We are standing down.

We are sad to announce that we are standing down from the race for the 2028 Worldcon. This decision has been made at a Crew-Committee Assembly today.

This decision comes from a mix of personal, organisational and timing reasons. Since our introduction at Smofcon in November, we have received wonderful support from volunteers, artists, experienced conrunners and communities across Central Europe. We are deeply grateful for that.

But as site selection begins, we have to be honest: we are not at the point where we would need to be in order to ask the community to vote for us and be ready to carry the responsibility of winning.

Our goal was never simply to be a winning bid. Our goal was to present the best German Worldcon we could imagine: a Worldcon in Nuremberg that would be transparent, welcoming, ambitious, and able to learn from other open community traditions. To do that properly, we need more time.

We still strongly believe that a Worldcon in Nuremberg could be a great Worldcon, and that building a stronger Central European Worldcon community matters for the future of Worldcon.

Sadly, that will not happen in 2028.

We hope to use the momentum, relationships and ideas that have grown around this bid to help build a stronger foundation for future European Worldcons. We are considering whether to bid again for a later year, but we have not made that decision yet.

For now, we want to thank everyone who supported us, donated to us, challenged us, advised us, volunteered, created art, shared ideas, and believed that Nuremberg could be part of Worldcon's future.

Thank you.

Florian & Ruben

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We also want to document what we have learned: about open volunteer structures, the Chair role, transparency, documentation, and how future Worldcons might become easier for new people to join. We hope some of that work can still be useful beyond this bid.

The rest of this site remains online as a record of the work we did. You can explore the pages above.