Every September, downtown Salt Lake City sees dozens of Darth Vaders, Trekkies and superheroes. For 13 years, they have ushered in the fall season in Utah’s capital city.

But after next year, that will change — at least temporarily.

The Salt Palace Convention Center, where the FanX Pop Culture & Comic Convention is held, will be closed for three years starting in 2027. The center is undergoing renovations as part of a major downtown redevelopment project led by Ryan Smith, owner of the Utah Jazz and Utah Mammoth.

Dan Farr, the founder of FanX, said that closure poses “quite a challenge to deal with” for him and his team — especially since they use the full venue to host panels, celebrity keynotes, and all kinds of fandom-focused events and vendors.

“There is no way that it’s not going to be different than what it is now,” Farr said.

FanX will shift to Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy starting in 2028.

But that venue only has about a third of the space the event currently uses, Farr said. The Salt Palace is 987,000 square feet, with 515,000 square feet of contiguous exhibit space. The Mountain America Expo Center has 243,000 square feet of exhibit space.

When FanX started 13 years ago, Farr said his team planned to hold it at the Sandy convention center, but decided not to when they realized they wouldn’t be able to fit as many guests as they’d like.

The first FanX convention drew between 70,000 and 80,000 fans, making it the largest first-year comic con in the nation in 2013.

Moving the event to Sandy means downsizing things.

“It’s going to be at best probably half the size,” Farr said.

But Farr’s team has been working alongside Visit Salt Lake, which sells the Salt Palace to expos and groups, to find solutions.

One of those is to host two, half-capacity conventions per year in Sandy, which isn’t entirely new since FanX used to host two conventions a year until 2017.

But the changes for FanX won’t stop even after the Salt Palace renovations are done.

There will be changes to the downtown convention center that will impact FanX’s sprawling feel and large vendor floor. It’s unlikely the original layout can ever be replicated, Farr said.

“It’s also not going to be continuous, so people may have to go up one or two levels to get to other vendor areas,” he said. “It is definitely not optimal.”

Melissa Nagata, the owner of Nerf Herder Co., expressed her concern on social media. “It’s the biggest event I do every year,” she said.

Tyson Lybbert, the chief sales officer at Visit Salt Lake, said the Salt Palace hosts roughly 200 conventions a year, from FanX to a hunting expo to the Silicon Slopes Summit.

After renovations, Lybbert said the center will not be smaller, but will have a “different configuration.”

“This will make some changes necessary for [Farr’s] show and others,” Lybbert said. “The flow is probably what is impacted the most.”

Still, Farr said his convention is committed to the same thing it has been for the past 13 years — hosting the best possible fan experience. He has no plans to move it outside of Utah.

This year’s FanX convention — the final one in the Salt Palace’s current configuration — will take place from Sept. 24-26. Guests for this year include Helen Hunt, Rainn Wilson, Manny Jacinto and Ashley Greene.

Farr hopes people will come celebrate the big version of the convention while it lasts.

“It’s absolutely an end of an era from what it’s been traditionally,” Farr said. “My comfort is we still have the best fans in the world here in Utah … and we’ll all work together to figure out how to make it into something fun, something fantastic again.”

FanX will host two conventions in 2027 at The Salt Palace — in March and September — and then move to Sandy starting in 2028.

Correction • June 4, 10:31 a.m.: The story has been updated to correct the year that the FanX convention will relocate to the Mountain America Expo Center.