Xbox FanFest comes home to Seattle for the 25th anniversary
Microsoft is closing this year's eight-city FanFest tour at Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture on 12 November, three days before Xbox turns 25, with tickets given away by sweepstakes.
Xbox is taking FanFest home for its 25th birthday. The final stop of this year's eight-city FanFest tour lands at the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle on Thursday 12 November 2026, three days before the brand turns 25.
What is on at MoPOP
FanFest is pitched as a celebration of Xbox past, present and future, with hands-on gameplay, Xbox history and artefacts, trivia, collectibles, fan activities and an Xbox Gear pop-up shop. Attendees also get the chance to meet some of the people behind the games. Xbox says Seattle is the last of eight cities on this year's tour, and that it is bringing fans together in the city where it all began.
How to get in
Tickets are being given away rather than sold. Xbox is running a FanFest Seattle ticket sweepstakes, with winners selected at random and notified by email. Entrants and attendees must be 18 or older, and travel and lodging are not included. That giveaway closes on 11 October 2026 at 11:59pm PT. A second prize, the Green Ticket Trip sweepstakes, offers a trip for the winner and a friend to Seattle for the celebration. Both are open to eligible US residents aged 18 and over, and the full conditions sit in the official rules.
Why the Seattle stop matters
Xbox has spent 2026 marking its 25th anniversary with a run of tie-in announcements, from an Ikea furniture collection to a TCL smart-TV partnership, and FanFest has been part of that calendar all year. Ending the tour in the city where the original console was made is a neat piece of symmetry for a brand that has spent the year arguing publicly about its own direction: the anniversary hub is where much of that conversation is being staged, and a birthday party at MoPOP is as much a signal about what comes next as it is a victory lap.
Our opinion
A sweepstakes rather than a ticket sale is a shrewd way to fill a room, because it filters for the people who actually want to be there rather than the ones who can simply afford the trip. The travel-and-lodging exclusion does quietly narrow that field to Washington locals and anyone willing to fund a weekend for a free event, which is a strange place for a 25th-birthday party to land. The eight-city tour has been Xbox's most fan-facing gesture in a year otherwise dominated by job cuts and strategy resets, and finishing it in the city where the whole thing started is the right note to end on. What the anniversary actually delivers for the platform is still an open question, and no amount of green neon at MoPOP will answer it.