Bid Launches Into New Orbit
After almost two years of coasting through online convention bid tables and Zoom parties, the Seattle in 2025 Worldcon bid is accelerating to cruising velocity with the updating of our website, an appearance at DisCon III, creation of support tiers, release of new information, and plenty of metaphors to herald our progress towards hosting the first Worldcon in Seattle in 64 years. The original 1961 Seacon took place before the Seattle World’s Fair and the opening of the Monorail and Space Needle. We believe 64 years is too long an absence from the Emerald City. Does Worldcon still need us? Will you feed us your site selection votes? Science fiction fans—if we build it, will you come?
We Have Dates! And an Amazing Location!
Yes, while the fabric of society was unraveling this year, we were busy negotiating a shiny future in the Summit expansion of the Washington State Convention Center. Summit is a brand new, state-of-the-art convention facility under construction in the heart of downtown Seattle, next door to the current convention facility, and scheduled to open January 2023. We think that merits both exclamation points and the italics in the paragraph heading, and the objections of our editor were OVERRULED (all caps! hahahaha)!
The Summit has 250,000 square feet of exhibit space, 100,000 square feet of meeting room space configurable into up to 62 rooms, 58,000 square feet of ballroom space, and amazing views of the city, the mountains, and Puget Sound to be found inside 137,000 square feet of windowed lobby space. We took a hardhat tour earlier this month, and the space will be gorgeous and full of light. Ask us about the third-floor garden terrace! The plentiful power drops, superb pedestrian flow with no pinch points, accessibility features, and endless configuration options make our con-running hearts swell three sizes. (Seattle also has superb medical facilities.)
Food and beverage outlets can be placed anywhere in the halls, and by 2025 the neighborhood will be bursting with life. We toured half a dozen neighboring hotels and have offers from 12 hotels for over 2,000 peak room nights within a five-block radius of Summit, some as near as across the street, ready for signing after the site selection vote. This pairs with our right-of-first-refusal offer from Visit Seattle, our city partners in bringing Worldcon to Seattle. Knowing the hiccups of past Seattle bids, we have been talking to Visit Seattle for the better part of two years, and can report that they like us, they get us, and sound as if they’re as excited about it as we are (impossible!).
I can bury the lede no longer. Mark your calendars! If the Seattle bid is selected, the dates of the 83rd Worldcon will be August 13–17th, 2025.
We Are Ready to Gratefully Accept Your Support
It takes resources to throw a Worldcon. Our parent organization, Seattle Genre Alliance, is a newly registered nonprofit corporation in Washington State, with 501(c)(3) status pending. We have a bank account, an updated website, and are ready to accept your donations. You can support us at Tall ($50), Grande ($150) or Triple Shot ($300) levels, with a dollar-for-dollar credit towards an adult attending membership to the Worldcon if our bid is selected. Triple Shot supporters will receive special tokens of our gratitude at unexpected times!
All of this and more can be found at https://www.seattlein2025.org. Click now! We’ll wait.
Come See Us at DisCon III and Get Limited (First) Edition Swag!
Seattle 2025 will appear at DisCon III on Friday, December 17, on the panel Future Worldcons: 2024 to Infinity and Beyond! at 7 p.m. in the Palladian Ballroom, with a PowerPoint presentation and answers to your questions. While due to the circumstances–look around!–we won’t have enough people onsite to staff a club table or host a room party, bid co-chair SunnyJim Morgan will be found appearing on costume and con-running panels and staffing program ops, while bid member Kevin Black will be helping with programming and logistics and attending panels and events. We will have a limited amount of exclusive Seattle 2025 merchandise with us—emblazoned umbrellas ($20), stainless steel travel mugs ($15), and ribbons (free!)—for sale or giveaway to lucky collectors. We may make more, or it may be your only chance to seize these particular items.
We Also Need Your Help
Our list of open positions is under construction but… between us, we need a lot of help. For the bid we can use folks to assist with content creation for the newsletter/blog, promotions, graphic design, social media, and fundraising/sponsorships. We also need as many people as possible to help spread the word at conventions around the globe. If you have other interests and talents, reach out to us. We are also starting to recruit for staff positions in 2025 if the bid is selected. Contact us through our website, or at seattle2025worldconbid@gmail.com.
Thank you for reading! We hope to see you in Seattle in 2025!