Art Toy Con is coming to Cali for the first time on Saturday 8 and Sunday 9 August 2026, setting up a free two-day convention at Comfandi Campus E Centro, Calle 8 #6-23, in central Cali, though visitors still have to register online in advance. The event runs from 12:00 to 20:00 and brings limited-edition figures, live painting and collectors into a venue that turns culture into a managed, ticketed flow of bodies and attention.
Who Gets In, Who Gets Counted
Entry is free. That sounds generous until the registration gate shows up. The convention may not charge at the door, but it still asks people to sign up online before they can walk in, a familiar little checkpoint dressed up as access. Art Toy Con has run in Colombia since 2016 under the Artefacto Inc banner, led by Iván Darío Espinel, and for its Cali debut it is co-organised with the local collective El Sótano Fanzine. The names matter because the scene is not floating in some pure creative commons. It’s being arranged, branded and administered.
The event is built around art toys, described as collectible design pieces that mix contemporary art, pop culture, illustration and nostalgia. They’re designer objects, often hand-finished and produced in small batches. That scarcity is the point. The hunt becomes the product. Collectors chase numbered editions, rare colourways and sold-out collaborations with the same fever usually reserved for limited sneakers or first-edition prints. The market logic is plain enough. Make it scarce, make it desirable, make people compete.
The Scene Below the Brand
The convention brings illustrators, sculptors, graffiti artists and graphic designers who turn their visual language into three-dimensional form. A single figure might reference a classic cartoon, a street-art character or a purely abstract shape, and it is typically produced in a numbered edition. Prices vary widely depending on the artist’s profile, the edition size and the complexity of the sculpt. In other words, even the art object gets sorted by hierarchy.
Art Toy Con sets up at Comfandi Campus E Centro, a cultural and events venue in central Cali. The two-day format lets visitors drift between exhibitor tables, watch artists work and return to figures they’ve been eyeing. Palm-sized vinyl characters sit alongside larger resin statement pieces. The whole setup invites browsing, but it also keeps the collector circuit moving, with value and access shaped by who made the piece, how many exist and how quickly they disappear.
The convention arrives on ground already prepared by Cali’s homegrown Toy Melo fair, which has staged free editions in the San Antonio neighbourhood since 2024. That grassroots festival, with its colonial houses and independent cafés as a backdrop, built the collector base and artist network that the bigger convention now joins. The two events are separate, but they feed the same growing scene. Toy Melo’s free editions matter because they show what people build without the velvet rope first. The bigger convention follows the trail.
What the City Sells as Culture
Cali has long been known internationally for salsa, but its creative economy is diversifying. Events like Art Toy Con add a new layer to the city’s cultural identity and connect it to global design trends while keeping a local character. The convention also strengthens the corridor between Colombia’s creative hubs, since artists who show in Cali often appear later at events in Bogotá or Medellín.
That’s the official story: culture, diversity, creative economy, connection. The other story is simpler. A branded convention enters a city where a grassroots fair already did the work of building the scene, then folds that energy into a larger circuit of collectors, exhibitors and managed access. The art may be hand-finished. The structure isn’t. It runs on registration, scarcity and the quiet discipline of the market.