With the recent announcement that MegaCon Live London 2025 will become the newest convention to host the UK qualifier for the Extreme Cosplay Gathering, you might be asking yourself what all the fuss is about.
The Extreme Cosplay Gathering (known as ECG, formerly the European Cosplay Gathering) is a bit like Eurovision for cosplay, bringing together entrants from all over the world to perform on a massive stage for a huge audience. The finals are held in July, in Paris, at JapanExpo; 2025’s event will be Season 13. To become an ECG representative, an entrant has to ‘qualify’ – essentially winning a Masquerade to even be invited to the finals – which is why it’s considered so prestigious.
But what makes a qualifier different from a regular Masquerade? Read on for a bit more clarity.
A qualifier is a one-off event
The ECG qualifier will only be held once, on Sunday 26th January, as an additional experience class within the regular Cosplay Masquerade. This means the Saturday show will consist of the Bard, Adventurer, and Artificer classes, but the Sunday show will consist of Bard, Adventurer, and ECG, known as our Challenger class. We will open more Artificer spots on the Saturday and more Adventurer spots on the Sunday to help balance opportunities for cosplayers across all our craftsmanship classes.
Winning is not the end of the road
If you win the Artificer class, you can sit down and put your feet up when you get home, but winning an international qualifier is just the first step on a journey of many months. You’re invited to represent their country at the finals in Paris in July, which means an exciting, expenses-paid trip to Europe, but you’re being invited for a reason, so you’re encouraged to upgrade your costume and performance, or present something entirely new, so there can be more work to be undertaken after the qualifier is over.
Eligibility criteria
It’s a bit like the Olympics: you have to be a resident of the country to represent it, so there are requirements for how long you must have lived in the UK, or what level of citizenship you must hold to enter. Your costume also must derive from an official source; no own-designs, fanart, crossovers or mash-ups are permitted in the ECG class. Most importantly, entrants must be at least 18 years old at the time of the qualifier.
Please read the full ECG Season 13 ruleset (which are the same as Season 12) for all the eligibility criteria.
Differences in the rules
The qualifier runs some different rules to the regular masquerade; if you intend to enter the ECG class, please be aware of them. Some (not all) of the differences include:
- 50% craftsmanship and 50% performance weighting;
- Only groups of between 1 and 4 people are permitted;
- Different performance lengths for different sized groups (ie. more people get longer on stage)
- Stage ninjas are only permitted for groups of up to 3 people;
- A strict time limit on how long your stage set-up can take;
- Live microphones are not permitted.
Please read the full ECG Season 13 ruleset (which are the same as Season 12) for all the rules.
Use of audio-visual equipment
While we encourage the use of an audio track and the video screen for our regular Masquerade, the ECG finals insist on the use of AV. Entrants to the qualifier are highly encouraged to make use of the video screen as practice for the stage at the finals.
But remember…
…we will still be running our regular Cosplay Masquerade around the qualifier, so don’t worry if you have no interest in competing internationally! All the opportunities that existed in 2024’s circuit are still available to you, and the application form will reflect that, so just read it carefully.
Applications for the ECG qualifier, and for our regular Cosplay Masquerades, will open later this autumn, and the show will take place on Sunday 26th January 2025 at MegaCon Live London. We can’t wait to see you there!
