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The NEC Birmingham doesn’t feel like a convention centre when UK Games Expo is running. It feels like the hobby has finally taken over. This year’s show — the 20th anniversary edition — ran from 29–31 May across five halls plus the Hilton Metropole, and the scale of it takes a moment to fully process. We were there for all three days, and we’re still unpacking what we saw, played, and bought.
Post-show figures put the weekend at 87,837 turnstile attendees and 51,196 unique ticket-holders, which reportedly broke both UKGE’s own attendance records and a single-day NEC record. With 900 exhibitors across the halls, finding your bearings is genuinely part of the experience. Here’s what stood out for us.
The Show Itself: 20 Years and No Signs of Slowing
UKGE began, famously, with a church minister from Kidderminster and a retired GP from Sutton Coldfield. What they’ve built now occupies more floor space than most industry trade shows and draws visitors from across Europe. The 20th anniversary felt like a genuine milestone — there was a celebratory energy to the floor that’s hard to articulate but easy to feel.
Hall 1 alone held over 4,000 seats of open gaming alongside tournament play, which tells you everything about how the show balances shopping with actual playing. The World’s Largest Bring & Buy in Hall 5 was, as always, part treasure hunt and part endurance sport. If you’re a collector hunting out-of-print titles or just want to pick up a copy of something you’ve been sitting on, it’s worth building proper time into your schedule for it.
The show’s breadth has expanded noticeably. Alongside the main game halls, UKGE now runs a full seminar programme, a Publisher-Designer track, a dedicated Indie Games Market, and an industry Press & Business Zone with a Thursday preview evening. It’s pulling double duty as both a public fan event and a genuine trade showcase — and largely managing both without one undermining the other.
The Awards: Four Games That Won Everything
UKGE runs two distinct awards programmes: the Judges’ Choice Awards across 20 categories, and the People’s Choice Awards, where the public votes from that shortlist across four broader categories. The four games that won both a Judges’ Choice and a People’s Choice are the clearest “Best of Show” picks from this year’s lineup.
Luthier: The Art of the Instrument — People’s Choice Strategy
Luthier: The Art of the Instrument from Paverson Games took both the Judges’ Choice for Best Euro-Style Board Game and the People’s Choice Strategy Award, which makes it the headline strategy pick of the show. The game puts players in the role of instrument makers in a historical setting, managing craftsmanship, resources, and reputation to produce the finest pieces.
If you like engine-building games with a strong thematic hook — the kind that reward long-term planning the way Terraforming Mars does — Luthier looks like exactly that kind of experience. Euro games with genuine craft themes have a strong track record (Viticulture, Everdell, and the like), and the award sweep here suggests Paverson has delivered something with real depth. It’s going on the wishlist.
Battle of Hoth — People’s Choice General
Battle of Hoth from Days of Wonder won the Judges’ Choice for Best American-Style Board Game and swept the People’s Choice General Award. Star Wars IP has a complicated history in board gaming — plenty of brand recognition, not always matched by gameplay — but Days of Wonder have a track record worth trusting, and the show’s voters clearly responded to whatever they played on the demo tables.
This sits squarely in the American-style, thematic, miniatures-adjacent space. If you want something with strong table presence and a dramatic setting, it looks like the year’s standout in that lane.
Ryoko’s Guide to the Yokai Realms — People’s Choice Roleplaying
The RPG side of UKGE is the largest in the UK, and this year’s People’s Choice Roleplaying winner was Ryoko’s Guide to the Yokai Realms from Loot Tavern Publishing — which we picked up in the limited edition box set, along with the adventure and art books. It had already taken the Judges’ Choice for Best RPG Expansion, making this a clean double win, and honestly both awards are deserved.
The core book is a 392-page, 5e-compatible hardcover — a hybrid monster manual, player-options book, and rules module you drop into existing worlds rather than a strict map-by-map campaign setting. The headline addition is a full system for kaiju battles: bespoke rules for fighting gargantuan, god-like monsters, with mechanics for vulnerabilities, rampage phases, and city-levelling aftermath. Alongside that you get 16 new species, 14 new subclasses, an Element Bender class with four bending-style subclasses, 62 new monsters, 39 feats, harvest-and-crafting systems for turning kaiju parts into gear, and 62 new spells. It’s a toolkit that pushes 5e combat toward something more cinematic — wuxia and anime-influenced in the best way.
The adventure book gives you ready-to-run content that showcases the new systems properly, with big kaiju set-pieces and yokai mystery arcs built specifically to stress-test what the core book introduces. The art book is a separate volume of setting and concept art — full-page illustrations, world-building snippets, and design commentary that doubles as both a reference tool and an exceptional prop for session zeros and big reveals. Showing players the kaiju art before a fight lands very differently than describing it.
As a box set, it’s one of the best-produced RPG products we’ve seen in person. If you play 5e and have any interest in Japanese folklore, kaiju cinema, or just want your combat to feel more like a martial arts film, this is the supplement for it.
Disney Villainous Treacherous Tides — People’s Choice Family
Disney Villainous Treacherous Tides from Ravensburger won Best Variant and the People’s Choice Family Award. Villainous has been a reliable family-weight franchise for years, and the Treacherous Tides edition seems to have done exactly what a good variant should — refreshed the formula without losing what made the original work.
What We Played and Bought: Kryptothera
The game that surprised us most from a demo perspective was Kryptothera: The Cryptid Pursuit — or more precisely, it was the game that convinced us to buy the card game from the same range on the spot.
Kryptothera is set in an alternate Art Deco world where cryptids like Nessie, sea monsters, and trolls aren’t myths — they’re proven creatures that also power advanced technology. Players are rival cryptid hunters racing across a stylised map, tracking, studying, and capturing creatures while managing gear, transport, and reputation. It’s a competitive adventure game for 2–6 players, designed to be accessible to newcomers while carrying enough strategic layers to hold the attention of hobby gamers.
