Oh wow. It’s now less than 2 weeks to Spiel ’19, which is happening this year from Oct 24-27. The 37th iteration of the annual gamecon is set to be another “larger than last year” Spiel with an estimated 200,000 attendees (LY 190k) expected to flock to the Messe Halls.

More than 1,500 games (LY 1,400) from 1,200 exhibitors (LY 1,150) would be display with an increase in exhibition space to 86,000 sq meters (LY 80,000 sqm). Indeed the world’s largest event for board and card games.

One of the issues we faced last year – that we haven’t encounter since we started visting Spiel back in 2012 – was a breakdown of the ticket entry system (they switched to barcodes) that resulted in a huge chokepoint that was literally looking to spill over into the streets.

Seems this year the renovation at Messe Hall’s done and Spiel ’19 is adding Hall 8 to the itinerary (yay! more walking!). Wisely, they have also made available the newly renovated East (Ost) Entrance for the 1st time in 2019 to usher in the attendees.

Another change is the loss of the KombiTickets – not that it matters to us since we do not use this combo. KombiTickets combine the Spiel entrance and the train tickets into one. If you are looking to get this ticket combo this year, you might want to start exploring alternatives now.

KombiTickets
The long-standing contract between Messe Essen and Ruhrbahn, to which we are unfortunately affiliated, has not been extended, so there will be no combi-tickets for VRR for any event taking place at Messe Essen this year or in the future. We regret this very much.

If you have any questions, please contact the Ruhrbahn directly or Messe Essen.

Source: https://www.spiel-messe.com/en/visitors/entrance-opening-times/

One change – for us personally – is that we’ll need to purchase a (children) ticket for Rachel this year as she’s now bubbly 4 yo. 🙂

Stay tune for more updates when we hit Spiel ’19 this 24th.