CFC NEWSLETTER, JUNE-JULY 2026 — NATTY HARBOR SHENANIGANS
To our future attendees,
We have a great deal to discuss in this newsletter, but first, we would like to thank everyone who was able to make our Happy Hour event at Live K Karaoke on June 19th! We really appreciate the roughly 125 of you that came out to sing and have some fun with us!! We additionally would like to thank DC Fur Meet for partnering with us for that event, we wouldn't have been able to have it without them.
In other news, the Live K Karaoke event also kicked off our staff site visit at the Gaylord from June 19th to June 21st. We were able to gather a great deal of information at both the hotel and surrounding National Harbor and we have some really exciting ideas on how best to utilize the space and area. We're happy to share some of the important things we learned with you as well as some other major announcements we've been brewing!
Newsletter Delays and Date Changes!
As many of you have seen by now, we have adjusted our convention dates to February 18 to February 21, 2027. This movement of our convention dates is the cause for the delay in posting this newsletter. We appreciate your patience and continued support!
As stated in the social media announcement, the dates were shifted due to a mistake on the Hotel's side. Without going into much detail, our original dates overlapped with an event that was not ideal for both events and our event's attendees. Both events were unaware of the overlap until the hotel realized the error and reached out to us. The hotel worked diligently to rectify the issue and offered us dates exactly one week prior to our original dates. All event planning has stayed the same, with the exception of shifting our room block's launch to August.
The Live K Karaoke Event
The event at Live K Karaoke went phenomenally. We would like to take the time to thank everyone that came out for making it a success. Additionally, we would like to thank the following people for assisting making this event work:
- DJ Kaito
- DJ Novocaine
- DJ HanIsAlive
- RalekArts
- Aurora
- NightSkies
- Racky
- Bowser
- Neptune
- Howie
- The Live K Karaoke Staff
- And everyone else on staff who attended this event!
We also would like to thank the locals who were out at the National Harbor and hope that our attendees also enjoyed the freedom day festivities that were going on during the event. Those live bands that they had playing outside absolutely slapped! For those of you who have never been to National Harbor before, this is the local township that hosts our convention hotel and we will likely be having overlapping community events of a similar nature in February. It's one of the many reasons we're so excited to be hosting CFC at the National Harbor!
The Staff Site Visit
CFC has a few staff that work or attend MAGFest, the 20k+ attendance video game music festival that also happens in the Gaylord. So, we benefit from having people knowledgeable about the venue on our team. However, with us not expecting quite that attendance number in our first year, and there being some difference with us being a furry convention, we still had plenty of things to learn and think about while at the Gaylord.
We had the majority of our core staff on site to review all of the rooms, plus there were a number of smaller events happening during our stay that allowed us to see how the space could be used in different ways. We were also able to get measurements of the space as well as see a few things that weren't marked on the hotel floorplans.
While there we also did sound testing in both the hotel rooms as well as the event space. We were really impressed with the sound deadening and are confident that even louder rooms won't be bothering their neighbors. This hotel has loud groups going through it very regularly (while we were there, a fraternity was doing an alum meetup and they got LOUD), and we're confident that, with it designed in mind of this, noise complaints will be pretty minimal.
All around, the feedback we got from the staff that were onsite who hadn't attended an event at this hotel was that they were impressed. Gaylords are designed to have great amenities, awesome entertainment options, and incredible atmospheres, and the Gaylord National is absolutely no exception. We're thankful that with our amazing venue, as well as the absolutely incredible local, walkable area around the hotel, that CFC will have one of the best convention spaces a furry convention could ask for. (Did we mention there's a bar called the Cadillac Ranch across the street from the hotel with a mechanical bull?? And we asked nicely… And we did in fact get to ride it in fursuit 😉).
We also learned a few logistical things our attendees will be interested in, such as parking rates around the area, which we'll have on our website as soon as we can. As well as confirmation on some things that will be closed in the winter during our event like the pool bar. (The pool will remain open, it's indoors, the pool bar sadly is not).
More Arts n' Crafts
The art team at CFC has been busy! We're excited to reveal our second event mascot whom several of you have seen already on social media! Introducing Thistle!
Art by BagelBytes
This is a non-binary hyena, they are leading the science team preparing for the launch of our space expedition. You can expect to see them on some of our upcoming merch, like this design that we'll have shirts at our dealing tables at other cons, as well as at our con store in February:
Art by Bedtime Kitty
Additionally, Lighter has been hard at work finalizing Jet's reference sheet for you all to feast your eyes on! Please enjoy:
Art by Lighter
Can we just say, y'all REALLY seem to like Jet… And we do too. A t-shirt will be available for Jet in a similar style to Thistle's. Please note that both of these shirts will go through a few revisions as we get closer to the convention and nail down preferred production materials.
Some Announcements
With all of that, we'd like to leave everyone off with a few quick announcements:
- We're planning to reveal the third and final mascot for CFC next month!
- We were planning to have our hotel room block open as originally planned in July, but the date movement has caused a delay. Please be on the lookout for updates. We'll send out emails and post notifications once we have a set date.
- Our vendor hall applications are open! Apply now until August 31st!
- Our DJ and performer applications will be opening this month! Please be on the lookout for a social media announcement!
- We'll be vending at the July DCFM!
On that note, we appreciate your continued support and look forward to seeing some of you at DCFM!
Interested in learning more and getting involved with our community and talking to our staff? Join our Discord and Telegram!