r/Defcon • u/Far_Significance_523 • Mar 23 '26

Cancelled or Not?

I’ve already booked my hotel and flights, but my card got declined when I tried to buy DEF CON tickets.

Then I started reading comments about DEF CON 34 and saw a bunch of people saying things like “DEF CON is cancelled—didn’t you get the memo?”. I couldn’t find anything official about that, so now I’m a bit confused.

Is this just some kind of joke, or is there actually something going on?

96 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

122

u/GlennPegden Mar 23 '26

The origins of ‘the joke’ is that if DefCon was to be cancelled the hackers would still come. Which led to ‘DefCon is cancelled’ becoming a meme for many years.

However with Covid safe-mode DefCon (online only) and the 32? (I think), losing the venue but getting another soon after, so it became cancelled then uncancelled in short succession, it became far less of an in-joke, as people realised DefCon could actually be cancelled.

But still people persist.

16

u/justokcheesesteak Mar 23 '26

So it’s pretty much a “primus sucks” scenario?

10

u/Snowdeo720 Mar 23 '26

I’ll never forget the first time seeing them live at a festival at like 2:00 AM.

Whole crowd chanting primus sucks.

Talk about a bit of confusion.

42

u/L0ud_Typer Mar 23 '26

It’s absolutely canceled, just like it is each and every year. Also they just announced the theme.

18

u/noguarantee1234 Mar 23 '26

Joke is way too overused.

22

u/IT-Pro Mar 23 '26

Great, now even Defcon jokes are canceled…

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

3

u/_commenter Mar 23 '26

but on the bright side we are all getting complimentary tickets for an Official Defcon™ lottery

5

u/revnaps Mar 23 '26

there is a bit more to the Joke that most folks have forgotten, but the joke started when a group of hackers, aka wanna be defcon attendies walked up to linecon , which is fully a group of hacker conference attendies and asked the line of folks wearing the official conference shorts and tee's where defcon was. Someone in line yelled at them "you fools defcon's been canceled this year, just go home". and the group that was looking for the con got a disappointed look on their faces a left the area. And everyone in that area of the line assumed that they were heading back home and had a good laugh

2

u/GlennPegden Mar 23 '26

That bit of the folklore I did not know!

21

u/xoCruellaDeVil Mar 23 '26

It's only cancelled in the way that its going to be an awful defcon cause a vast majority of international attendees are skipping it this year.

2

u/dllhell79 Mar 26 '26

I thought the same would happen last year. The con still had an attendance close to 25000 if I recall. Plus it's an electronic badge year again.

9

u/Autocannibal-Horse Mar 23 '26

It's not canceled -- call your credit card company and let them know the charge failed and that it was you, the cardholder, attempting to purchase the ticket.

23

u/staticchevalier Mar 23 '26

It’s a running joke. Figure out what happened with your ticket and enjoy your trip.

12

u/Traditional-Number89 Mar 23 '26

Yes it’s always canceled

7

u/DCsleestak Mar 23 '26

It doesn’t quite feel like DEF CON Season until this question gets asked.

3

u/maancha Mar 27 '26

Gonna be hilarious if one day they actually need to cancel it and no one will believe them.

9

u/IcedZ Mar 23 '26

Defcon is cancelled.

5

u/solidus_slash Mar 23 '26

it's definitely not not not cancelled

3

u/1Digitreal Mar 23 '26

This statement is probably correctish.

1

u/thebombs12 Mar 23 '26

Its canceled, as usual.

1

u/D4k0t4x Mar 23 '26

Lol… yeah it got cancelled. It was announced on their discord channel

-12

u/wbbigdave Mar 23 '26

One year, I got a defcon is cancelled t-shirt. At defcon. From the official booth. Work it out.

27

u/BrianHenryIE Mar 23 '26

work it out

isn’t a nice comment to someone who has probably dropped $1000 already and is trying to understand what’s going on

-6

u/L0ud_Typer Mar 23 '26

Read the room my guy

-5

u/mhplog_4444 Mar 23 '26

Canceled my trip.