PLAY – The Game Festival, the international event dedicated to Board-Games, Role-playing Games, Miniatures Games, Live, and Collectible Card Games returns from May 22nd to 24th at Bologna Fiere with more than 40.000 square meters of covered area in five different pavilions.
More than 3000 tables ready to play, thousands of titles including great classics, latest releases, meetings and conferences.
Many news for this special edition. Here is the full program (more than 700 events)
All the main publishers will attend Play 2026 including Asmodee, Cranio Creations, dV Games, Ghenos Games, MS Edizioni, Giochi Uniti, Mancalamaro, Red Glove, Pendragon, Devir, Ravensburger, Clementoni, Ludus Magnus Studio, Need Games, Giochix, Spin Master, Djeco, the complete list is growing day by day.
This year Play will celebrate the 80th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Italy with events, meetings, special guests including Tory Bown, Avery Adler, Banana Chan and Sheila Santos from LLama dice
But many other designers will attend Play – The Games Festival, including Vital Lacerda, Johan Eriksson and Tadeusz Nowopoliski. Here is the list of our guests
Play – the Games Festival has 4 main halls
Hall.20 is dedicated mainly to boardgames with an area for crowdfunding projects
Hall.18 is dedicated to role-playing-games and miniature games
Hall.15 is dedicated to special project like tables for Goblin Maginifico, games winning international awards, the guest country area – Spain this year, specific area for collaborative games and 2-players games, the Art@Play, the Independence Play and SAZ area for game designers. This area include also a special booth dedicated to the theme of this edition and a small area for digital games
The earth of this area is the Play Games Library, more than 100 tables dedicated and animated by La Tana dei Goblin staff
Hall.16 is dedicated to collectable card games with the present of all the main games system including Riftbound with events, tournaments and demo.
This hall will also include are dedicated to family games and kids games, wooden games ,traditional games, abstract games Star Wars figurse includine an AT-ST 4 meters tall
Scientific Area – Hall.15
Play also hosts those who work on games by building innovative game-based research projects in a wide variety of disciplinary fields. Confirming the fundamental role of games in learning and study processes, again this year PLAY counts on the collaboration of some of the most important Italian research institutions that will be present with their proposals: the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) and the National research Center (CNR) that will be joined by important institutions from the academic world such as the IMT of Lucca, Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, the University of Florence, the University of Genoa and the University of Turin. The same area will also host an area dedicated to inclusive and accessible play organized in collaboration with AUSL Modena.
Organized by Bologna Fiere in collaboration with Ludo Labo and the support of dozens of Italian play associations.
