Scotiacon Live

An Update on 2027 Registration Hello folks! 2026 was the largest convention we've ever had and registration was busier than ever. Due to the huge demand and the speed at which rooms sold, we wanted to let you know that in 2027 we will operate residential registration on a lottery basis. Let's talk about why and how it will work. In 2026 we had 2,335 attendees join us in Glasgow, nearly 40% more than in 2025. Almost half of these registered at the opening of registration and, on review, we saw the Crowne Plaza sold out of rooms in less than ten minutes. This presents both attendees and our Reg team with a number of problems. These issues include: - Attendees must be available at an arbitrary date and time - The process penalises those with more to type - e.g medical details - The process is biased against those who need longer to complete forms - Attendees may be rushed into giving incomplete or incorrect information With all this in mind, to provide the fairest and most accessible registration experience possible, we took the decision to move to a lottery approach, giving people time to complete the details fully and at their leisure before we allocate the rooms randomly across the accumulated registrations. The timeline is below; here's how it will work. Registration will initially be open for two weeks. When you register during that period has no bearing on if you receive a room or not. After that, eligible registrations will be randomly drawn into rooms and outcomes sent to attendees within 3 days. To be eligible for the lottery, you must have completed a registration and successfully created a room share with a partner. Incomplete or registrations without a completed room share will not be entered into the lottery, so be sure to check that everything is completed before the two week mark! When you receive a confirmation, if you have been assigned a room, you do not need to pay immediately. Payment requests will be sent over the following four weeks. Payment is due once you've received a payment request and both members of the room share must then pay within seven days. If you are unsuccessful in the lottery, remaining registrations will be drawn into a waiting list and any late registrations will join the same waiting list. As in previous years, registrations in the waiting list can switch to non-residential and arrange their own accommodation at any time. If you are only seeking a non-residential registration, the process is similar to previous years and you may register at any point while we remain open. We'll start to work these after the initial lottery outcomes are processed, so don't worry if you don't receive an immediate request for payment. As in previous years, we'll announce regularly how we're getting on with the process and whether we are ahead or behind of expectations. We don't anticipate running out of non-residential registrations, but if we see such growth that we need to close early, we'll give as much notice as possible. We realise not everyone will welcome a lottery, but we believe this is the best way to make registration fair and accessible; we hope the majority of attendees will agree. Now, with that said, one question remains: when does registration open? Come back in a few days and let's talk about that...