Games aimed at adult players were a major driver of growth in Germany’s sizeable tabletop market this year, with sales surging more than 20% in the first nine months despite the country’s ongoing economic difficulties.

The rise helped Germany’s combined games and puzzles market grow 8% over the period, compared with 3% across the wider toy industry, according to figures from market research company Circana released by German board game publishers’ association Spieleverlage.

That result continues strong growth in the German board games market, which previously rose 22% between January and mid-September 2025. That was driven heavily by collectable card games such as Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon – although even excluding collectables, the games segment grew by more than 6%.

German board game publishers are also becoming more optimistic, with 90% of companies surveyed by Spieleverlage expecting their revenues to remain stable or grow this year.

More than four-fifths of respondents predicted stable or growing sales across the wider board game, card game and puzzle market, while 86% expected Christmas trading to match or exceed last year’s performance.

Circana representative Joachim Stempfle said games and puzzles had been among the toy industry’s leading revenue growth drivers this year, with the category it calls ‘adult games’ recording growth of more than 20% during the first three quarters.

That was helped by the popularity of an unnamed music-based party game – likely Marcus Carleson’s Hitster, published by Jumbo, which had sold more than one million copies in Germany alone by the beginning of 2025. Jumbo recorded 87% growth in Germany last year, with the company identifying Hitster as a major contributor.

The growth in games aimed at adult players follows a sharp rise in sales of adult-oriented party and knowledge games in 2024, when Spieleverlage reported growth of more than 50% in those categories.

Spieleverlage chairman Hermann Hutter said, “With the pandemic six years ago, our industry experienced an unprecedented surge in popularity, which could not continue at that pace.

“However, developments over the past two years show that the trend toward games remains unbroken and that the industry has succeeded in appealing to new target groups.

“The trend could be stronger if the economic conditions in Germany were better and consumers had more money in their wallets for leisure activities at the end of the day.”

Germany’s economy has struggled with sluggish growth in recent years, weighed down by high energy costs, weak industrial activity and subdued consumer spending.

Households have faced pressure on their disposable incomes following several years of inflation, while businesses have complained of high operating costs, excessive bureaucracy and slow progress on economic reforms.

Some 69% of surveyed publishers said the so-called ‘kidult’ market was important or very important to the industry’s future, with card games identified as an important growth driver by 48% of respondents, followed by family and adult games at 38% and party games at 33%.

Separate research from Germany’s Stiftung für Zukunftsfragen also suggests the popularity of tabletop gaming has remained well above pre-pandemic levels.

Its 2026 Freizeitmonitor study found that the proportion of people regularly playing board and card games each week had risen from between 6% and 8% in the mid-2010s, to around 13% to 14% since 2020.

Publisher Pressure

Despite the positive sales figures and improving confidence, German publishers remain heavily critical of the country’s economic and regulatory environment.

Spieleverlage’s survey found that 94% of respondents believed reforms introduced so far were insufficient to support sustained economic growth, while 62% identified bureaucracy and regulation as major challenges. Weak consumer confidence was cited by 57% of companies.

Publishers are facing high energy costs, taxation and increasing compliance requirements, with Spieleverlage singling out the EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation as a source of costs and bureaucracy.

Those concerns have not stopped companies investing in expansion, however, with 50% of surveyed publishers putting money into international growth and 44% investing in new games.

More than 60% of publishers identified specialist bricks-and-mortar retailers as important places for consumers to discover and try games, while the association pointed to the potential for a major book retailer to increase the visibility of tabletop products through its physical stores.

That comes despite Spieleverlage’s survey last year revealing a significant shift towards online sales, with six out of ten publishers reporting an increase in internet purchases and almost half experiencing falling sales through physical retailers.

Spiel Essen also remained an important part of publishers’ commercial plans, with 78% of respondents attaching high or very high importance to the convention for their year-end sales and as an opportunity to test new games.

This year’s event attracted a record 230,000 visitors across a sold-out four days – although its ability to squeeze in larger and larger crowds has now reached its limit, Merz Verlag managing director Carol Rapp told BoardGameWire at the show.

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Security arrangements at the world’s biggest board game fair have come under scrutiny after six thefts were reported during setup and dismantling at this year’s Spiel Essen – including €14,000 of stock and equipment being stolen from a publisher overnight.

Show organiser Merz Verlag told BoardGameWire all six incidents are believed to have occurred when access to the exhibition halls was restricted, despite Messe Essen venue security being in place throughout those periods.

The thefts have prompted complaints from affected businesses about security at Spiel Essen and the assistance they received – while Merz Verlag has stressed that exhibitors are responsible for protecting their own property, even outside public opening hours.

French tabletop games company Tossit was among the worst affected exhibitors this year, claiming that about €14,000 of merchandise, equipment and tools disappeared from its stand in Hall 6 overnight following the convention’s final day.

Company co-founder Gaëtan Ekszterowicz said in a LinkedIn post that his team left the stand at around 10.45pm on Sunday, October 25, intending to finish dismantling the following morning – but returned at 8am to discover more than 500 units of merchandise and other equipment had disappeared.

That included tools stored inside the stand furniture, leaving the company without even the equipment needed to complete dismantling its booth.

Ekszterowicz estimated that removing the stolen goods would have taken at least 35 to 45 minutes, raising questions about how such a large quantity of merchandise could have been removed from an exhibition hall overnight.

Another exhibitor, tabletop accessories seller The Rolling Inn, said €4,000 in cash – representing its entire convention takings – was stolen during dismantling on Sunday evening.

A third theft was reported by Julian Hill of board game media outlet Boxed Meeples, who said on Instagram that his bag was taken from the Paverson Games stand during a team meeting on Wednesday October 21, the day before SPIEL opened to the public.

Hill said the bag contained money, payment cards, camera and sound recording equipment, as well as recordings of interviews he had already conducted at the convention.

Spiel Essen’s organisers have also been criticised by Tossit’s Ekszterowicz and The Rolling Inn for their response to the thefts.

Ekszterowicz claimed representatives of SPIEL Essen and Messe Essen laughed at its team and failed to take their complaints seriously – as well as alleging that a member of staff attempted to grab a phone from his company’s marketing manager during an exchange about the incident.

“No representative of Merz Verlag laughed at members of Tossit’s team or grabbed a phone,” a Merz Verlag spokesperson told BoardGameWire.

They said, “Tossit wanted to film an exchange between them, Messe Essen and Merz Verlag which members of Messe Essen denied due to them not wanted to be taped, referring to personal rights.”

Asked about allegations from Tossit and The Rolling Inn that they received little or no assistance, the spokesperson said, “The team of SPIEL Essen takes every reported theft seriously and helps in the best of our abilities and in making contact to the police.

“Our team was also on site and talked with exhibitors. At the moment we are collecting information to may be able to help further.”

Merz Verlag said police had been informed of the incidents, and that it was cooperating with investigations.

The spokesperson added, “In total six thefts were reported to us this year, ranging from tablecloths, to some cases of games, to cash and equipment, the examples you mention already included. 

“To our knowledge these cases took place during set-up or dismantling. In 2025 fewer incidents have been reported, none in the scale we see with Tossit. “

Merz Verlag said venue operator Messe Essen provided security throughout setup and dismantling, with access restricted to exhibitors, people holding setup and dismantling passes, event staff and security personnel.