Why It Stood Out
The first thing that hits you is the art. The entire production — board, cards, cryptid illustrations — is built around a 1920s/30s Art Deco aesthetic, and it’s stunning in a way that photos don’t fully capture. It has genuine table presence, and the creator-led demo we played was one of the best-taught sessions we had all weekend. Having one of the game’s designers walk you through the systems makes a real difference when you’re evaluating something unfamiliar.
The replayability angle is built in via varied cryptid decks and modular content, so different combinations of creatures and objectives meaningfully change how sessions play out. That kind of variance is what separates a game you’ll play five times from one that sticks around for fifty. The card game we picked up from the same range uses the same setting and visual language — if you enjoy the kind of light card game that works as an entry point to a bigger world, this fits that role perfectly.
Worth noting: an expansion is already in the pipeline — Kryptothera: From the Mountains to the Sea — adding 33 new cryptids including sea monsters, mermaids, and trolls. It’s available for pre-order now if you want to get ahead of it. For a game that showed up with a creator demo and a strong visual hook, it left the most lasting impression of anything new we tried at the show.
Compile
We also played a fun card game called Compile, which was doing the rounds on the floor. It’s a lighter experience — the kind of thing that works well as a palate cleanser between longer sessions or as a gateway for players who haven’t yet taken the step into heavier games. If you enjoy accessible games that still reward thinking ahead, it’s worth a look.
Notable Releases Worth Watching
Even beyond what we played, the show floor had a few standout titles worth flagging.
Burgle Bros 3 from Fowers Games appeared in the New Games listing. The Burgle Bros series has a devoted following among hobby gamers who like cooperative heist games with a puzzle-like structure, and a third entry will have fans paying close attention. 20 Strong: Tanglewoods Core Set from Chip Theory Games was flagged as a solo-focused title — if you’re actively looking to grow your solo gaming collection, it’s a name to watch.
On the IP side, Terraria and Cult of the Lamb both had tabletop adaptations announced or previewed at the show from Paper Fort Games, tapping directly into videogame audiences. Apex Legends: The Board Game from Glass Cannon Unplugged also made an appearance. The trend of video games crossing over to the tabletop continues at pace. Whether any of these translate their source material into genuinely strong gameplay remains to be seen — but the licensing push shows no sign of slowing down.
For those who enjoy thematic, atmospheric games, 1984: UNPERSON (a dystopian strategy game from Boardova) was one of the more intriguing indie titles on the floor. Carcassonne Labyrinth from Ravensburger also appeared, which will be of interest to anyone who loves the original and has been waiting for a new spin on the formula.
Miniature Supplies: What We Picked Up
UKGE is also one of the better places to shop for miniature painting supplies, and we came away with a useful haul. We found the Vallejo metallic greens we needed, which are always worth stocking up on when you see them. We also tried a set of colour-changing paints from Green Stuff World — these are a relatively new addition to the hobby market, and we’re still working out the best applications, but the results on the test swatches were genuinely interesting.
Diamond files from Army Painter went straight into the toolkit for mini prep work — the kind of thing you don’t realise you need until you’ve spent an hour struggling with mould lines. We also scouted Gamer Grass for basing materials, which has a strong range of tufts and texture products. We’ll be doing some video watching before committing to a full basing setup, but the products looked solid in person.
If miniature gaming is a part of your hobby mix — or you’re thinking about making the leap — our getting started with Warhammer guide is worth reading as a foundation for understanding what you’re likely to need.
The Bigger Picture: What UKGE 2026 Tells Us About the Hobby
A few things stood out as patterns across the weekend rather than one-off observations.
Solo gaming continues its upward trajectory. Between 20 Strong, the solo sections at exhibitor stands, and the sheer volume of games advertising solo modes, the market for single-player tabletop experiences is clearly growing. Publishers have noticed. If you’ve been building a solo game collection, there’s never been more to choose from.
The Art Deco and dieselpunk aesthetic is having a moment. Kryptothera is the most obvious example, but the visual palette of stylised 1920s-1940s design turned up repeatedly across the indie section. It’s a strong look for games because it’s visually distinctive, immediately readable, and lends itself to thematic consistency across components.
IP-driven games are everywhere, and the audience is split on them. The crowd around the Terraria and Cult of the Lamb stands was significant — there’s genuine enthusiasm for familiar properties in tabletop form. But the hobby contingent tends to evaluate these on mechanical grounds, and licensed games have a mixed track record there. The ones to watch are those where the design team seems to have started from the gameplay rather than the brand.
Final Thoughts
UKGE 2026 was the best version of the show we’ve attended. The scale was larger, the programming was richer, and the floor had real energy from opening to close. Ryoko’s Guide to the Yokai Realms was the purchase we’re most excited about. Kryptothera was the unexpected highlight. And somewhere in the Bring & Buy, someone almost certainly found exactly what they’d been looking for.
If you missed the show this year, the 2027 edition is worth putting in the diary early. Based on the trajectory, it’s only going to get bigger.
Continue Your Journey
- The best solo board games for strategic solo play — if Kryptothera or 20 Strong have you thinking about expanding your solo collection
- Our deck building games guide — for players interested in the card game side of the hobby
- Getting started with Warhammer — a full guide to miniature gaming for newcomers
- Video games as board games: what actually works? — context for the IP-licensed games trend at the show
- Best cooperative strategy games — for anyone whose interest was sparked by the show’s co-op offerings
Did you attend UKGE 2026? We’d love to know what you picked up and what you thought was the game of the show — let us know in the comments.
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