Denver’s StarFest, one of the country’s oldest pop-culture cons, calling it quits after 45 years

Denver convention StarFest, one of the longest-running pop-culture gatherings in the nation, has announced its final voyage.

The 45-year-old event, which debuted just two weeks before “Star Wars” hit theaters in 1977, will hold its last convention May 13-15 at the Hyatt Regency DTC. Celebrity guests scheduled to attend include Brent Spiner (Data from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Picard”); Terry Farrell (Dax from “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”); Michelle Hurd (“Picard”); and Zach McGowan (“Black Sails” and “The 100”).

“My kids were like three years old when we started,” said KathE Walker, who co-founded and has continued producing StarFest along with husband Stephen and sister Karoline Jobin. She said the end of StarFest does not spring from financial woes.

“Basically, we’re retiring,” she said. “None of us has ever gotten a paycheck from StarFest because it’s fan-run, and we’ve always put all the money into next year’s event.”

StarFest has hosted celebrities such as Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Francis Ford Coppola, Christian Bale and, of course, dozens of cast members from various “Star Trek” series and films, including William Shatner, Patrick Stewart and “Star Trek’s” first female captain to lead a series, Kate Mulgrew (“Star Trek: Voyager”).

StarFest is one of Denver’s original conventions for all things “Star Trek,” sci-fi, fantasy, horror and more, following the also-formative Mile High Con, which has continued to be literary-focused since it debuted in 1969. StarFest, however, was Denver’s first media-oriented convention that harnessed the passionate fandom for TV, film and comics.

In recent years, pop-culture conventions have evolved into a multibillion-dollar industry, moving steadily away from the mom-and-pop feel of the original conventions.

“I know the big cons — they’re out there. The one that’s now going to be in Denver, the Fan Expo … they have like 12 others they do throughout the country,” Walker said. “StarFest is just a different show. We have families who have been coming to us for decades, people who have gotten married here, and hosts and volunteers who have also been with us for decades.”

That kind of institutional knowledge will be impossible to replace in Denver’s pop-culture scene, but it’s not clear how many younger fans will care. StarFest has been upstaged in recent years by the event currently known as Fan Expo Denver (formerly Denver Pop Culture Con, formerly Denver Comic Con), with its million-square-foot layout at the Colorado Convention Center and dozens upon dozens of TV, film, comics and literary guests amid the panels, retail alleys, cosplay contests and performances.

That corporate event, and many others, owe a debt to the pioneering StarFest, which worked out the kinks in its industry long before it was even considered one. Its celeb meetings and autographs, cosplay (back before that term was coined in Japan), and cross-genre approach invited nerds, geeks and fanatics of all types who may have felt intimidated or ignored in other social environments.

Back when StarFest started, it was propelled by in-person meetups, such as clubs that gathered to pore over “Star Trek” episodes on VHS tape, Walker said. StarFest has since expanded to cons-within-cons, such as ArtFest, ComicFest, GameFest, HorrorFest, KlingonFest and ScienceFest.

“We try to do a little bit of everything and still not just dabble in it,” Walker said. “But it’s gotten so expensive. Hotel fees have gone up — and you can’t blame them during the pandemic, because they’ve been devastated — and it’s gotten really expensive to bring in actors.”