It added that exhibitors were regularly reminded that they were responsible for protecting their own property, and could pay for dedicated guards to secure their stands outside public opening hours.

Ekszterowicz said in his LinkedIn post, “I don’t expect organizers to prevent every theft. But at the very least, I expect them to take this kind of situation seriously and have cameras installed inside the entrance halls. The complete absence of surveillance cameras is also shocking.”

The Merz Verlag spokesperson confirmed to BoardGameWire that no CCTV was covering the booths which suffered thefts.

Wargamer also received a response from Tom Kraayvanger, the press leader at Spiel Essen venue operator Messe Essen, who said the venue operator was taking into account “data protection requirements and the privacy rights of the many people present on the exhibition grounds during an event and its set-up and dismantling phases”.

He said: “When large numbers of people are moving goods, material and equipment at the same time, camera footage does not make it possible to distinguish between the legitimate removal of items and their unauthorized removal”, adding that “comprehensive video surveillance could not guarantee complete protection against theft”.

The incidents also follow a series of reported thefts at SPIEL stretching back at least a decade – including more than $20,000 in combined losses reported by six publishers in 2018, when affected companies called for improvements to security.

Japanime Games, Artipia Games, Folded Space, Gotha Games, Greenbrier Games and Hub Games reported cash, games and personal belongings were stolen during the convention that year, with Japanime alone claiming losses of more than $10,000, according to contemporaneous reporting by BoardGameGeek. The affected publishers subsequently launched fundraising efforts to help compensate for their losses.

Two years earlier Greek publisher LudiCreations had about €3,500 stolen from its cash box during Spiel Essen, prompting it to create and launch Steal This Game on Kickstarter to help recover its losses. R&R Games also reported a cash-box theft at that year’s convention.

More recently, thefts have been reported since 2023 by Thailand-based Hexa House, game marketing studio DinaSaidSo and Pillars of Heracles designer Tamàs Olàh – the latter of whom said about $400 of painted miniatures were stolen at Spiel Essen while unattended overnight.

Asked whether the latest incidents would prompt changes to security arrangements for SPIEL Essen 2027, Merz Verlag said it was still evaluating the situation.

“We are gathering information and evaluate the situation,” the spokesperson said. “At this early stage we cannot say anything regarding future arrangements.”

Spiel Essen broke its visitor record for the fourth consecutive year at its 2026 event by hitting a record 230,000 attendance – with publishers reporting bumper sales despite increasingly fierce competition for attention from more than 2,000 new releases.

The world’s largest board game fair once again sold out all four days this year, drawing 10,000 more visitors than in 2025 after expanding into an eighth exhibition hall and taking over the entirety of the Messe Essen exhibition centre – its home for over 40 years – for the first time.

But that ability to squeeze in larger and larger crowds has now reached its limit, Merz Verlag managing director Carol Rapp confirmed to BoardGameWire, with any further growth set to come via new events and experiences rather than increased attendance or exhibition space.

SPIEL Essen 2027 is scheduled to take place from October 21 to 24.

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AI giant Anthropic has introduced new restrictions which attempt to stop its Claude coding software from recreating existing games, amid generative AI providing the capability to quickly spin up unauthorised digital clones and reskins.

The changes were spotted in Claude Code’s instructions around October 27, with two new sentences telling the software: “Do build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user’s own designs and assets”, and “Don’t build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original”.

Anthropic technical staff member Addy Osmani confirmed the changes in a post on X, saying the company had introduced the restrictions because using Claude to infringe intellectual property rights was already against its usage policy.

Board games are vulnerable to AI-generated imitations because their underlying gameplay mechanics generally cannot be protected by copyright – while generative AI also makes it easier to reproduce those systems digitally, and create alternative imagery and text without directly copying the original game’s protected material.

The potential danger to tabletop publishers was highlighted last year when US software development company Sembit used Claude Code to produce a browser-based version of Catan within four minutes – although that rapidly-assembled version suffered from significant bugs and some non-functioning gameplay features.

Unauthorised online versions of board games are not a new phenomenon, with publishers having faced challenges controlling digital recreations of their titles long before AI coding tools became widely available. But generative AI potentially makes such recreations much easier to produce, lowering the technical expertise, time and cost needed to turn an existing tabletop game into a playable digital version.

Colonist.io, which was launched in 2017 as Katan.io before rebranding in 2019, openly markets itself as a free alternative to Catan, closely reproducing the original game’s rules, gameplay and visual layout while using different artwork. The platform reported 60 million games played and 3.6 million active players across 2025.

Colonist.io states clearly on its website that it has no association with Catan, and argues that its game is legal under US law, citing guidance from the US Copyright Office that gameplay methods cannot be protected by copyright.

A 2022 study published in the Iowa Law Review highlighted the Catan rights holders’ apparent decision not to pursue legal action against Colonist.io, contrasting it with an earlier incident in which an Android imitation called Island Settlers was withdrawn following a cease-and-desist notice from Catan’s lawyers in 2011.

Companies which have taken action against unauthorised digital adaptations include Disney, which prompted the closure of the unofficial Disney Lorcana simulator Pixelborn in 2024 over its use of the game’s protected card imagery. Pixelborn creator Pavel Kolev said more than 6.5 million games had been played on the platform before it was shut down.

Anthropic’s new intervention follows controversy over AI-generated video game clones, including cases where developers have withdrawn public demonstrations over concerns that their games could be copied before release.

The new restrictions have already affected attempts to recreate published tabletop games, including a Claude Code user who reported being refused help to build a private online version of an unnamed, commercially released co-op board game.

The user wanted to create a password-protected version allowing friends to play remotely, including one unable to attend in-person sessions, and to introduce AI-controlled players to study the game’s strategy.

Claude refused despite the user specifying that the adaptation would not be publicly distributed, instead offering to help develop an original game using similar co-op and limited-information mechanics.

A separate complaint came from wargame publisher Raymond Weiss, whose Conflict Simulations business has released around 30 tabletop titles since 2017- including three nominees for the Charles S Roberts Awards, one of the longest-running awards honouring conflict-focused tabletop games.

Weiss says he has been using AI-assisted coding to create unlicensed digital versions of other publishers’ wargames for paying customers, calling them private, “personalized builds” for people he says already own the physical version of games which do not already have a digital adaptation. He charges between $400 and $800 per project, according to his website.

He reported on GitHub that Claude Code had begun refusing to continue work on adaptations it previously supported, although he acknowledged that he did not hold licences from the publishers whose games were being adapted.

The restrictions are, of course, limited to Anthropic’s own software. In a November 2 blog post, Weiss said he had already resumed the work interrupted by Claude’s refusals using rival AI coding tools OpenAI Codex and Kimi.

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Spiel Essen has broken its visitor record for the fourth consecutive year by hitting a record 230,000 attendance – with publishers reporting bumper sales despite increasingly fierce competition for attention from more than 2,000 new releases.

The world’s largest board game fair once again sold out all four days this year, drawing 10,000 more visitors than in 2025 after expanding into an eighth exhibition hall and taking over the entirety of the Messe Essen exhibition centre – its home for over 40 years – for the first time.

Almost 1,000 exhibitors from 53 countries packed into the 2026 show – up 5% compared to last year – while the event’s floorspace grew to a record 81,200 sq m – larger than 15 American football fields.

