UK Games Expo 2026 People's Choice Award Winners & Record Breaking Attendance!

UK Games Expo took over the NEC in Birmingham this last weekend, breaking records, blistering feet, and making the national news in several outlets including the BBC. Tabletop Sentinel were in attendance throughout the show and had an absolutely fantastic time.

On Thursday night there was a press ceremony for the Judges Choice Award Winners, who were announced earlier in May. The winners of the Judges Choice Awards became the nominees for the People’s Choice Awards which were voted on by the attendees and then announced on Sunday afternoon towards the end of the show.

The winners of the People’s Choice Awards were:

Strategy Award

Luthier: The Art of the Instrument (Deluxe) by Paverson Games

Family Award

Disney Villainous Treacherous Tides by Ravensburger

Roleplaying Award

Ryokos Guide to the Yokai Realms by Loot Tavern Publishing

General Award

Battle of Hoth by Days of Wonder

The show itself also broke records, which I’m sure wasn’t a surprise to anyone who attended this year as even though the trade hall has now expanded across four halls, with over 30% more traders this year than last year, the halls were packed with attendees who should be expecting calls from their bank managers shortly.

In 2025 the show saw a 7% attendance rise, with over 42,000 unique people buying tickets, and 72,000 attendance (attendance is counted adding the total number of tickets for each day whilst uniques are based on actual individuals - a number of whom attend on multiple days). This year, the 20th anniversary of the show, saw almost a 22% rise in unique attendees with 51,196 uniques and 87,837 people across the weekend making the show the biggest to date by some margin.

The show certainly feels like it’s challenging the giants of boardgaming shows such as Gen Con in the States and Spiel in Germany. Whilst the trade hall at UK Games Expo is probably now bigger than that of Gen Con (and UK Games Expo certainly has more traders as they had over 900 different vendors this year whereas Gen Con had over 500 last year) Gen Con still beats the show on attendees (Gen Con had just over 70,000 uniques last year) and the amount of games and seminars available to sign-up are currently on a completely different scale to that of UK Games Expo.

What really impressed me about the UK Games Expo Trade Hall is that the make up of the traders is very different from those at Gen Con. Whilst there were a number of American companies present in Birmingham the vast number were British and European companies, including dozens (possibly hundreds) of fantastic indie designers and studios selling their creations. Compared to 20-25 years ago when a show like Dragonmeet in London used to run in the Kensington Town Hall and hosted pretty much every Tabletop RPG Company in the UK in a small trade hall and everyone knew each other, the amount of creatives working in the industry and releasing games has grown so dramactically that you discover so many new games and meet hosts of new creatives at every event these days. It’s fantastic to see so much growth and long may it continue.

Congratulations to Richard and Tony who have organised and run the show for the last 20 years, along with Patrick who sadly passed earlier this year, and to the entire UK Games Expo staff and volunteers. While I can’t wait to see what the 2027 installment brings my feet are informing me that they are very happy it’s twelve months away!

Images courtesy of UK Games Expo