From Fandoms to Festivals: How Anime, K-Pop, and Video Games Are Bringing Young People Together
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How festivals turn shared passions into whole communities.
Anime, K-pop, and video games today make up one of the biggest youth communities in Ukraine, drawing tens of thousands of people to a single venue. Festivals like FANCON, Summer Anime & Cosplay Fest, and the Kyiv Geeks & Games Festival have become places where entire fandoms meet offline.
DeTalks takes a look at how the popularity of young people's passions is growing, and what role festivals play in it.
From Niche to Mainstream
The team behind FANCON — one of the largest pop culture festivals in Ukraine — positions the event as one that brought once-'niche' interests together under one roof — from board games and comics to esports and wrestling.
And indeed — to understand how much the scale of fan culture in Ukraine has changed, it's enough to compare two numbers. About 3,000 people came to the country's first Japanese animation festival back in 2008, while in 2025, FANCON drew around 36,000 visitors over two days.
This year, organizers expect over 40,000 people across 27,000 square meters.
Anime and Manga: How Asian Culture Went Global
As far back as the early 1990s, Western audiences began to see anime as something deeper than just Japanese animation.
According to psychologist Hanna Pokrovska, it appeals to teenagers because it differs from the American and European storytelling tradition — complex emotions, social conflict, morally ambiguous characters. That's exactly what makes anime resonate with young people looking to see their own experiences reflected.
Global demand for anime keeps growing. According to Grand View Research, the global anime market was worth $37.7 billion in 2025, and could more than double to $77.3 billion by 2033. Researchers point to the spread of streaming services as a key driver, having expanded access to anime content beyond Japan.
In Ukraine, the trend is visible in the growing popularity of Ukrainian-language dubbing. The push behind this came from Russia's full-scale invasion. In 2024, the Ukrainian anime community team 'Amanogawa' moved from voice-over translation to full dubbing.
For anime fans, FANCON 2026 included a 'UA Dub&Sub' stage — a space to meet the voice actors who dub characters from global film, games, and Japanese animation into Ukrainian.
K-Pop: Music That Brings People Together
The fan culture around K-pop artists makes up one of the biggest fan communities online. For example, mentions of the band Blackpink online totaled over 423 million between 2016 and 2024 — about 148,000 a day.
For many K-pop fans, beyond the music itself, what matters is the sense of belonging to a large international community. For fans, the fandom feels like a family, bound together by shared interests.
Interest in the genre keeps growing in Ukraine too. For example, more than 900 participants took part in the Cosplay & K-Pop Cover Dance Show at FANCON 2025, and at this year's event, the total prize pool grew to 240,000 hryvnias — the largest in the history of cosplay competitions in Ukraine. For comparison, back in 2024 the separate K-pop Cover Dance prize pool stood at 100,000 hryvnias.
Video Games: From Hobby to Way of Life
Video games in Ukraine are no longer just an individual hobby — popular titles draw their own fan bases. These are entire communities that bring together people around shared interests.
Researchers note that the growth of the internet and online gaming has made such communities global: players form their own groups, share experiences, develop internal norms, and even shape distinct cultural practices.
FANCON itself actively incorporates gaming into its program. For example, the Red Bull ClassiCS sector at this year's festival will host a show match featuring bloggers, professional players, and esports stars. Gaming zones with simulators will also be available for guests.
How the Communities Themselves Are Evolving
In the past, anime, K-pop, or gaming fans existed in separate bubbles — on forums, in small circles, mostly offline. Now, these communities have become global, connected through Discord, social media, and international fandoms that bring together people from different countries around a shared interest. The lines between communities themselves have blurred — a gamer might also be into K-pop, and a cosplayer might collect manga.
For Ukraine, an additional factor has been the growing demand for Ukrainian-language content since 2022. In 2025, its share among youth and teens grew by 29% on TikTok and 19% on YouTube, driving local communities, publishers, and dubbing teams to produce even more content.
DeTalks is the official media partner covering FANCON 2026. Look for exclusive content from the event on the media's Telegram channel and social media.