The new record attendance continues a period of rapid growth for Spiel, which attracted 193,000 visitors in 2023, 204,000 in 2024 and 220,000 last year – the latter of which outstripped the show’s previous record attendance of 209,000 from just prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But that ability to squeeze in larger and larger crowds has now reached its limit, Merz Verlag managing director Carol Rapp confirmed to BoardGameWire, with any further growth set to come via new events and experiences rather than increased attendance or exhibition space.

She said, “It will stay at 230 [thousand]”, adding that although the show was technically below its “legal maximum” attendance, the current levels allowed for visitors to make their way around the already crowded show floor more easily.

A shortage of exhibition space, however, has already been a recurring problem for Merz Verlag – which has been forced to introduce waiting lists for prospective exhibitors in each of the last three years, despite repeatedly expanding the show.

Organisers had to repeatedly rearrange hall layouts ahead of the 2024 show in order to accommodate as many publishers as possible while keeping safe amounts of aisle space. Expanding out into Hall 7 last year failed to eliminate the problem, and despite another expansion into Hall 8 this year, all available stands were booked up ahead of the April 30 application deadline.

That leaves the organiser facing the prospect of turning away more prospective exhibitors in future years, with no further exhibition halls available to accommodate them.

BoardGameWire reported in March this year that Spiel organiser Merz Verlag had “no intention” of relocating the show away from Essen in order to continue its expansion, saying that the event would remain in its current home “for the foreseeable future”.

Rapp has now doubled down on that sentiment, saying, “We are well aware that we are pushing Messe Essen to its absolute limits. But to immediately dispel any rumors: A relocation is not on the table.

“Our focus now is on continuing to refine and develop Spiel at the Essen location in the coming years.”

Expanded Focus

That development had already been apparent in recent years, with Spiel beginning to break out from its long-time status as a game-buying fair and opportunity for business meetings by adding a series of new events.

They include introducing Games Workshop’s Golden Demon miniature-painting competition in 2024, running a world record-setting game of Catan – Connect with more than 1,100 people in 2025, and adding the TCG Awards and Warhammer 40,000 laser tag this year.

The organiser also launched Essen spielt! in 2026, a partnership with the city which brought gaming events to venues across Essen during the fair – and said it plans to develop the initiative further in 2027.

Other new developments for 2026 included a business matchmaking platform aimed at helping publishers, designers, retailers and other industry professionals find potential business partners and arrange meetings before arriving at the fair.

Rapp told BoardGameWire she was pleased with how this year’s expansion had worked out – particularly the addition of a new northern entrance, which noticeably helped spread visitors more effectively across the exhibition halls, and helped reduce the vast queues which have formed at the start of each day in previous years.

She added that the new Hall 8 had also exceeded expectations, despite initial uncertainty about how exhibitors would make use of the slightly unusually-shaped space.

US publisher Allplay took Spiel up on an offer to move into a central position in the new Hall 8 – and COO Joe Wiggins told BoardGameWire that shift had paid off handsomely, with sales up 40% compared to the previous year’s show, marking the publisher’s most successful Spiel to date.

He picked out Enchanted Ivy as one of its big hits of the show, saying demand for the 450 copies of the title it brought was “non-stop” until the game was sold out at 3pm on opening day.

Wiggins said sales were good across its portfolio, from light titles to heavier strategy games – adding that the new location right at the show’s main entrance meant visitors were far more likely to discover its booth.

That interest was capitalised upon by Allplay through its decision to run a large number of demo tables as part of its booth, with Wiggins saying seeing games in action had helped draw people in, even if they weren’t a “typical” Allplay customer.

German publisher Pegasus Spiele also reported stronger-than-expected sales, despite arriving at Essen with relatively conservative expectations.

Company co-CEO Karsten Esser told BoardGameWire on Friday afternoon that sales were already ahead of the equivalent point in 2025, even without the benefit of a single major award-winning release driving demand.

Pegasus brought more than 40 new releases to the event, and said the breadth of its portfolio had helped compensate for the absence of an obvious blockbuster title.

Other exhibitors BoardGameWire spoke to also reported substantial sales increases, while the consensus generally was that last year’s busy Friday, Saturday and Sunday were added to this year with a Thursday which felt like a return to pre-Covid crowds.

Spiel Squeeze

While most halls saw attendees flowing easily, if slowly, around them during the fair, the long and narrow Hall 3 once again proved the trickiest to get around – especially given the enormous queues which formed at several different booths during the show.

Chief among those were the queues at Spanish publisher Combo Games, which snaked along one whole end of the hall and out of the doors – creating a line Carol Rapp said was among the longest she had ever seen at the show.

Combo had benefitted from its new release Queen Alice, which combines elements of chess with eurogame mechanics and an Alice in Wonderland-inspired setting, being the ‘most-thumbed’ title on BoardGameGeek’s Spiel Essen preview – leading to a sea of attendees trying to reach the booth to get their hands on the game.

Company co-founder Antonio Guillamó told BoardGameWire on the show floor that it had brought about 2,000 copies of the game to Essen, including stock earmarked for fulfilling Gamefound pledges, but had sold out by around lunchtime on Friday.

Demand was so intense that the Combo team was forced to concentrate purely on sales rather than demoing its games – and the huge buzz created other problems for the publisher.

Guillamó told BoardGameWire that Spiel had been “fighting” the publisher over the long queues, which ended up blocking access to other booths such as the nearby Dice Throne.

Rapp told BoardGameWire Spiel had provided advice on how to guide the queue to avoid it blocking other booths, as well as providing extra security from Messe Essen – which Combo had to pay for – to help manage the line.

She said, “They had one of the hottest titles of the show, and nobody can plan for that. I get that, and the team gets that. But if the crowd waiting to buy is turning into a safety issue, then we have to do something.”

Rapp said her team was always “counting the seconds on the first day” to find out where the biggest queues were emerging, in order to step in quickly and help prevent any blockages.

She added that another blockage at the 2026 event had arisen at Pegasus Spiele, with large groups of people congregating by the booth after buying their games – saying that Pegasus was told to fix the issue or their booth would be closed. That problem was sorted the next morning by introducing a guard rail, she said.

Rapp said in an interview with German board game channel Brettspiel-Kollektiv that one exhibitor had repeatedly ignored instructions intended to keep queues under control, leading organisers to prohibit further sales for the remainder of the day. The publisher involved was not identified.

She stressed to BoardGameWire that managing congestion was essential to keeping the event safe and enjoyable, particularly as the number of visitors and exhibitors continued to grow.

“As long as the people are moving, everything is fine,” she said. “As soon as you have a block, a cluster or whatever, in the aisles, and it’s taking too long, people will go crazy.”

The pressure of accommodating record numbers at Spiel also extended beyond the exhibition halls, with severe crowding on Essen’s public transport system each morning in the run-up to the show opening.

Standing Out

The growing scale of Spiel has also brought fresh challenges for publishers trying to stand out among the thousands of games competing for attention.

This year’s 2,012 new releases represented another increase on the prior record, with the volume of new titles becoming a significant consideration for companies deciding when and how to launch their games.

