Gen Con grows to 74,000 attendees, stays world’s second largest tabletop gaming conference

Gen Con has grown to a whopping 74,000 attendees–over 2,000 greater than in 2025–maintaining its place because the world’s second largest tabletop gaming conference. Going by turnstile figures, Gen Con does look like closing within the largest occasion, SPIEL Essen in Germany.

Two figures are sometimes reported: attendees represents the variety of tickets bought, or distinctive attendees, whereas turnstile tells you ways many individuals entered the occasion in complete, however counts individuals who attend on a number of days a number of instances.

By distinction, Origins Game Fair shrank barely, going from 19,171 attendees in 2025 to 18,700 in 2026, whereas UK Games Expo grew from 42,000 attendees to over 51,000. Origins and UKGE used to leap-frog one another yearly, vying for the third spot, however UKGE has had monumental progress over the previous couple of years.

Of the opposite predominant tabletop gaming conventions, SPIEL Essen 2026 is in October and PAX Unplugged 2026 is in December.

Not all conventions report all of the related figures–SPIEL Essen solely experiences turnstile, not attendees; whereas PAX Unplugged and Origins solely report attendees and never turnstile.

There are different giant gaming and geek-themed conventions, some bigger than these, however this listing focuses on these devoted particularly dedicated to tabletop gaming. France’s Festival International des Jeux attracts turnstile figures of round 110,000, and Italy’s Lucca Comics & Games dwarfs all of those with over 280,000 attendees. However, tabletop gaming solely represents a part of these occasions. And, in fact, main popular culture conventions just like the San Diego Comic Con attract round 150,000 attendees.