Gamescom 2026: Big, Loud and Slightly Bonkers

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I’ve just come back from Gamescom in Köln and, if you’ve never been, the easiest way to describe it is this: imagine someone took the entire global gaming industry, added several hundred thousand people, turned the volume up to eleven and stuffed the whole thing into a German exhibition centre.

It is absolutely enormous.

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This year 368,000 people from 131 countries descended on Köln, alongside 1,743 exhibitors from 66 countries – both extraordinary numbers. The entire 233,000 square metres of exhibition space was sold out for the first time. And another 624 million views were generated online.

Gaming isn't a niche. It isn't even just an entertainment sector anymore. It's a cultural monster.

And Gamescom is its Glastonbury.

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The big publishers were obviously out in force, with Xbox, Nintendo, Ubisoft, SEGA, Capcom and the rest building stands that looked like small countries. Opening Night Live alone attracted 78 million views, with announcements around Final Fantasy VII Revelation, Gears of War: E-Day and new Witcher 3 content amongst the noise.

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But actually, the bit I found most interesting wasn't necessarily the blockbusters.

It was everything around them.

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The indie halls were rammed. Smaller developers were showing genuinely weird, inventive things alongside billion-dollar franchises. Asian publishers and developers felt increasingly prominent. Gaming hardware continues to blur the line between console and PC. And everywhere you looked there were communities built around games rather than simply people buying them.

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That's probably the biggest takeaway.

Gaming understands fandom better than almost any other entertainment industry.

People weren't wandering around Gamescom looking at products. They were queueing for experiences, dressing as characters, collecting things, meeting creators, playing together and becoming part of something.

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For marketers, that's the interesting bit.

Too much advertising still treats gaming as a media channel: “How do we reach gamers?”

Gamescom rather spectacularly demonstrates that this is the wrong question.

There isn't really a single thing called a gamer anymore. There are hundreds of overlapping cultures, communities and passions – and brands that understand those communities can become part of them rather than simply advertising at them.

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Oh, and Köln is brilliant. And the IGN party is a perennial favourite for me.

Getting there is pretty easy too. To-the-second-perfect trains from King's Cross, with just one change, make getting to Köln easier than commuting into London for many.

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Beer comes in suspiciously small glasses, pork appears to be compulsory and my Gamescom experience delivered 47,000 steps to offset the beer.

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My feet were destroyed.

Getting ready to book again.