Essen SPIEL 2026: Where Will Your Next Game Night Take You?

One minute you’re looking at a game about excavating a frozen civilisation. A few minutes later, you’re considering whether your friends would enjoy building a Japanese town using potatoes as currency.

Welcome to Essen season.

If you’ve noticed unfamiliar game names appearing everywhere and wondered what you’ve missed, Essen probably has something to do with it. For anyone who enjoys discovering what board games can do, it’s a particularly exciting time of year.

It can also leave you with a very long wishlist and absolutely no idea where to start.

Running Boardgamist means thinking about how those games fit into real evenings. A striking box might catch your attention, but the useful question comes afterwards: who would you play it with, and what would you want that evening to feel like?

With that in mind, here are five games to explore this Essen season, each offering a different answer.

What is Essen SPIEL, and why does it matter?

SPIEL Essen is the world’s largest board game fair, held in Essen, Germany. The 2026 event took place from 22 to 25 October, bringing together publishers, designers and players to discover, demonstrate and buy games.

For the wider hobby, it’s a chance to see the extraordinary variety of ideas finding their way onto our tables.

You even need to travel to Germany to enjoy that sense of discovery because just following the games from home can open a door into parts of the hobby you haven’t explored yet.

The five titles below are a Boardgamist selection for that spirit of discovery, rather than a ranking of the fair’s biggest releases. Start with the experience that appeals to you.

I C E: For the group that wants to uncover something together

Some games make their theme immediately understandable through what you physically do.

In I C E, you lead a guild of explorers investigating the remains of an ancient civilisation beneath the ice. The board consists of stacked layers of tiles, which you excavate to reveal what lies underneath.

That gives the game a particularly appealing invitation: there is something down there, and you get to uncover it.

As the excavation develops, the shared landscape changes. You’re discovering artefacts while deciding how to advance your own guild’s ambitions, so the sense of exploration sits alongside competition.

Choose this when your group enjoys a substantial game with a distinctive physical presence and a setting worth getting absorbed in.

Allow time and attention for the experience. This is a better prospect for an evening planned around playing than a quick addition after dinner. The linked Boardgamist listing is for the Collector’s Second Edition.

Harmonies: Crescendo: For the game you already keep coming back to

Discovering something new can mean finding fresh possibilities in a game that already belongs on your table.

Harmonies: Crescendo expands Harmonies with three modules: Sanctuaries, Whispers and new personal boards. These introduce different landscape-building possibilities, scoring opportunities and spatial challenges, and can be used separately or combined.

That flexibility is useful. You can introduce a little variety, see how it feels, and explore further when everyone is ready.

For a household that already enjoys the original’s landscape puzzle, Crescendo offers a reason to take another look at familiar decisions. Where will everything fit? Which opportunities should you pursue? How much can you make from the space available?

Choose this when Harmonies already gets played regularly and you’d welcome more ways to explore it.

You need the Harmonies base game to play. If you haven’t tried it yet, start there. There’s no need to add an expansion before you know whether the original suits you.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance: For the player who wants to make their own way

Perhaps the most appealing part of an adventure is deciding who you become along the way.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance, from Czech Games Edition, takes you to medieval Bohemia, where you begin as an ordinary peasant and develop your character through the opportunities you pursue.

Exploration, equipment, skills and quests shape that journey. You build a deck representing your developing abilities, choosing how to make progress through a world that offers different paths.

The appeal is having room to follow your curiosity. Becoming better equipped or more capable gives your decisions a sense of direction beyond the next turn.

Choose this when you enjoy character development, exploration and a substantial game you can settle into.

Yotei: For people who like building something of their own

A town beneath a Japanese mountain. Forests, fields, hot springs and ski resorts. A local economy in which potatoes have considerable spending power.

Yotei has an inviting starting point.

Set in Hokkaido, it asks you to develop an appealing town by acquiring land and deciding what to build. You buy or bid for opportunities, using your resources to bring different parts of your destination to life.

The town-building theme gives those decisions an easy point of connection. You can picture what you’re creating, while bidding means keeping an eye on what other players want too.

Choose this when your group likes developing in their own little corner of a game, with competition over the opportunities available.

The gentle setting still contains competitive decisions. If you enjoy the idea of building a lovely destination while occasionally making a rival pay more for their plans, this is worth exploring.

For The Gods!: For friends who enjoy watching each other’s plans

If your favourite part of game night is noticing what somebody else is about to do, For The Gods! offers a different direction.

You sail between Greek islands, establish temples and build them higher as you compete for control. Along the way, God stones let you call upon divine powers that can change your opportunities.

The central question is where to commit your effort. Strengthening one position means spending attention and resources that could have gone elsewhere, while your opponents are making their own decisions around the same islands.

That makes it a prospect for players who want the shared board to matter.

Choose this when your group enjoys tactical competition, changing positions and finding the right moment to act.

Expect to pay attention between your turns. This is likely to suit people who enjoy responding to rivals more than those who want to concentrate almost entirely on their own creation.

Which one belongs on your table?

Picture the next evening you could realistically organise:

• If everyone wants to explore a striking shared landscape, start with I C E. 

• If Harmonies is already a regular favourite, Crescendo is the natural place to look. 

• For character development and a larger adventure, investigate Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

• Yotei offers town building with an inviting setting and interactive bidding.

• For The Gods! puts more of the emphasis on contesting a shared space and timing your opportunities.

You only need one of those experiences to sound right.

That’s the useful way to approach Essen SPIEL 2026: let the variety widen your horizons, then choose according to the people who will actually pull up a chair.

If you’re torn between them, tell me who you play with and what you enjoy. Helping you find the right game for the right moment, with the right people, is what Boardgamist is here for.

Frequently asked questions

What is Essen SPIEL?

SPIEL Essen is an annual board game fair in Essen, Germany, where visitors can discover games, watch demonstrations, play and buy from exhibitors.

Are all the games discussed here brand-new Essen releases?

No. This is a selection to explore around Essen season, including an expansion and a second edition. Inclusion doesn’t mean a game made its debut at the fair.

Can I play Harmonies: Crescendo without Harmonies?

No. Crescendo is an expansion and requires the Harmonies base game. Its three modules can be introduced separately or combined.

Are these games available for immediate UK delivery?

Check the individual product pages before ordering. Some titles are offered as preorders, and availability at a convention can differ from UK retail delivery dates.