Here's some of the tabletop game-related news I've run across in the past couple of weeks:
▪️ In March 2026, fair organizer Merz Verlag announced that SPIEL Essen 26 would occupy all eight halls of Messe Essen, with 81,200 m² of floor space devoted to fair activities — and in late April 2026, ahead of the registration deadline of April 30, Merz Verlag stated that all exhibition space has been booked "and we are now placing inquiries on a waiting list".
▪️ Merz Verlag also oversees the Deutsche Spiele Preis, and for those who live in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, voting for the 2026 DSP is now open. From now until the end of July 2026, you can submit a list of your five favorite family games and one favorite children's game — and "family game" means anything that is not a children's game. (The links lead to lists of eligible titles released between May 1, 2025 and April 30, 2026.)
▪️ Additionally, in early March 2026 Merz Verlag announced the TCG Awards, which was initiated by Card Sports League and Hana Sports & Entertainment GmbH (with Merz Verlag as a partner) and which Merz Verlag managing director Carol Rapp describes as "the first dedicated recognition for everything that makes TCG culture so special".
The TCG Awards consists of thirteen categories that are a mixed bag of everything related to TCGs. Of those thirteen, five categories focus on "product excellence" (for Game, Set, Newcomer, Accessory, and Artwork of the Year), and four categories focus on "community and creators" (for Event, Local Game Store, Content Creator, and Equality Impact of the Year). Anyone with an interest in TCGs can vote in these categories, whereas three other categories (Brand Partnership, Campaign, and Service Provider of the Year) will be voted on by a jury.
The final category — Player of the Year — will be determined by a "performance based evaluation".
▪️ In late April 2026, Italian magazine ioGioco announced its fifth annual ioGioco Awards, which (coincidentally) also includes thirteen categories. Paolo Mori won designer of the year, with Toy Battle, co-designed by Mori and Alessandro Zucchini, winning two-player game of the year. (Toy Battle also won the 2026 As d'Or for "game of the year" and best two-player game on Board Game Arena. I wouldn't be surprised by a 2026 Spiel des Jahres nomination on May 19.)
Other ioGioco winners include Cole Wehrle's Arcs as best board game of 2025, Bryan Bornmueller's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game as best light/family game, and Marc and Catherine André's Splendor Kids as best children's game.
▪️ Gen Con has released an exhibitor list and an interactive map for its 2026 event. Here's hoping a downloadable non-interactive map will once again be available for those of us who do better with a combined list and map instead of flipping back and forth from one to another.
▪️ ICv2 published a two-part interview with Bob Maher, CEO of ACD Distribution, and I thought I'd highlight two excerpts that relate to tabletop games. First, in mid-2025 ACD Distribution purchased Luma and Synapses Games from Flat River Group. Asked how that's been going, Maher says:
[Regarding] Compile and Medium and the other games that Carl [Briere] is working on at Synapses, I actually had no idea the volume that they do on those games. That part of it, the work that Carl does at Synapses has already paid for the acquisition. It's been wildly positive.
And speaking of the board game market more broadly, Maher says:
There was a point, probably over 10 years ago, that I remember we used to sell some new releases of board games in the thousands of copies. There might be a new board game we sold 5,000 or 7,000 copies of on release. That's not really a thing at the moment. Or when Essen was a huge source of news and the new release board games were a big deal, and it was really great when the consumers could get their hands on whatever the hot new release is. I don't feel like we're in that space right now, but I believe we will come back to it at some point.
I'd wager the increased number of games hitting the market leads to most retailers going wide rather than deep. Get one copy of most titles and a few of anticipated titles, then re-order as needed.
▪️ The title of this video from Mike at Tabletop Turtle is muy clickbaity, but I still appreciated his effort to detail how games have become less directly interactive, thanks largely to the growth of deck-builders, engine-builders, and tableau-builders — games in which the focus is on growing faster and reaching goals first, with relatively limited options to tear apart an opponent's creation.
Speaking of which, my "Cult of the Old" quest hasn't progressed much, with Leo Colovini's Aztlán hitting the table only once so far. That game heavily features tearing opponents apart, although you can also play nice to receive a bonus.
