EXCERPT. 60,000 sq meter. 6 halls. 1000 exhibitors. 56 countries. Estimating 180k attendees. Friedhelm Merz Verlag’s 40th Anniversary of Essen Spiel and Boardgamecafe.net’s 10th – T-13 days and counting. Stay tune here for more pictures and quick reports in two weeks time!

With all expectations that the 40th Anniversary of ESSEN SPIEL this year will exceed the records set in the pre-COVID year of 2019, the largest board game fair comes with a host of special features!

So, get ready for SPIEL!

New Hall Layout

The biggest change arguably has to be the revamped HALL LAYOUT. We may no longer find our favorite publishers at their “usual” Halls as they will now be grouped according to erm “thematic categories”. We’ll let you know if this new floor plan works better than the previous.

Long-time SPIEL visitors will notice: From now on, games and publishers will be distributed among the halls according to thematic categories. While role-playing games, collectible card games and miniatures games will find their way into Hall 1, connoisseur and expert games will be located in Hall 3. In Halls 2, 4, 5 and 6, family games – from simple children’s games to light connoisseur games – are waiting to be tried out. When distributing the booths in the halls, Merz Verlag also made sure that small, medium and large booths are well mixed. This means that at every corner there is an opportunity to discover new exhibitors as well as well-known publishers. 

Check out the new hall plan here – spiel-essen.de/en/the-spiel/hall-plans.

A SPIEL Of Events

Their theme for this year is “change and innovation” and as such, a series of talks and workshops are lined up through out the four days. Best part is Free Admission!

• “The Changing World of Board Games – 40 Years of SPIEL”
• Educators Day
• Let’s Meet and Play
• Meeps malt Meeps

For those of you not at Essen, fear not as most of the above events should be streamed on their Youtube channel.

As usual, we leave you with our group pic from last year’s Essen Spiel.

For more Essen Spiel reports:
https://boardgamecafe.net/category/essen-spiel-2/