The head of one large board game publisher who spoke to BoardGameWire at the show suggested that while smaller publishers often needed the exposure provided by major events such as Spiel, the rising competition on site might make it more beneficial for them to spread releases more evenly through the year.

He argued that publishers should consider whether launching at a quieter time of year might make it easier for their games to attract attention – particularly given that consumers were increasingly buying board games year round rather than concentrating their purchases around Christmas.

The challenge was echoed by other industry figures at the event, who described an increasingly crowded market in which the quality of new games continued to improve, but with individual releases potentially struggling to establish themselves.

Value Judgement

For publishers, however, Spiel’s value continues to extend well beyond the opportunity to sell games directly to consumers – something especially crucial given the high cost of running even a small booth at the event.

While the base cost of the smallest booth option – 15 sq m – comes in at about €1,500, that figure can easily balloon to several thousand euros after adding mandatory charges for booth partitions, waste disposal, and the cost of transporting, paying for and accommodating even tiny numbers of booth staff.

Pandasaurus Games told BoardGameWire ahead of the event that it had heavily downsized its Spiel Essen booth this year, having previously spent more than €50,000 ($57,000) attending Spiel with its larger setup.

The US publisher shifted to using European Player Network, Asmodee‘s specialist English-language sales and distribution operation in the region, to handle its stock and sales at the giant German show this year – removing the need for Pandasaurus to transport and store hundreds of games, staff its own retail operation and devote much of its booth to selling them.

Pandasaurus CEO Nathan McNair estimated to BoardGameWire that the costs under its current model would fall between $20,000 and $25,000, with the expectation of selling similar numbers of games under the new setup.

Archona Games, the publisher of titles including Small Star Empires and Pest, told BoardGameWire at the event, “Our focus here isn’t the sales so much. It’s always nice to sell, and I mean, I’d love to have the success of some of the other currently hot games out there – I wouldn’t say no!

“But I think for us, the strategic sort of part of it is really what we do with our community as well as our partners.”

They said in-show meetings with potential partners had already created promising opportunities for 2027, and added that demoing games, gathering feedback and building customer relationships were all key reasons for attending the fair.

IELLO communications manager Roger Anthony-Gerroldt told BoardGameWire at the show that it had brought six staff dedicated to scouting new games and localisation opportunities, with three project managers seeking new designs for its main catalogue, two looking for titles to bring to the French market, and another representing its children’s games brand Loki.

He told BoardGameWire the team spent much of the event moving between meetings with designers and publishers, hoping to discover games capable of becoming long-term commercial successes.

He said, “They just take meetup after meetup after meetup, and they look at a lot of designs, and they hope that they find the diamond that will take the place in the market and stay here.”

But he acknowledged that identifying those potential hits was increasingly difficult, with IELLO typically finding only one or two games each year that met its ambitions – and some promising projects ultimately failing to make it into the company’s catalogue.

That challenge has become more pronounced as the number of new releases continues to grow, Anthony-Gerroldt said, with even successful titles increasingly struggling to maintain sales beyond their first year or two.

Ukrainian publisher Boardova, meanwhile, described its first experience running a booth at Spiel as a valuable opportunity for promoting its games and building relationships – while stressing that the costs of attending meant the event should be viewed as a wider marketing investment rather than simply a sales opportunity.

Pegasus Spiele co-CEO Karsten Esser told BoardGameWire that direct sales at Spiel remained an important part of covering the company’s costs of attending, saying, “Well, to be honest, we run the company because we want to earn money. Of course, we love games, but we are also interested in earning money. I have to say, therefore, yes – the number of games that we sell here do matter, and they help us to break even. And maybe we can even reach a surplus. We will see.”

But he added that the longer-term value of the fair came from the market intelligence it provided, particularly the opportunity to gauge consumer demand across the company’s new releases, and identify which titles might become future commercial successes.

AI Divide

The ongoing debate over the use of generative AI in tabletop gaming was also visible at this year’s Spiel, with an anti-AI sign campaign from Neon Hope publisher Hopeful Games taking place, while some publishers and accessories sellers were clearly making use of generative AI for their artwork.

Spiel organiser Merz Verlag has yet to introduce restrictions on exhibitors using AI-generated artwork, in contrast to several other major tabletop conventions which have adopted explicit policies in the past year.

UK Games Expo introduced a strict AI policy several weeks ago, prohibiting exhibitors from displaying or selling products created wholly or substantially using generative AI, while PAX Unplugged bans the sale of products incorporating substantial AI-generated content.

Origins Game Fair also requires products sold or distributed at the event to be created by human artists and creators. Gen Con, meanwhile, prohibits AI-generated imagery in its Art Show, although it has not introduced an equivalent general ban for exhibitors.

The issue has particular significance for Spiel, which faced widespread criticism in 2023 after using AI-generated illustrations on its official tickets, posters and app.

Merz Verlag subsequently abandoned AI-generated artwork for its 2024 marketing campaign, citing criticism from industry professionals and consumers, alongside continuing legal uncertainty around the technology.

Rapp told BoardGameWire at the time that the organiser had reconsidered its approach following the backlash, but did not believe it was Spiel’s place to make decisions about the wider industry’s use of AI.

The absence of a general exhibitor ban three years later leaves Spiel as an outlier among the major tabletop game conventions.

BoardGameWire contacted Merz Verlag in September with a series of questions about whether the show planned to follow suit with its own AI policy, but was told by a spokesperson that the topic was too wide ranging to be able to address while preparations for this year’s event were taking place.

Future Plans

With its exhibition halls full and visitor numbers now capped, Spiel’s organisers face the challenge of finding new ways to develop the event without increasing its physical footprint.

Rapp told BoardGameWire during the show that Merz Verlag was still exploring what that might look like, with the company due to hold its annual planning workshop this month.

“Maybe it’s focusing more on events, like you said, or celebrating the industry. I don’t know yet, but we will have some good stuff coming up next year,” Rapp said.

Spiel Essen 2027 is scheduled to take place from October 21 to 24.

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Restoration Games is no stranger to crowdfunding backers pledging hundreds of dollars for premium versions of its games – but its Kickstarter for The Lord of the Rings: The King’s Gambit has taken that to an entirely new level.

The crowdfund had raised $2.33m from more than 7,300 backers in the early hours of its final day, equivalent to almost $319 per supporter – an average spend well above Restoration’s previous major crowdfunding campaigns, including the roughly $260 from last year’s Battle Monsters: Godzilla x Kong.

Almost three-quarters of backers who have committed to one of the game’s various versions opted to spend at least $379 on one of the Mithril tiers, with more than 2,800 people going all-in on the game’s most expensive $449 option.

Those Mithril pledges together account for about 82% of the total raised at the time of writing – a figure well above that expected by Restoration prior to the campaign’s launch, co-owner Justin Jacobson told BoardGameWire.

He said the company had expected Mithril to be most popular, but had conservatively projected about three Mithril pledges for every two people committing to the base-level Limited tiers of the game

He said, “I’m not entirely surprised. We created the Limited Edition as a sort-of compromise pledge level for folks who wanted some deluxe elements but didn’t want to go all-in for the Mithril Edition.

“Ultimately, though, most Kickstarter backers are there precisely because they do want to go all in, and we try to make that pledge level as appealing as possible and as good a deal as possible.”

