RuneFest 2026 runs on 3 and 4 October at the Birmingham NEC, and Jagex named that venue on 15 January 2026 in the release that opened its 25th-year plans. RuneFest is Jagex's own fan event for RuneScape, a long-running fantasy world people play online together. If you came looking for a Chicago show, that is a different event.

Where is RuneFest 2026?

The Birmingham NEC. Jagex's release of 15 January 2026 puts RuneFest 2026 "at the Birmingham NEC", gives the dates as October 3 and 4, and says the event doubles in size from RuneFest 2025 to hold 6,000 fans.

If you have seen Birmingham mentioned, that is the right city. Our reading is that the venue is easy to miss because RuneScape's own news post about the event, dated 17 April 2026, never names a place at all. It gives the dates, the tickets and the plans, and leaves the venue out. The venue was already three months old by then, and it sits in a Jagex press release rather than in that game news post.

The NEC is not new ground for the event either. When Jagex moved RuneFest 2025, its post of 3 July 2024 said it would host "RuneFest at the NEC in Birmingham, UK on March 1st-2nd, 2025". Same site, the next RuneFest along.

When is RuneFest 2026?

3 and 4 October, which is a Saturday and a Sunday. Both pages agree: Jagex's January release gives October 3 and 4, and RuneScape's post of 17 April says "This October 3rd & 4th". Neither one gives a start time for either day.

What is the Chicago event, then?

There is a real Jagex event in Chicago this year, and it is not this one. The same January release announced Deadman All-Stars Live at the Rosemont Theatre on 20 June. Deadman is a competitive version of Old School RuneScape, and the release calls this an elite Deadman Mode competition. It says top content creators and competitors will battle it out, with the creator Solomission.

The release says that would happen in front of a theatre audience and a livestream. Two events, two countries, two different months. If you searched for the Chicago one and landed on October dates, that is why.

How much are RuneFest 2026 tickets?

Standard tickets are GBP 210 and Gold Tier tickets are GBP 375, in both cases plus what Jagex calls a platform booking fee. The 17 April post says tickets were due to go live on Thursday 30 April at 16:00 BST, and Jagex's January release said they would be sold through RuneFest.com. We have not found a publisher page saying whether any are left, so we are not going to guess.

A standard ticket covers both days and comes with a goodie bag. Gold Tier adds an upgraded bag with a figurine, early access to the merch store, 15% off merch at the event, reserved seating at the front of the main stage, and priority booking for LAN sessions and meet and greets.

This site is hard on paid power, so it is worth being as plain when something looks like the opposite: nothing Jagex lists for Gold Tier is game power. Every one of the five perks above is a real-world thing. The April post says the standard bag is packed with exclusive gifts "including some 25th anniversary surprises", and never says what those are. So we cannot tell you either bag holds nothing for Gielinor, the world RuneScape is set in, only that nothing Jagex names is. That is the version of a premium tier we have no argument with. Jagex also writes in the April post: "We do not make our events or set ticket prices for profit in any way." That is its claim rather than ours, and it is a claim worth holding it to.

What is actually happening at the event?

Jagex's January release describes two permanent stages of reveals and developer sessions, plus meet and greets with staff and creators. RuneScape's April post fills that in: a second stage running all weekend for developer panels and question sessions, and the return of the props from last year, including the Lumby gates, the Grand Exchange and the Varrock fountain. Those are places in the game, rebuilt in the real world.

Two things there are worth calling out. The Skill Chips come back in new versions, 8 brand new challenges built on the game's skills, plus a final reward chip for finishing all eight. And the event is running quests, which the post says it has never done at RuneFest before, with quest points and a hiscore table for them, the same way the game tracks its own story missions.

Our take: two Jagex events, months apart, and why the search is a mess

	RuneFest 2026	Deadman All-Stars Live
Dates	3-4 October 2026	20 June 2026, already past
Place	Birmingham NEC, UK	Rosemont Theatre, Chicago, US
What it is	Jagex's fan event, two stages of reveals and developer sessions	The release calls it an elite Deadman Mode competition, and says it will see top content creators and competitors battle it out, with Solomission
Announced	Jagex release, 15 January 2026	The same release

Both were announced in one press release in January, and after that they went their separate ways. RuneFest got its own game news post in April with the tickets and the plans in it, and that post never says where the event is. Deadman All-Stars Live has no equivalent post on the first page of RuneScape's events news list, which is as far as we looked.

Jagex gives RuneFest 6,000 fans, and gives no capacity at all for the Chicago show in anything we read. RuneFest's venue sits on a corporate site three months upstream of the April post, and the other event's only home in what we read is that same release. That events list also carries a 25 Years of RuneScape entry dated 15 January 2026 that we did not open, so we cannot tell you whether the venue turns up in game news somewhere we did not look. Our reading is that the April post leaving the venue out is enough on its own to mix the two cities up, and that nobody is being misled: a publisher can fix this by repeating itself once, in the post a player actually reads.