Halloween may still be two weeks away, but San Diego Comic-Con attendees got an early taste of tricks and treats this morning with the Returning Registration badge sale for 2027.

The first of two badge sales for next year’s convention was open exclusively to eligible returning general attendees today, meaning those who attended SDCC 2026 with a paid general attendee badge. For thousands of hopeful fans, it was their first chance to secure a ticket back to San Diego next summer, assuming the dreaded waiting room was feeling generous.

But was today’s sale a treat, or did some familiar registration nightmares come back to haunt us?

The Waiting Room

The waiting room opened right on time at 7:30am PT. For many, it behaved as expected, showing the clock ticking down to 9am PT.

Last year, you may recall that for many attendees, the background didn’t load, displaying only a white page with certain elements visible, since it was white text on a white background. This time, we saw exactly zero — yes, zero! — issues with the waiting room, which was an excellent start to the badge registration event.

As in the past, anyone could join the waiting room, as you aren’t prompted to login until you actually are selected to checkout after 9am. This doesn’t mean anyone could purchase — but if you wanted to spend your morning sitting in a waiting room (or help an eligible friend), you certainly could.

Everyone waited patiently for 9am (even if they also had a lot of anxiety), when the great randomization would begin.

 

The Sale

Shortly after 9am, those in the waiting room were randomized. Just like last year, the randomization happens very quickly, in which everyone is randomly assigned a place in line. A status bar and a toucan gives you a rough estimation of how long until you’d be able to purchase badges — for some, only a minute or two away, and for others, more than an hour.

 

From here, all you could do was wait. Sales started almost immediately, with several reporting getting in within the first few minutes.

@SD_Comic_Con 3 mins today! pic.twitter.com/bcddn7pk0v

— Alex (@_Alexis2424) October 17, 2026

 

There were a handful of issues, especially early on, but they seemed to be few and far between. Some though had issues with CAPTCHA, or with buttons not working.

For the most part, though, things ran very smoothly — with Preview Night selling out first (as it always does), at 35 minutes — slightly above last year’s 34 minutes. 

From there, it was very business-as-usual, with thousands of badges continuing to be sold. Eventually, Saturday sold out at 63 minutes, again right in line with 2026’s sell-out time of 65 minutes.

Friday was next, at 68 minutes, just under 2026’s time of 70 minutes.

Traditionally, Thursday and Sunday sell out at roughly the same time, and that continued to be true this year, with Thursday badges going first at 82 minutes (under 2026’s 84 minutes).

And finally, Sunday sold out at 90 minutes into the sale, just slightly above last year’s 88 minutes.

Overview & Next Steps

This was one of the smoothest Returning Registration sales we’ve seen over the years, on top of a pretty equally smooth Returning Registration last year. All of that bodes well for behind-the-scenes technical kinks having been worked out, and hopefully an equally-smooth Open Registration. 

Even if you walked away empty-handed today, it’s hard to deny that the technical gremlins that have haunted badge sales in recent years were largely absent this time around.

The good news is that according to our very un-scientific poll, it seems that the vast majority of our readers walked away from the sale with a badge — with 74% reporting as of press time that they were able to secure at least a single day badge.

That’s about on par with last year — and in even better news, only 2.9% reported a glitch (slightly up from last year’s 2.5%). If you were someone who was affected by an issue during today’s sale, we highly recommend you reach out to Comic-Con International here.

If you didn’t get everything on your wish list today, don’t despair just yet. Open Registration, which is open to anyone with a valid Member ID, is set for Saturday, November 14. All badge types will be available again, so just because a particular day sold out today doesn’t mean you’ve missed your chance. As long as you didn’t snag the full four days plus Preview Night during Returning Registration, you’ll have another opportunity to try for any missing days in November.

Badges will be mailed to the U.S. addresses in your Member ID. Make sure you verify your address.

As for all other badge types and hotels? Early Bird  will likely open in November shortly after Open Registratoin, and the General hotel sales should be sometime after Open Registration (likely in April). All other badge registration events (volunteer registration for those on the interest list, Trade Professionals, and more) will be at a later date.