Back in March, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced that Xbox FanFest, originally conceptualized by Chris “Xbox FanFest Guy” Munson, would return later this year. In July, Sharma announced that 3,200 Xbox employees would lose their jobs, which she referred to as “the most significant restructure in Xbox history.” One of those 3,200 employees was Chris Munson.
As spotted by Eurogamer, the company still plans to move ahead with Xbox FanFest this year, even though the guy who helped create it won’t be there to help. Last night, on August 3, a new Xbox Wire blog post went live titled “Celebrating 25 Years of Play,” in which “Team Xbox” announced six new 2026 tour dates for Xbox FanFest across six different countries.
“The XBOX FanFest Tour is a global, multi-city run of fan-first events built around connection, local community, and the games we love,” reads the blog post, alongside the dates for tours in Tokyo, London, Mexico City, Sydney, and Toronto. “We kicked things off in Los Angeles at the XBOX Games Showcase, told you we were headed to Gamescom next, and today we’re sharing the rest of the stops.”
Presenting: our 2026 FanFest Tour dates 🥳
Your next chance to celebrate with the XBOX community starts here: https://t.co/edD1lp6lyl pic.twitter.com/rvHj0CLtdz
— XBOX (@XBOX) August 3, 2026
Back in March, when Asha Sharma originally announced that Xbox FanFest would return, Xbox’s CEO stated that she’d “heard clearly that our community values Xbox FanFest. As part of the return of Xbox, we made the decision to bring it back to LA to recognize the players who’ve been with us over the years.”
That statement rings somewhat hollow now, considering that hundreds of the key “players who’ve been with [Xbox] over the years” won’t be there to celebrate following Xbox’s latest round of layoffs. This, of course, includes Chris Munson, who announced in a post on LinkedIn on July 6 that he was one of the affected employees who was let go “after 15 1/2 years” at the company.
But hey, if you want to, as the Xbox Wire blog post puts it, “celebrate the joy of play” in the wake of its latest bloodbath, then you can enter the sweepstakes for a chance to win a ticket now. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to win one of those 25th anniversary translucent green Xbox Series X consoles that were given away last time. However, considering that an Xbox Series X will now set you back more than $900 in the UK and Europe, maybe they’ll hand out controllers this time around.
