Midwest Furfest is an annual convention that takes place in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. We come together to celebrate furry fandom, that is, art, literature, and performance based around anthropomorphic animals.

The roots of Midwest Furfest lie in the furry programming track of Duckon, an annual science fiction convention. The furry track was started at Duckon 3 in 1994. The track grew larger each year and it was estimated that by Duckon 8 in 1999 between one-quarter and one-third of the attendees were there due to interest in the furry track.

The track ran into problems because it was running out of room to expand without costing other parts of Duckon programming space and time. It was decided that the best course of action was to spin off into a new convention.

Thus Midwest Furry Fandom, Inc., our parent 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation, was created. Midwest FurFest was born shortly thereafter, to take place in November of 2000, on the weekend before Thanksgiving (a date that was to become traditional). The parting was amicable for all concerned, and Duckon lent a good bit of expertise and manpower to help make the first year of Midwest FurFest a success.

Since then, the convention has grown from 388 attendees in 2000 to 1,689 in 2007, making it the third largest furry convention in the world. Midwest FurFest is proud that we have raised over $60,000 for various wildlife- and animal-related charities since our inception.

This essay is based on the article Midwest FurFest appearing on WikiFur, originally written by Thomas Brady. It is distributed under the GNU Free Documentation license.