2024 Pacific Bonsai Expo updates

We have a lot of news to share about this year’s event! I’ll provide the highlights below and will follow up with more detailed info over the coming months.

First up, we’ll be hosting the event at a…

New Venue!

For the 2024 Pacific Bonsai Expo we’ll be moving the event to a new venue: the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts in Oakland, California.

The venue is located next door to the Oakland Museum on the shores of Lake Merritt, just across the lake from the Bonsai Garden at Lake Merritt.

The board decided to make to move to meet the community’s desire for an expanded event. We’re currently working on how to best take advantage of the additional space and will share details when they’re available.

Japanese maple by Andrew Robson
Photo courtesy Julian Tsai

Parking

The venue has limited parking on site. The current plan is to sell parking passes ahead of time so you can plan your trip accordingly.

There is additional parking next door at the Oakland Museum, and the venue is located one block away from the Lake Merritt BART station. We strongly encourage carpooling and using ride share services when possible.

Preferred Hotel

The official hotel for the event will be the same as last time, the Hilton House Emeryville. To quality for the group rate, which includes discounted parking, reserve your room online with this link or call (510) 601-5880 and use group code “G-PBSE”.

New Vendors

We’re happy to announce that we have additional space for vendors in the new venue! If you are interested in becoming a vendor, send me a note indicating your interest in vending and the number of 6′ tables you’d like to reserve.

We plan to make the final determination of which vendors will be able to participate in March. Although this year’s vendor area is larger, we expect we may not be able to accommodate all requests due to space limitations. Our selection criteria, as it was last year, will be to select vendors that provide visitors with a mix of trees, containers, and supplies that support the aims of the Expo: to create, to care for, and to display beautiful bonsai.

Call for Submissions

If you are planning to submit one or more of your trees for consideration, the submission period will run from February 1st through April 30th. The members of the jury (more on that soon!) will determine which trees will be accepted for display at the exhibit.

It’s free to submit, so we encourage everyone who wants to participate to begin preparing their submissions. A few changes from last year:

• There will be new judging categories (details coming soon)
• Exhibitors are limited to showing no more than three entries
• If your tree appeared in the first Expo, it’s ineligible for display until the third Expo in 2026. Award winning trees will be eligible for display at the fourth Expo in 2028.

We’ll have a lot more information about preparing submissions in the coming weeks so stay tuned!

Ticket Sales

We’re still working behind the scenes on the details and will announce a date for ticket sales in the coming months so be on the lookout for more details here, on the Expo website, or on Instagram/Facebook. In the meantime, you can…

Save the Date

The second Pacific Bonsai Expo will be held on October 26-27, 2024. Setup will be on Thursday the 24th and Friday the 25th. We hope to see you there!