Despite the much higher-than-expected proportion of backers opting for Mithril, Jacobson said the campaign’s overall performance was “pretty in-line” with his expectations ahead of the campaign’s final few days – and that “in a vacuum” he would have hoped for slightly higher numbers.

He pointed to the absence of a standard retail edition from the campaign, Free League’s The One Ring RPG crowdfund running at the same time and wider global economic conditions among the factors potentially working against it.

Jacobson said the pattern of backers favouring Restoration’s most expensive option was familiar from what he described as the company’s previous “spectacle” campaigns, with all-in pledges typically outstripping other pledge levels at the close of those crowdfunds.

But King’s Gambit is generating substantially higher spending per backer compared with Restoration’s previous projects offering similarly expensive all-in options.

Last year’s Battle Monsters: Godzilla x Kong offered a $379 Mega Bundle – the same price as the basic Mithril Edition of King’s Gambit – but averaged about $260 across its 2,301 backers.

Return to Dark Tower: Expeditions went even higher with a $499 all-in pledge including the base game, its expansions and upgraded components – although as an expansion-led campaign, existing owners could enter at just $45. Its $1.49m haul from 11,665 backers amounted to an average of $128 per supporter.

King’s Gambit is currently averaging almost $319 across its backers to date – despite almost 1,000 people having committed just $5 for access to the pledge manager.

Jacobson nevertheless cautioned against seeing the campaign as evidence that $379-plus board games were likely to become commonplace.

“This campaign is unusual, and I wouldn’t expect this to become the norm,” he said. “It stems from the unique way in which the original licensing deal and co-publication arrangement came to be in the first place.”

Opening Gambit

Jacobson told BoardGameWire that the publisher decided to pitch licence holder Middle-earth Enterprises in 2023 for a new version of cult 2000 board game Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit, but instead based on The Lord of the Rings.

Bringing Queen’s Gambit back had been an ambition for Restoration since its inception – it was the first game Jacobson suggested reviving when he approached designer Rob Daviau about founding the company in 2016, although they decided at the time that it was too ambitious for their first project. Daviau had worked on the original during his time at Hasbro.

Jacobson told BoardGameWire, “I put together a big proposal and sent it in. Meanwhile, while that proposal was under consideration, Rob was at the Cannes Game Festival and got approached by Asmodee about doing the exact same thing.

“It seemed like serendipity so we just started that conversation about working on it together. It offered a lot of benefits to both parties.

“We brought our design pedigree and Kickstarter experience, and they brought their massive team for art, sales, distribution, and more. It’s always challenging working outside your own team, but [Asmodee studio] Space Cowboys have been absolutely amazing and have helped make this game the best it can be.”

Space Cowboys plans to release a retail edition of the game next year, which while sharing the same gameplay will use smaller boards, omit the large plastic Minas Tirith and Mordor set pieces and use just two colours of plastic for its miniatures.

Jacobson said, “It was important that our offering was a stark contrast to the retail edition. That edition will be what lives on for as long as the game is sold, long after the Kickstarter campaign is fulfilled. So, first things first, we had to align on what that version of the game was going to be.

“Then, we basically brainstormed all of the ways we could ‘deluxify’ that. The Limited Edition was a slight bump and the 3D plastic set pieces; the Mithril Edition was the whole list.”

When asked if there had been any concern internally over having such a large gap between the price points of the Limited and Mithril editions, Jacobson said, “Not really. There are so many variables and options in setting up any campaign. You’re never going to be 100% certain that you’ve gone the optimal path.

“That said, we were confident in the overall structure of the campaign, i.e., folks who want the cool 3D set pieces and folks who want everything.

“As I’ve always said, the price is always a function of the cost to produce. So once we determine what a pledge level includes, setting the price is relatively straightforward with some minor adjustments. For example, we actually shaved a bit off the Mithril Edition to try and make it a bit more appealing.”

He added, “It does highlight that all of the economic turmoil folks are feeling are not being felt uniformly.

“It also speaks to hobby gamers in general. When you compare it to other hobbies, it’s still a relatively good deal even at the highest end of things.”

Jacobson told BoardGameWire that Restoration deliberately looked beyond established tabletop audiences when marketing the game, in an attempt to leverage the vast fanbase of The Lord of the Rings.

About half of King’s Gambit backers are supporting a Restoration Games crowdfund for the first time, he said – a slightly higher proportion than the company has seen on some of its more recent campaigns.

“We made a concerted effort to try and reach out to influencers whose audience comprises The Lord of the Rings fans and not specifically gamers,” Jacobson said.

He believes the licence was likely part of the explanation for the campaign’s performance, although added that Restoration titles tend to come with followers even without a large IP, given the nature of the company’s strategy of taking memorable, usually long-out-of-print games and redeveloping them for the modern hobby market.

He said, “Fans of The Lord of the Rings are certainly avid and show up in large numbers, but we’ve seen similar excitement from fans of Return to Dark Tower and the like.”

Aragorn Art

Despite the campaign’s strong performance, the release has attracted a backlash from a small minority of online commenters for depicting Aragorn as Black.

That reaction has spilled into the unreleased title’s BoardGameGeek ratings, where some users have awarded it scores of 10 specifically to counter what they believe are 1 ratings motivated by objections to Aragorn’s skin colour.

Jacobson described the reaction as “disappointing but not entirely unexpected”, while stressing that not everyone who preferred a depiction closer to previous versions of Aragorn was motivated by racism.

He said, “The art team for both Space Cowboys and Restoration Games spent countless hours working on an extensively researched and thoughtful art brief for the look of the entire game along with each individual character. It’s 59 pages long!

“Our first priority is always to do something true to the source material. Within those pages though there are a number of interpretations. Ultimately, for each depiction, not just Aragorn, we were looking to do something interesting and perhaps novel that still stays true to the source material.

“I can point to details in the lore that support this depiction, but this just isn’t something I have any interest in debating.

“Great works, whether that’s a game or an epic fantasy novel or something else, only arise when the people creating them have a strong vision for what they want to make and put their full effort into realizing that vision.

“In every case, some folks won’t share that vision. But, in every case, if you set out to try and please everyone, you cannot make something extraordinary.”

He added, “There are folks who prefer a depiction more in keeping with prior ones; where other folks enjoy seeing broader depictions. Whenever you are working with an IP, the fans will have strong opinions. I want to be clear: not everyone who would prefer the former do so from a place of racism.

“That said, there are certainly racists, who are using these types of situations to espouse their abhorrent beliefs. It’s unfortunate that they muddy what can be an otherwise interesting conversation.

“As for folks on BGG rating a game a 1 before it comes out, this has been going on for a while for a host of reasons. There’s nothing we can do about it, so we press on and just make the best game we can.

“When people actually receive and start playing the game, we are confident that there will be a lot of great ratings for it that will make the current kerfuffle just so much background noise.”

The King’s Gambit’s crowdfunding campaign ends at 8.30am EDT on October 20.

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Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering workers are moving to unionise after alleging rising workloads, unpaid overtime and job insecurity at Wizards of the Coast – despite the business having become the main profit engine of toy and game giant Hasbro.

Workers on Dungeons & Dragons, D&D Beyond and Wizards’ Studio X – which develops tabletop Magic: The Gathering and Duel Masters – plan to unionise with the Communications Workers of America, having secured the backing of a “public supermajority” of employees.

