About

About the Icon Festival

The Icon Festival for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Role-Playing is an annual festival which takes place on October 15-17th for the 23rd time. Icon is a red-letter day for fans of the SF&F (both literature and cinema) and RPGs, and its 3-day diverse program attracts people of all ages.

This year's festival theme is "Memories", and will consist of more than 400 events, including lectures, RPG sessions, panel discussions, movies, cosplay contests, LARPs, professional workshops, board games, comical and musical shows, as well as comics and anime events, providing a huge celebration for the science fiction and fantasy lovers and even much broader audiences.

Icon is produced by non-for-profit organizations that work all year long to promote fandom and creators of science fiction, fantasy and role-playing, and strive to make these genres more accessible to their audience. We also take pride in providing the stage to independent filmmakers and young authors.

The Icon Festival is a seminal cultural event, made possible due to the passion and hard work of hundreds of volunteers, from the festival director to the last but not least staff member. Their only reward is the festival itself as all income is used to pay for the facilities and cover expenses.

Guests of Honor at the Icon Festival

One of our most popular features at Icon is to meet world-class known authors, directors and actors. In previous years, we've had several guests during the festival or in surrounding events throughout the year, including Orson Scott Card, Neil Gaiman, John de Lancie, Tim Powers, Guy Gavriel Kay , Ted Chiang and others.

American author Ann Leckie was the Guest of Honor in 2018. Authors Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner also participated as special guests.

The 2019 Guest of Honor was the world famous American SF&F author Brandon Sanderson.

.Pictures from the festival can be found here

 

Accessibility Team

Please contact us via email: access@iconfestival.org.il

During the festival we're also available over the phone, at: 058-643-2082

 

The Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy 

The Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy was founded in May 1996 in order to promote and augment the fields of Science Fiction and Fantasy in Israel, and has been continuously active ever since. So far its activity included conventions, lectures about fantasy, science fiction and general science topics, premiere screenings of SF&F films, SF&F story-writing contests and much more. publishes an annual collection of original speculative fiction called “Once upon a future” and an online magazine – the Hebrew section of this very site. Both are, of course, in the Hebrew language. The society is a non-profit organization, and all its activities, as well as management, are performed by volunteers only.

Website: https://www.sf-f.org.il/en

The Israeli Role-Playing Society

Founded in 1999, its main goal is to promote role-playing games as mainstream hobby in Israel. It has organized hundreds of activities with the help of devoted volunteers, has published magazines and has taken part in the production of the "Icon", the Israeli Science Fiction, Fantasy and Role-Playing Festival, as well as the production of the annual Role Playing convention, "Bigor". With hundreds of active members, the Role-Playing Society runs a website, a newsletter and many groups around the country.

Website: www.roleplay.org.il

Previous screenings at the festival and conventions throughout the year

We are very proud to have been able to screen hundreds of independent and commercially distributed films, the majority of them free of charge to our audiences.

Here are some of the titles previously screened at the Icon Festival and Olamot Convention:

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