Military uniforms, horns and “sexual deviations”: what cosplay festivals are banning in 2026
Festivals across Russia are imposing restrictions for fear of denunciations and fines. Verstka examined the rules of 130 events — the ban on “LGBT propaganda” is the most common of all.
In the fifth year of the war, Russian cosplay festivals have accumulated a thicket of restrictions: banned items include military uniforms, “satanic” imagery, songs by “foreign agents” and anything that can be read as “LGBT propaganda.” The outlet Verstka studied the rules of 130 festivals held in Russia in 2026 and found how the industry balances between repressive legislation and self-censorship. Organizers impose the restrictions out of fear of denunciations, inspections and fines.
“LGBT propaganda” is the most common banThe ban on “LGBT propaganda” appears more often than any other — in 81 cases out of 130. Most often it targets crossplay, that is, cosplaying a character of another gender, and most strictly of all for men. At the Moscow festival Toguchi, “skirts and dresses on males, as well as women's wigs and makeup” are banned; at HALLOWEEN PARTY cosplay “must conform to gender norms.” Two Moscow festivals, LYubfest and DEDfest, banned women from wearing false beards, seeing in them “propaganda of sex change”; at Tianxia-Fest a minimum distance between performers was set — 20 centimetres — so that a paired act could not be taken as a demonstration of “non-traditional relations.” Cosplayers told Verstka that scandals with threats of denunciation erupted over a “kiss” that merely seemed to happen between two female participants.
Military uniforms, religion, the “occult”Almost as often — in 66 cases out of 130 — military uniforms and military cosplay are restricted. Bans cover both the uniforms of current security forces and, at some festivals, any military imagery at all, including historical: the rules of Tyumen's Kitsune Chibi Fest disallow “military uniform from the period after 1900.” These fears are not groundless: in 2024 an organizer in Astrakhan was fined 30,000 rubles for “discrediting” the army over a joke chevron with the letter Z. In a further 37% of cases, religious and “occult” themes are off-limits — crosses, pentagrams, horns, demonic imagery — which is why events that are Halloween-themed in all but name avoid the very word “Halloween” in their titles.
“There is a great deal of self-censorship”A separate layer of restrictions is tied to the “foreign agents” law (mentioned in the rules of 30 festivals) and to the register of “extremist materials”: some events ban songs by “foreign agents,” while others require cosplayers to check their chosen fandom against the Justice Ministry's website in advance. Participants themselves, speaking to Verstka, agree that most restrictions are driven by a wish to play it safe. “There is a great deal of self-censorship, and that's the problem. Few people think these are reasonable restrictions,” says a cosplayer named Andrei. According to participants, the restrictions are “becoming ever more unpredictable”: a performance prepared over a year may be barred “over some nonsense.”
Source: Verstka (by Ivan Smurov).
In the fifth year of the war, Russian cosplay festivals have accumulated a thicket of restrictions: banned items include military uniforms, “satanic” imagery, songs by “foreign agents” and anything that can be read as “LGBT propaganda.” The outlet Verstka studied the rules of 130 festivals held in Russia in 2026 and found how the industry balances between repressive legislation and self-censorship. Organizers impose the restrictions out of fear of denunciations, inspections and fines.
“LGBT propaganda” is the most common banThe ban on “LGBT propaganda” appears more often than any other — in 81 cases out of 130. Most often it targets crossplay, that is, cosplaying a character of another gender, and most strictly of all for men. At the Moscow festival Toguchi, “skirts and dresses on males, as well as women's wigs and makeup” are banned; at HALLOWEEN PARTY cosplay “must conform to gender norms.” Two Moscow festivals, LYubfest and DEDfest, banned women from wearing false beards, seeing in them “propaganda of sex change”; at Tianxia-Fest a minimum distance between performers was set — 20 centimetres — so that a paired act could not be taken as a demonstration of “non-traditional relations.” Cosplayers told Verstka that scandals with threats of denunciation erupted over a “kiss” that merely seemed to happen between two female participants.
Military uniforms, religion, the “occult”Almost as often — in 66 cases out of 130 — military uniforms and military cosplay are restricted. Bans cover both the uniforms of current security forces and, at some festivals, any military imagery at all, including historical: the rules of Tyumen's Kitsune Chibi Fest disallow “military uniform from the period after 1900.” These fears are not groundless: in 2024 an organizer in Astrakhan was fined 30,000 rubles for “discrediting” the army over a joke chevron with the letter Z. In a further 37% of cases, religious and “occult” themes are off-limits — crosses, pentagrams, horns, demonic imagery — which is why events that are Halloween-themed in all but name avoid the very word “Halloween” in their titles.
“There is a great deal of self-censorship”A separate layer of restrictions is tied to the “foreign agents” law (mentioned in the rules of 30 festivals) and to the register of “extremist materials”: some events ban songs by “foreign agents,” while others require cosplayers to check their chosen fandom against the Justice Ministry's website in advance. Participants themselves, speaking to Verstka, agree that most restrictions are driven by a wish to play it safe. “There is a great deal of self-censorship, and that's the problem. Few people think these are reasonable restrictions,” says a cosplayer named Andrei. According to participants, the restrictions are “becoming ever more unpredictable”: a performance prepared over a year may be barred “over some nonsense.”
Source: Verstka (by Ivan Smurov).