The move comes after several years of soaring sales and profits at Wizards, which has increasingly become the financial powerhouse of Hasbro amid struggles at the company’s traditional toys business – which includes Nerf guns, Transformers and Peppa Pig toys.

Wizards provided almost half of Hasbro’s $4.7bn revenue last year, with booming Magic: The Gathering sales pushing Wizards to a record operating profit of more than $1bn in 2025.

That performance was driven by hugely successful Universes Beyond releases including Final Fantasy, Avatar: The Last Airbender and Marvel’s Spider-Man, alongside strong backlist and Secret Lair sales.

Studio X workers specifically highlighted that financial success in announcing their unionisation effort, saying their team had been responsible for “back-to-back billion dollar years and a vast majority of Hasbro’s profit”.

D&D workers, meanwhile, said growing workloads without corresponding increases in headcount had left some teams regularly “crunching” simply to complete planned releases – describing crunch as “intense and mandatory unpaid overtime”.

They are also seeking contractual protections around job security, pay and career progression, saying, “Many of us are bringing home less money every month, adjusted for inflation, than we did when we were hired years ago. That needs to change.”

An open letter from those workers added that employees “live in fear of suddenly losing their jobs, with no warning and through no fault of their own”, and that Wizards prioritising in-office work had left workers “unsure of whether their current living situation is tenable for their role”.

Hasbro cut about 1,900 jobs across two rounds in 2023, including at Wizards, after a sharp downturn in its core consumer products business. That segment saw revenue fall 19% in 2023, swinging to a $64.7m operating loss, while Wizards revenue rose 10%.

Further cuts have followed since, including four Wizards employees during Hasbro-wide redundancies in October 2024, and about 30 developers – roughly 90% of the team working on Wizards’ now scrapped Sigil D&D virtual tabletop – in March 2025.

Hasbro cut roughly 150 more jobs three months later, including D&D staff, and last month D&D community manager LaTia Jacquise and Magic social media manager Jordan Hopkins publicly confirmed their layoffs – with Hopkins describing his departure as part of a “greater restructure”. Wizards has not disclosed the total number of jobs affected.

Magic rules manager Eric Levine said of the union effort, “Everyone I work with makes our company, our game, and our community stronger by bringing their talent, expertise, and effort to making Magic.

“Those incredible people deserve fair compensation, remote protections, clear career progression, and more. Supporting the people who make the game will ensure that Magic keeps getting better for years to come.”

The unionisation push also called for protections for work employees create in their free time, with the D&D workers’ announcement saying, “Currently, if an employee makes anything creative in their free time, with their own resources, Hasbro can claim ownership. What we do in our free time should not be dictated by the company, and what we make in our free time should belong to us.”

The D&D team also used its unionisation letter to reveal tension between Hasbro and Wizards over the use of generative AI, saying, “As pressure has ramped up from Hasbro to adopt LLMs and Gen AI tools in various aspects of our work, WOTC has resisted these efforts and kept AI out of our games.

“That’s good! We want to preserve this commendable stance through a union contract that ensures our games will always be made by people for people.”

Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks was openly enthusiastic about bringing AI into the D&D ecosystem in September 2024, saying at Goldman Sachs’ Communacopia conference that Hasbro was already using AI “significantly and liberally internally as both a knowledge worker aid and as a development aid” – but was more excited about its potential in play.

He added, “I play with probably 30 or 40 people regularly. There’s not a single person who doesn’t use AI somehow for either campaign development or character development or story ideas. That’s a clear signal that we need to be embracing it.”

In an interview with The Verge in March this year, however, Cocks said that while Hasbro was deploying AI widely across the company, he acknowledged there was resistance to its use in Wizards’ games.

He said, “There are some brands that the audience, the creators, just don’t want it, so we don’t even have it in our pipelines for our video games or for Magic: The Gathering, or D&D.”

Cocks added that he personally used huge amounts of AI-generated animation, images, text, sound effects and voice cloning in his personal D&D games, telling interviewer Nilay Patel there was so much on his home PC that it would “floor” him.

He added that AI was being used extensively elsewhere at Hasbro, including in toy design and as a general productivity tool across the company, and estimated it could save more than one million hours of work this year.

Cocks also told Verge that he did not believe the technology would cost creative workers their jobs, saying, “I see it only making the quality of the creative we have better.”

Other demands from the unionisers include better support for working parents, changes to healthcare provision and greater financial transparency, to aid the unions in collective bargaining.

The latest unionisation push at Wizards comes just a few months after developers of its online platform Magic: The Gathering Arena revealed their own plans to unionise.

More than 100 Arena workers announced their unionisation drive in April, with Wizards declining their request for voluntary recognition. The group subsequently won a National Labor Relations Board election in June, formally establishing the first union at Wizards.

D&D and Studio X workers – who are also organising under the United Wizards of the Coast-CWA – have asked Wizards and Hasbro to voluntarily recognise their respective units by an October 13 deadline, and have filed an election petition with the NLRB to allow the certification process to proceed if that does not happen.

They are also calling for Hasbro and Wizards to adopt a labour neutrality agreement allowing other workers at the company to organise without fear of retaliation.

D&D senior game designer Joey Haeck said they were organising “because scared workers are neither happy nor productive”.

Haeck said, “By organizing to negotiate a fair contract on issues of layoff protections, forced relocation protections, equitable pay and career advancement, mandatory AI use protections, parental support, and more, we make our game better by investing in our human creators and resisting the churn and brain drain caused by roller-coaster layoffs.”

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MyMiniFactory marketing and brand head Anjuli Smith has left the 3D-printing marketplace to launch her own tabletop agency, whose work will include helping smaller board game publishers find distributors and expand internationally.

Smith left MyMiniFactory at the end of September to focus full-time on her newly-launched Tabletop Growth Partners, which will primarily target the TTRPG and wargaming sectors with marketing, digital growth and business development services.

But she is also looking to offer international business development support for smaller board game publishers, using contacts built up over 13 years in the industry to introduce them to distributors and support them through sales and negotiation meetings.

Smith told BoardGameWire she is currently in talks with three board game publishers about working with them at the Spielwarenmesse trade fair in Nuremberg next February – including new Canadian publisher Acolyte, which focuses on co-op and semi co-op games and is looking for UK and European distribution.

She said, “An available network is a huge blocker for many smaller and newly launched publishers. Getting your games in front of the right people who know how to market them (and will in fact market them) is key to expansion.

“With over 5,000 new board games releasing annually I think it can be pretty daunting for smaller publishers who lack the massive budget of The Op’s Flip 7. Being able to use someone who people already know and trust to open a door for you is a huge win.”

Smith said her work with those publishers would include introducing them to distributors she already has relationships with, approaching potential new distribution partners and organising their meeting schedules ahead of the show.

She will also sit in on meetings for publishers that request additional support, including helping with negotiations and expansion plans.

Smith said, “I have a huge network of industry colleagues I have grown over the last 13 years and I think it’s important to give back and not gatekeep that.

“I like being able to introduce folks to each other and watch them both grow and succeed because of it.”

Tabletop Growth Partners will also offer marketing strategy, digital storefront optimisation, crowdfunding and subscription support, and representation at international events including SPIEL Essen, PAX Unplugged, GAMA Expo and UK Games Expo.

