About the World Cosplay Summit

The World Cosplay Summit (also known as WCS), is an annual international cosplay event that promotes friendly international exchange through Japanese pop culture. The event is hosted by TV Aichi and held in Nagoya, Japan. Since 2005 the event has held a cosplay contest, the World Cosplay Championship, thus the preliminary contests for the championship have been held in the respective countries of the participants.

Because of the keen attention from abroad, as of 2008, three ministries of Japan give support to the event; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT), and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).

Since 2005, the event is held over a two day period; the Cosplayer Parade is on the first day and the Cosplay Championship is on the second day.

The preliminary contest in Germany take place on the annual national convention “Connichi” in Kassel (Hessen) .The Convention had 2008 over 15,000 visitors and is getting even more popular in the fan scene.

In 2009 there will be 15 teams from 15 different countires who will participate in the contest:

Australia, Brazil, China (PRC), Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, Thailand and the United States

(from http://www.wikipedia.org)