HoYo Fest returned with larger venues and even larger crowds this year.
HoYoverse’s annual video game festival HoYo Fest has officially come to an end, bringing merchandise, stage activities, unique rewards, and more for the masses of HoYo fans in Southeast Asia. The GosuGamers team visited HoYo Fest events in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines to check out what HoYoverse had in store for us this year.
Here’s everything we saw at the event:
HoYo Fest Malaysia 2025
This year’s iteration of HoYo Fest in Malaysia may have shifted locations by a few floors, but nonetheless remained within the confines of the Pavilion Bukit Jalil shopping mall. Where last year’s HoYo Fest took place in the mall’s Centre Court on the ground floor, the event has now moved up to the Exhibition Centre on the fifth floor. When this change was first announced, I saw it as an early sign that HoYo Fest was expanding in size–but it is now clear that it was simply trying to accommodate its gargantuan crowd.
I headed down to HoYo Fest on Thursday (24 July), figuring that opening day would yield a crowd of diehard HoYoverse fans–given that most people would have had to take a leave day to pop up there. I was not disappointed in that regard, as the crowd was truly massive. Hordes of excited visitors lining up to enter the event would only thin out an hour or two after the event opened its doors.
Keep in mind that this was on a Thursday–we hear that on Saturday, visitors queued for almost five hours just to get into the event. The fact that this year’s HoYo Fest was a paid-for ticketed event seems to have not impeded passionate visitors from trawling its booths and stage events.
Even inside the actual convention, the queues were long. Those lucky enough to have been the first to get into the convention hall might’ve been able to tick off booth activities in a matter of minutes. However, from 12pm onwards, most booths had an almost hour-long queue–saying nothing of the queue for the merchandise store, which saw a constant stream of bodies despite its rapidly waning supplies.
These queues are what separate HoYo Fest from other conventions of its kind. Of the masses in attendance, few of them were actually walking around and exploring the event. Most stayed in line to score postcards and merchandise, and those who played more than one HoYo game would have had to repeat the ordeal at different booths.
Truthfully, after several years of HoYo Fest, most fans now attend the event with full understanding that they’ll have to brave long queues for merchandise and souvenirs. They don’t do it because they have to. They do it for love of the game.
Additional reporting by Timothy Raj Augustin.
HoYo Fest Philippines 2025
HoYo Fest has always drawn in massive crowds of fans in the Philippines. So, I thought HoYoverse’s decision to move the venue away from SM Megamall to the SMX Convention Center–and implement paid tickets–this year was a prudent one to ease the event’s ever-present overcrowding issue. But with storms and flooding ravaging the country ahead of HoYo Fest, I assumed the crowd this year would be much smaller.
But when I headed down to the opening day of HoYo Fest on Thursday (24 July), I was immediately proven wrong. Despite the torrential downpour, there were still long lines of diehard fans queuing up to buy official merchandise and participate in booth activities. After talking to a few attendees, I found out that some of them were in line as early as 8PM the previous night, while others traveled from places like Baguio and Cebu just to attend. Truly, it was foolish of me to underestimate the Filipino fanbase of HoYoverse games.
But was HoYo Fest worth the trouble of having to brave constant rain and flooding? Even with a new venue and paid tickets, the lines were as long as ever. Merchandise still sold out as soon as they were restocked, with a fair few fans not even getting the chance to buy anything.
The new Artist Alley helped greatly in that regard, offering attendees other merchandise they could take home if they didn’t want–or didn’t get the chance– to buy official ones. It also helped to support the local artist scene, of course, giving them a chance to reach out to a dedicated and lucrative customer base. With the Philippines having such a vibrant local artist scene, the Artist Alley was frankly a long overdue addition to HoYo Fest. It took a while for it to be added, but its value was immediately apparent for all parties involved.
If you wanted to cosplay or see cosplayers, then HoYo Fest was also a great chance to get some pictures taken and interact with your peers. You could also participate in the various activities, and they would have been a nice way to kill some time and have fun–assuming you can survive the lines.
But if the attendees I talked to can be believed, the real draw of HoYo Fest has always been the community experience, and that remained true this year.
You can be a fan of Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero (or all three); you can come in cosplay or your usual attire; be a dedicated fan for years or an eager newcomer; but the real reason you come to HoYo Fest is to meet and have fun with fellow fans. Of course, you’re gonna have to queue for hours and brave all the problems that come with a crowded convention. But if a fun community experience is what you’re after, then this year’s HoYo Fest offered just that–making it yet another successful one, despite all the lingering issues.
Additional reporting by Kurt Lozano.
HoYo Fest Singapore 2025
This year’s HoYo Fest in Singapore was held in a convention hall in Suntec Singapore Convention* Exhibition Centre for the first time, after previous iterations were held in cafes and the atrium of a shopping mall (*also Suntec City).
The event is also now a ticketed one. With a larger space for booths, there is also now an all-new Artist Alley for fan art and merchandise. Some of the booth owners were just artists doing fan art as a side hobby simply because they love the games, but their excitement to be in an event like HoYo Fest was palpable.
The biggest attraction of HoYo Fest was undoubtedly the official merchandise booth. Fans had to be quick to get separate timed tickets to enter the queue for the merchandise booth, because some of the merchandise was selling really quickly when I arrived at noon on the first day of the event (the PR representative also told me that there was no guarantee there would be restocks the next few days).
There were also game booths for four HoYoverse games (i.e. Genshin Impact, Honkai Impact 3rd, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero) where fans can get holographic tickets which come with redemption codes for in-game rewards after completing certain activities.
Besides the activation in the Genshin Impact booth, which required participants to throw balls to knock down plushies, the other activities at the other booths felt a little more lacklustre, and the game booths got generally less busy than the other areas of the event hall later in the afternoon.
There was also a stage where, depending on the schedule, fans can do a sing-along session to songs like Zenless Zone Zero's Burning Desires with guest cosplayers, as well as an Experience Zone where fans can experience the games HoYoverse has to offer (although I do question the nous of a play area for an event aimed squarely at… fans of the games).
Evidently, HoYo Fest 2025 was a success with tickets sold out for all three event days in Singapore, echoing the immense popularity of the HoYoverse games (even on a Friday afternoon).
Additional reporting by Jay Chan.
The future of HoYo Fest
HoYo Fest seems to be expanding exponentially year-on-year, but it continues to struggle to match the tenacity of HoYoverse’s own playerbase. Hosting the event in bigger venues was a good call this year, as it allowed organisers to keep more visitors inside the convention than outside. It's worth noting that, according to HoYoverse, tens of thousands of people visited HoYo Fest across six different countries. With one more Honkai game on its way, the developer shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. We only expect that number to climb next year.
The problems that we faced in this year’s iteration of HoYo Fest were also present last year, however–from the long queues to the somewhat underwhelming booths–so we’re crossing our fingers and hoping that future HoYo Fests improve on these aspects too.
With that said, HoYo Fest continues to showcase just how dedicated the playerbases for HoYoverse's various titles are, here in Southeast Asia at least. While the long lines and inadequate stock of merchandise are always bothersome, they are undeniable signs of the sheer pull that these games have. Hopefully, next year's HoYo Fest can deliver an even better experience that can match the continued dedication of the fans of HoYoverse's games.