Smith told BoardGameWire she believes the cost of attending international shows could make that kind of support particularly valuable to smaller publishers.

Smith said, “For a small publisher the costs of flights, hotels, and a booth are huge. Asking them to then take time away from sales to talk to others simply isn’t an option.”

She added that many board game studios and publishers had opportunities to expand their communities, but lacked the time, knowledge or money to pursue them themselves.

“At the end of the day they are creatives, they should be creating their next bestseller, not getting bogged down with admin and endless meetings. Let me do that.”

Smith joined MyMiniFactory after previously working as a purchasing assistant at Asmodee UK and at Asmodee Entertainment’s fiction imprint Aconyte Books, and most recently served as the 3D-printing platform’s head of marketing and brand.

Her work there included business development around bringing established tabletop properties into 3D printing, including Steamforged Games‘ Warmachine and Modiphius Entertainment‘s The Elder Scrolls.

Smith said that while she is based in the UK, she has set her working schedule to cover US mornings because she expects “a vast majority” of the agency’s clients to be based there.

The agency has also signed up as an ambassador for MyMiniFactory’s Soulcrafted initiative, which was launched to champion human-made creative work amid the rapid growth of generative AI.

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After 20 years growing the UK Games Expo into one of the largest tabletop gaming conventions in the world, founders Richard Denning and Tony Hyams are preparing for their eventual exit by bringing in AireCon co-founder Mark Cooke as operations director.

Cooke joins following another record year for UKGE, which has seen its annual unique attendance surge almost 65% since 2023 to reach more than 51,000.

The show has already well surpassed Gen Con in terms of trade hall size, with the British event now spanning about 44,000 sq m – about 40% larger than Gen Con’s trade hall area – and hosting around 900 exhibitors in 2026.

That soaring growth has put increasing pressure on the small organising team at UKGE, with Denning telling BoardGameWire last year that the show had strained a full-time workforce which stood at just six people – although UKGE also relies on more than 200 volunteers, GMs, umpires and other helpers to deliver the convention each year.

Cooke is no stranger to growing a UK board game convention, having co-founded and built AireCon with Ben Clarkson from a 28-person gaming weekend in his flat a decade ago into England’s second-largest board game con, with about 5,000 attendees this year.

His hire by UKGE comes just three weeks after AireCon revealed that despite its own soaring growth, its 2027 show in Harrogate would be its last – saying a combination of factors had “made it increasingly challenging to run AireCon in a way that preserves the character and spirit that made it so special in the first place”.

More than 5,500 people are expected at the final AireCon – which has been nicknamed Airemageddon – with Cooke set to continue working on that final show before moving to UKGE full time.

A statement from UKGE emphasised the hire was part of a phased transition for UKGE’s organisers, and was “not a sudden change of leadership or direction”.

It said Cooke would work alongside Denning and Hyams “over the next few UK Games Expo events”, ensuring that knowledge, experience and responsibilities the pair have built up over the last 20 years are handed over “gradually and thoughtfully”.

Denning said, “As UKGE has expanded to now one of the world’s largest shows we have gradually grown our team, adding event managers, administrators and logistics support.

“Bringing in Mark as operations director is the next logical step as we put in place plans to ensure UKGE can run far into the future.

“We have known Mark through AireCon and other industry roles for many years now and he is an ideal choice bringing both event management experience, energy and fresh ideas to the team as well as a safe pair of hands as and when Tony and I eventually step away from the show we have built together with others.”

Cooke added, “I’m incredibly excited to be joining the UK Games Expo team and to have the opportunity to play a part in the next chapter of such an important event for the tabletop gaming community.

“I have huge respect for what Richard and Tony have built over the years, and I’m looking forward to working alongside them over the coming events.

“This will be a gradual transition, giving us plenty of time to share knowledge, ideas and experience. My aim is to build on the fantastic foundations already in place while helping UKGE continue to grow and thrive for many years to come.”

Denning and Hyams launched UK Games Expo at Birmingham’s Clarendon Suites in 2007, when the convention attracted about 1,000 visitors.

It moved to Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre in 2013, and had grown to more than 25,000 unique attendees by 2019 before the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted its run of physical events.

Its growth has accelerated since returning, with unique attendance passing 31,000 in 2023, 39,000 in 2024 and 42,000 last year, before jumping beyond 51,000 at its 20th anniversary event this summer.

Denning told BoardGameWire last year that building a world-class trade hall in the UK had been a personal ambition stretching back almost two decades, adding at the time that UKGE was “now fully on the world stage of ‘mega-cons'”.

Despite this year’s record attendance, Denning told BoardGameWire after the show that there was still room for further expansion, particularly around the roughly 500 events taking place during the convention.

The next UK Games Expo is scheduled to take place at Birmingham NEC from June 4 to June 6, 2027.

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Spiel Essen has launched a dedicated B2B matchmaking system aimed at helping publishers, designers, retailers and other industry professionals find potential business partners and arrange meetings before arriving at the world’s biggest board game fair.

The new service, which is restricted to exhibitors and people with business visitor tickets, lets users create profiles detailing what they are looking for and what they can offer, send specific business inquiries, connect via chat and schedule appointments at the show using the built-in calendar.

Spiel said today that the system will be integrated directly into its dedicated app, adding that the move is intended to make networking between trade visitors, professionals and publishers “more targeted, simple, and effective”.

Business has long been an important part of Spiel despite its status as a public-facing convention, with major publishers operating their own dedicated B2B areas for meetings with retailers and other industry professionals.

B2B-specific companies such as manufacturers, crowdfunding services and trade organisations were still scattered across various halls in 2019, but that situation began to change after Spiel was taken over in 2022 by Merz Verlag – whose core event, Spielwarenmesse, is one of the world’s biggest B2B toy trade fairs.

Those companies began to be more concentrated in Hall 4 during the 2022 event – a move which intensified the following year amid a major reorganisation of the halls which attempted to more obviously split the fair into themed segments such as children’s games, family and light-to-medium games, expert games, tabletop and miniature games, roleplaying games and TCGs.

Florian Hess, managing director of Merz Verlag, said after last year’s record-breaking Spiel, “For exhibitors at the fair the focus is also on the joy of the games. At the same time, an incredible number of effective business developments emerge here – and this happens naturally alongside everything else.

“I don’t know of any other event that is as strong a springboard for a business’s launch as Spiel. I have met exhibitors who started here a few years ago with a small booth and are now occupying several hundred square meters and selling games internationally.

“Experiencing this kind of B2B rocket launch never ceases to fascinate me.”

The new system arrives as Spiel prepares for its biggest-ever event from October 22 to 25 this year – with an expansion into all eight main halls at the Messe Essen exhibition centre for the first time expected to see the event challenge its record 220,000 attendance set last year.

Spiel said earlier this year that it had reached the reached the limits of its expansion at its long-time home after boosting floor space to 81,200 sq m – larger than 15 American football fields – amid what it called “overwhelming interest” from exhibitors.

But despite the show bumping against its space limits at its long-time home, a Merz Verlag spokesperson told BoardGameWire in March, “We love Essen – as a venue and the city – and have no intention of leaving. For the foreseeable future SPIEL will remain in Essen as it has for more than 40 years now.”

