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 the fan convention 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. The exact sentence, from Jagex's release of 15 January 2026, is that "RuneFest 2026 will take place October 3-4 at the Birmingham NEC, doubling in size from RuneFest 2025 to host 6,000 fans".

So if you have seen people guessing Birmingham, they are right. Our reading is that the guessing happens 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, sitting in a Jagex press release rather than a game news post, which is not where a player would look.

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 says "October 3-4", 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 in Chicago on 20 June. Deadman is a version of Old School RuneScape where dying costs you far more than usual. The release says that show would be a competition between well-known players, run with the creator Solomission 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.

We say this every time a game charges more for more, so we will say it here too: none of that is game power. Gold Tier buys you a better seat and a better bag. It buys nothing that follows you back into Gielinor, the world RuneScape is set in. 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 new. There are 8 Skill Chips, which are real-world challenges based on the game's skills, plus a final reward chip for finishing all eight. And the event is running quests for the first time, 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

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 front page of RuneScape's events news list, which is as far as we looked.

So the venue for the bigger event is sitting on a corporate site, three months upstream of the page a player would actually find, and the other event's only home in what we read is that same release. Our reading is that this is why the guesses split between two cities. Nobody is being misled. The answer just is not filed where the question gets asked, and that is a thing a publisher can fix by repeating itself once.