Most philosophers think that phenomenal consciousness is real and that it has two components: an experiential component—a state that is subjectively ‘like something’ for a subject of experience; and a cognitive component—the subject’s awareness of the experiential component and knowledge of what it’s like. Illusionists, by contrast, claim that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. It does not exist but only seems to exist (Frankish 2016). Although illusionism is highly counterintuitive, I shall claim that it is probably true. For I shall argue that phenomenal realism—the view that phenomenal consciousness is real—is conceptually incoherent. I identify four possible realist pictures of phenomenal consciousness, individuated according to the stand they take on two fundamental questions about phenomenal consciousness: (i) whether the cognitive component would fallibly or infallibly represent the experiential component to the subject of experience; and (ii) whether a cogent picture of phenomenal consciousness must include both the experiential and the cognitive component, or whether it might be constituted by one component alone. I examine these four realist pictures of phenomenal consciousness and show that each of them is conceptually incoherent. Therefore, I argue, phenomenal realism is conceptually incoherent.