The third Comic Con Astana international festival will take place in the Kazakh capital on July 25-28, reported the festival’s press service.

Comic Con Astana will last four days this year at the EXPO International Exhibition Center.

A highlight of the festival will be the international-scale cosplay contest with a total prize pool of 12 million tenge (over US$27,000). The cosplay contest jury will feature Trine, a talented cosplayer and skilled costume creator from Denmark, and Cinderys, a frequent winner of international championships and cosplayer from France.

The festival’s special guests will include video bloggers Chuck Review, Anastasiz, and Yan Topless, voice actors Vsevolod Kuznetsov, Petr Glanz, Islam Gunjayev, and Egor Vassilyev, and illustrator Djuney9.

Fans of “The Witcher” will be treated to the appearance of popular Geralt cosplayer Ben Schamma, aka Maul Cosplay, from Germany.

Another special guest will be Saikono Joker, the artist, producer, and original author of the “Tiny Bunny” visual novel and survival horror computer game.

The convention will also host Prince Lemon and Akonya, the founders and official voices of SoftBox studio, known for translating and voicing doramas and Korean films. Prince Lemon and Akonya are the talented voice actors Yuriy and Aruna Kim, a married couple from Kazakhstan.

Previous Hollywood celebrities hosted by Comic Con Astana were Pilou Asbæk, known for his role as Euron Greyjoy in the “Game of Thrones” series, Sean Gunn and Michael Rooker from “The Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Avengers: Endgame,” and Alexander Kuznetsov, an actor from “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.”

The festival program will feature meetings and autograph sessions, premieres, sneak previews and presentations, a cosplay show, authors’ alley, and performances by music artists and dance groups. Global studios will present their interactive entertainment booths at the festival.

The program will also include a geek fairground zone with themed goods, exclusive merch, and handmade stuff; a lecture zone hosting presentations and masterclasses from renowned local and foreign authors, bloggers, actors, artists, and other pop culture figures; a game zone with board games, VR, eSports tournaments, and retro consoles; a pop Asia exhibition zone dedicated to Asian pop culture from anime and manga to J-Pop and K-Pop; and a food court. For the youngest visitors, there will be a Kids’ area.

astanatimes.com