SPIEL Essen, the world's largest public board game fair, opens on October 22 and uses all eight halls of the Essen fairgrounds for the first time. Players who can't make it to Germany can follow along on free livestreams, including a German-language panel on Sunday with Ubisoft's head of Europe about what board games and video games can learn from each other.
What to expect at the fair
The organizers expect up to 230,000 visitors over four days, and every booth was booked months in advance. Thousands of new games are shown and sold at the fair for the first time. Staff at the booths explain the rules so visitors can sit down and play right away, and many designers sign copies of their games.
Together with Games Workshop, SPIEL runs a Warhammer 40,000 laser tag arena outside the halls for the first time. Warhammer's Golden Demon painting competition is back too, and on Sunday cosplayers show off their costumes on a catwalk on the stage in Hall 4. For a board game fair, that's a surprising amount to do away from the table.
On Thursday evening, the German gaming and entertainment channel Rocket Beans TV plays a live round of The Werewolves of Miller's Hollow on stage at the Grugahalle. The event, hosted by publisher Asmodee, marks the game's 25th anniversary.
Video game fans will also find Kingdom Come: Deliverance (The Board Game), an official adaptation of Warhorse Studios' medieval RPG. There will sell it in English at there booth in Hall 3. Like the video game.
How to follow SPIEL from home
SPIEL streams its stage program from Hall 4 on its YouTube channel, with talks, panels and interviews on all four days. The host, Manuel Fritsch, is also editor-in-chief of IGN Germany. Talks are in German or English, and the official schedule lists the language for each one.
Hosts Daniel and Simon also stream from the show floor. They spend the fair walking the halls and answering questions in chat.
Czech Games Edition plans its own livestream with the board game channel The Dice Tower from its second booth in Hall 7, where designers will talk about the new games and take questions from viewers. The publisher hasn't shared the schedule yet.
A Sunday panel on board games and video games
On Sunday, October 25, from 2:10 to 3:00 PM CET, a panel in German looks at what board games and video games have in common, what each does best, and where the two are starting to mix. Ralf Wirsing, Ubisoft's head of Europe, is on stage. Earlier in his career, he produced games in The Settlers series and ran the studio Blue Byte. He's joined by Stephan Jacob, a professor at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences with a long career in video games, SPIEL Essen head Carol Rapp, and Jens Junge, who runs an institute for game research.
Anyone planning to go in person should know that Friday and Saturday are sold out and there's no box office at the venue. As of October 16, tickets for Thursday and Sunday were still available online.
