08/25/2026
Staunton’s magic is bigger than one story.
When Queen City Mischief & Magic began, it was inspired by a single magical world that brought people together in an incredible way. What started as a one-story specific festival has grown over the years into something we never could have imagined—a celebration of magic, imagination, creativity, fantasy, and the wonderfully weird people who love them.
And we think that’s something worth celebrating.
Because magic doesn’t belong to one story. It belongs to all of us.
Over the years, mermaids and Wookies and villains and Borgs and aliens and have joined our witches and wizards. New characters, new fandoms, new performers, new artists, and new ways to experience the fantastical have found a home at Queen City Mischief & Magic. And this year, we’re opening the doors even wider.
We’re especially excited to explore a new world this year that highlights the powerful themes of finding your people, embracing what makes you different, and refusing to let someone else decide where you belong.
Those ideas matter to us.
We also want to be clear about something that matters even more: everyone belongs at Queen City Mischief & Magic.
Trans people belong here. LGBTQ+ people belong here. People who have loved these stories for decades belong here. People who have complicated feelings about the stories that first brought them here belong here. And people who have never read the original stories belong here, too.
We can not control another person’s words or actions, but we can choose what kind of community we create.
For that reason, for this post, we are leaving comments off. We recognize that we can never please everyone, but recently, many of our comments sections have turned into battlegrounds between followers of many different mindsets turning against each other in nasty and ugly ways. That is not who we are. So we choose not to allow that for a post this important today.
And we choose kindness.
We choose inclusion.
We choose imagination.
We choose belonging.
So if you’ve been with us since the beginning, thank you. If you found us somewhere along the way, welcome. And if you’ve never joined us before, we hope you’ll come see what happens when the magic gets a little bigger.
Queen City Mischief & Magic isn’t leaving its history behind. We’re building on it.
Magic is for everyone.
Magic lies within.
