Last month, I managed to grab a Saturday ticket to Star Wars Celebration here at McCormick Place in Chicago (after being #249 on the waitlist for one after they sold out).

What’s Celebration you might ask? More or less, it’s a huge gathering to celebrate everything and anything Star Wars. It was first started in 1999 to celebrate the release of Episode I in Denver, CO. Since then, there’s been one at a different spot around the world every 1-2 years including a few in Europe, and one in Japan.

This year’s Celebration in Chicago was my first time attending, and it was an absolute blast. The big reveal this year was the title and first trailer of the upcoming film Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker: the final film to close out the 9 episode series that marks the definitive end of the Skywalker saga.

One of the first things you noticed while walking in is the absolutely enormous mural that spans each of the 9 films.

The very last panel represents Episode IX, and was releaved on the Friday right after the trailer came out.

It was cool to see how much work people put into costumes, how many people traveled from across the world to be there, and how everyone was glad to be around thousands and thousands of other people sharing a common interest. Here are my photos from throughout the day.