2026 Chicago Pen Show Recap

I’ve been back for a few days now and I know I’ll need a few more to fully recover from the 2026 Chicago Pen Show, which was both a lot of fun and a lot of work! I did a report card for this show last year and since it was held at the same hotel and much of the layout was the same, we’ll skip all the scores and get right to it! Welcome to Chicago! A gorgeous sunrise along the shores of Lake Michigan to greet me - worth waking up for! This is the Cloud Gate, AKA The Bean, which is worth a visit if you’ve never bean, I mean, been. (same joke from last year, but picture taken this year at the crack of dawn around 6am, aka 4am in my time zone). Francisco Lopez of Hinze Pens welcomes you to the Chicago Pen Show!(Note: In my ongoing effort to make “ChiPS” a thing, I will be using that instead of “CPS” throughout this article. 🙂) There are 3 elevators at the Doubletree Hilton Oak Brook, for a hotel that has 400+ hotel rooms. Each with a whopping maximum capacity of 5. Yes, elevator for 5…