs events from casual to competitive, each hosted by a named organiser:

Six of the games on that list have their own vertical on this site — Magic, Riftbound, Gundam, Palworld, Pokémon and Lorcana. Three games appear under two organisers each: Gundam and ONE PIECE are run by both Bandai and Pro-Play Games, and Riftbound by both UVS and Pro-Play Games.

Around the TCG Zone, tabletop also carries a board game lending library, a First Look area of unreleased and newly released games, a Crokinole Zone that also hosts the Danish dexterity game Klask, an RPG Zone with Alexandria RPG Library, Baldman Games running D&D, Games on Demand and Amoirais, and a miniatures section with learn-to-play sessions for Corvus Belli's Infinity plus a Paint and Take handing out a free PAX-exclusive mini.

New for 2026

Two areas are new this year, both announced on PAX's homepage:

• The Creator Stage moves theatre-style programming onto the show floor — game discovery segments and creator appearances.
• The PAX Art Hub is PAX's version of artist alley. Its own page is specific about the bar: artists in the area either hold official credits from work inside games, or are original artists inspired by gaming culture.

The 2026 show theme is PAX Land, PAX's theme-park framing across all four of its shows.

The rules that catch people out

These are the ones that cost people time or property at the door, taken from PAX's safety and FAQ pages.

Things banned inside the Expo Hall specifically, on crowd-egress grounds: strollers (you may carry one, not push it), stilts, remote-controlled vehicles, rollerskates and rollerblades, and rolling bags, rolling backpacks, suitcases or wagons. That last one is worth reading twice if you were planning to wheel a card case between Arch and Summit. Stopping in an Expo Hall aisle for a cosplay photo is also not allowed — step to the side.

Prop weapons need peace bonding. Every costume prop is inspected and zip-tied by an Enforcer at the Information booth, and once bonded it stays bonded for the whole show rather than needing a daily check. What will not pass: functional weapons of any kind, live or decommissioned airsoft, replica firearms made from metal or solid resin, plastic or rubber, metal swords, knives and spears, and any sharp implement. Firearm props need an orange safety tip at all times; bows must be unstrung or strung with low-tensile thread, with foam or cardboard arrow tips. Taping over a metal blade does not make it legal — PAX addresses that one directly.

Ages. PAX is an all-ages show, with individual schedule items flagged 13+ or 17+ where the content warrants it. Children under 7 attend free with an adult. Children 7–12 need a Kids badge and must be with a badge-holding adult.

Accessibility. Medical passes cover the holder plus a +1, and give entry to panels and the Expo Hall provided the relevant line has not already been capped. ASL interpreters must be requested at least two weeks before the show, which for 2026 means requests are due by around August 21. Both go through paxquestions@reedexpo.com.

Security. Badges must be worn at all times, bag checks may occur, and PAX asks attendees to carry photo ID. Where photography is prohibited — autographing, photo ops, screenings, backstage — smart glasses and camera-equipped eyewear may not be worn, not merely not used.

Live music in a PAX West lobby. Concerts, panels and freeplay are what the badge buys after the Expo Hall closes at 6 p.m. Photo: Zak via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

What is not published yet

Being straight about the gaps, two weeks out.

The full schedule is not out. PAX's schedule page carries a preview and a note that more content is still to be released, so panel times, tournament slots and the Creator Stage line-up are all unfixed.

The guest list is not out. The guests page describes the categories of guest PAX books and points readers at the newsletter for the announcement drops, without naming anyone for 2026 beyond the Storytime keynote.

This year's Omeganauts have not been announced. The Omegathon page says the class is still to come.

Badge Pickup hours are not published. PAX's info page says hours and show maps will appear under Maps, Hours and Entry Info once they are current.

And treat the registration page's Important Dates block with suspicion. As of August 20, 2026 it still lists 2024 dates — a June 20th, 2024 single-day bundle cutoff, a July 14th, 2024 badge mailing deadline, a July 26th, 2024 Omegathon inclusion deadline and an onsite price increase for August 30 to September 2, 2024. Those are not this year's deadlines, and the mailing one matters, because shipped badges are PAX's own recommended way to skip the pickup queue. If you need a badge in the post, ask rather than reading that block.

Quick Action Checklist

• Only buy the 4-Day if you are going all four days. Four singles cost $311.85 against $264.60, a $47.25 saving — but three singles top out at $252.00, which undercuts the 4-Day by $12.60.
• Want show floor and nothing else? Buy Monday. $59.85 for eight Expo hours is $7.48 an hour, against $11.03 on Saturday.
• Plan the 6 p.m. handover before you arrive. Eighteen of the show's fifty hours have no Expo Hall — that time is panels, freeplay, tabletop, tournaments and concerts, or it is time you spend in a hotel room.
• Check which building. Video games are in Arch at 705 Pike Street; tabletop is in Summit at 900 Pine Street, on Levels 2 and 0.
• For a tournament, be at sign-up at 10:00 a.m. that day, whatever time the tournament itself starts.
• Leave the rolling bag at the hotel — it is banned inside the Expo Hall, along with strollers in use, skates and stilts.
• Cosplayers: Information booth first for peace bonding, and leave metal blades and solid replica firearms at home.
• Need an ASL interpreter? The two-week lead time puts the 2026 deadline around August 21.
• Planning a convention year rather than one show? Our Gen Con field guide and the gamescom 2026 ticket guide cover the logistics that repeat from show to show, and there is more in the Gaming Events archive and across the Mythras blog.