The fair’s expansion into a seventh hall last year helped the four-day show to its record 220,000 attendance, outstripping the 209,000 visitor record it set just before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Spiel might have broken its attendance record in 2024 were it not for a self-imposed visitor cap, which limited the number of attendees each day to about 50,000 – a measure introduced alongside wider aisles post-pandemic to help visitors move around the often crowded halls more easily.

More than 920 exhibitors from 53 countries are expected at this year’s event, with Merz Verlag saying in March that demand had come both from long-term exhibitors keen to “significantly increase” their booth space, as well as an “impressive number” of first-time exhibitors hoping to attend this year.

About half of the available tickets for Thursday, Friday and Saturday have already been sold, seven weeks before the show opens, with Sunday sales currently “lagging slightly behind”, the show announced today.

Access to the matchmaking platform comes as part of Spiel’s €46 business visitor ticket, which compares with €25 for a standard adult day ticket.

Spiel Essen 2026 takes place at Messe Essen from October 22 to 25.

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Australia’s biggest gaming convention is growing its tabletop exhibition space yet again amid the ongoing global boom in TCGs.

Pax Aus has featured tabletop games since the Melbourne-based con was launched in 2013, with the segment having grown over the years to take up a significant share of the show’s floor space.

The convention’s event director Lauren Luciani told BoardGameWire Pax Aus is expanding its dedicated tabletop hall by 7% for this year’s show, which takes place from October 9 to 11 – adding that even with that extended footprint, a waiting list had emerged for tabletop exhibitors.

Luciani said about 70% of exhibitors from last year’s show were returning for 2026 – although she would not reveal overall exhibitor numbers, or even an overall attendance for last year’s event, describing both figures as “confidential”.

Pax Aus’ announcement of this year’s show was once again dominated by major TCG publishers, underscoring the huge and growing popularity of a swell of different collectible card games over the past few years.

Magic: The Gathering‘s new Reality Fracture set, Disney Lorcana, Riftbound: League of Legends TCG, Star Wars: Unlimited, One Piece Card Game, Dragon Ball Super Card Game, Flesh and Blood and the Cyberpunk TCG were all namechecked in a recent announcement from Pax Aus showcasing this year’s event.

On the board game side highlighted games were thinner on the ground, however, with Asmodee studio titles including The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game, Citadels Duel, Schadenfreude and party games from its Exploding Kittens studio the only non-TCGs namechecked in the announcement.

Asmodee ran a large booth at last year’s show, while other stands included board game distributors Let’s Play Games and Asmodee-owned VR Distribution (which rebranded to Asmodee in Australia last September), as well as a first-ever appearance from Warhammer publisher Games Workshop.

Other board game publishers with dedicated booths were few and far between in 2025, however, with much of the remaining tabletop section made up of retailers and a handful of stands for media outlets.

Update August 12, 2026: Pax Aus contacted BoardGameWire to add that TTRPG veteran Chaosium has just announced it will be attending, hosting free game sessions and showing off its co-op board game Horror on the Orient Express.

The event does include a large area for indie game developers on both the video and tabletop sides, however, called Pax Rising – expected to host more than 80 independent creators this year.

That segment also includes an Indie Showcase competition to highlight games from Australia’s independent design scene.

Last year’s winners in the tabletop category were Conquest For The Capital by MountainSoul Gaming, Coffee Up! by ToToTam, Cartograph – Atlas Edition by The Ravensridge Emporium, Panda Party by Cheerfolk, Spacewreck Salvage by Aethermon Studios and Potion Society by The Murmuring Mystic.

When asked by BoardGameWire whether Pax Aus now sees TCGs as the primary growth area for the convention, Luciani said, “The trading card game category continues to experience significant growth globally, and PAX Aus is committed to reflecting the interests and passions of our community in the content and experiences we deliver.

“While TCG will have a strong presence at this year’s event, there are still a number of tabletop announcements to come, and attendees can expect a diverse range of tabletop gaming experiences on offer.”

This year’s event will include a segment where fans can meet Australian game designers Jay Bendixen, Ryan Boucher, Natalie Delaney-John and Cam Jasson during special sessions for Gretchen’s Garden and That Dicey Word Game.

Pax Aus also appears to be attempting to broaden its appeal to the collectibles market. eBay Australia returns as presenting sponsor of the Tabletop Hall for a second consecutive year, expanding its presence with the debut of eBay Live, live-streamed collector content and a dedicated Collectors Club programme.

Australia remains a long, expensive trip for European and North American attendees, of course. But for international publishers weighing whether the expense of exhibiting in Australia can be justified, Luciani argued that the value extends beyond direct sales.

“PAX Aus provides tabletop exhibitors with access to one of the largest and most engaged gaming communities in Australia,” she said. “Beyond direct sales opportunities, exhibitors benefit from brand exposure, community building, hands-on product experiences and the ability to engage with both existing fans and new players.

“As tabletop gaming continues to grow, PAX Aus remains a unique platform for publishers, retailers and creators to showcase their products alongside the broader gaming culture that brings tens of thousands of fans together each year.”

PAX Aus now forms part of Melbourne International Games Week, Australia’s largest annual games festival.

This year’s event takes place at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from October 9 to 11.

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Tabletop gaming trade organisation GAMA has opened nominations for its 2027 Power Retail Awards, inviting gamers and industry professionals from around the world to spotlight stores and cafés they believe represent the industry’s best.

The annual awards, which have now been running for 17 years, aim to act as a showcase and celebration of business practices, community-building and operational innovations that other hobby retailers can learn from.

More than 750 retailers were submitted for inclusion in last year’s awards, with nominations coming from Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS) customers before being voted on by a GAMA committee of retailers and emeritus ‘team retail’ members.

The awards cover four categories: Retailer of the Year, Innovation in Games (Retail), Outstanding Contribution to Games Industry (Retail) and Outstanding Store Design, with winners of each receiving a one year GAMA membership, recognition in its online database and in the Spring issue of its Around the Table magazine.

That prize was reduced by GAMA last year, with retailer of the year having also previously receiving $1,000 and the other category winners $500 each.

Any tabletop retail business can be nominated regardless of country or GAMA membership status, although US-based businesses have heavily dominated the awards since they were launched in 2010, picking up 50 out of the 63 wins to date.

That total does not include the 2021 Retailer of the Year award, which was presented to every GAMA retailer member at the time to recognise and celebrate them having survived the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Arizona-based Silver Dragon Games scooped Retailer of the Year in the 2026 awards, adding to the Innovation In Games (Retail) and Outstanding Store Design titles it won at the same awards in 2024.

They were joined this year by Illinois-based Fantasy Books and Games, which won the Innovation in Games (Retail) award, Minnesota’s The Gamers Den, which sealed Outstanding Contribution to the Games Industry (Retail), and Wisconsin-based Oddwillow’s Game Haven, which won Outstanding Store Design.

UK retailer Eclectic Games remains the only non-US winner in the past two award cycles, having scooped Outstanding Contribution to the Games Industry in 2025, while Mexico City-based La Piramide is the only store from outside of the US, Canada or the UK to win an award, which it claimed during the inaugural contest in 2010.

Nominations are open to stores that have been operating for at least one full year, while previous winners cannot win the same category twice.

Anyone interested in nominating an outstanding hobby retailer can do so here.

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