No occasion has come again extra strongly from its pandemic-enforced hiatus than Gamescom. The German occasion posted report attendance this 12 months, pushed partly by enterprise attendance boosted by the demise of E3; its two-year-old South American spinoff Gamescom LatAm claimed an viewers of 175,000, up 17% over the earlier 12 months. This week is Gamescom Asia x Thailand Recreation Present, which has additionally scaled quickly from its launch in 2021: the 2026 version will host guests from 29 nations, comprise 20 nationwide pavilions and is aiming welcome greater than final 12 months’s whole of 206,000 attendees to its expanded present ground.
The dimensions is pushed by the present’s unity of enterprise and client audiences, which undertaking director Daria La Velle describes as a filling a niche within the Asian market amid established occasions like Tokyo Recreation Present and the rapidly-rising BitSummit. That result in a partnership with the 18-year-old client occasion Thailand Recreation Present, prompting a relocation from Singapore to Bangkok in 2024. That has been adopted by an additional partnership this 12 months with anime occasion Ace Bangkok, which accounts for half of the extra present ground added to this 12 months’s occasion.
The remainder, says La Velle, comes from publishers and builders – each native and international, and mainly PC and console centered, who’re drawn by a strong vary of networking and funding capabilities alongside a four-stage, 70-person B2B speaker lineup together with John Romero, Despatch developer AdHoc studio and Rovio.
“There are positively extra publishers and builders from Asia,” La Velle tells GamesIndustry.biz, “particularly Japan, China, Korea, but in addition Southeast Asia.” She factors to early exhibition house booked by Japanese shoppers together with Ps, Nintendo (represented by native licensee Synnex) Capcom, Bandai Namco, Sega and The Pokémon Firm. “However we’re additionally seeing exhibitors coming from the US, from Europe, and even so far as South America. We have now nation pavilions that we did not have final 12 months, like Germany, Austria, the Philippines.” Enterprise attendees cut up roughly 40/60 between Thailand and international, she says.
The present seeks to deliver the Gamescom expertise to an viewers who know the model – the international clout of which “positively opens doorways” – however aren’t capable of make the journey to Germany. “The variety of attendees that come from Asia Pacific remains to be a comparatively low in comparison with the variety of attendees that come from Europe and the US and South America,” says La Velle of the German present, with the price of attendance being a significant factor for small groups in nations just like the Philippines, Indonesia or Thailand. “So as a substitute of touring to Gamescom, we tried to deliver the Gamescom expertise to their exhibits mainly, to their yard.”
Whereas the title is solely Gamescom Asia – reflecting a possible viewers containing a few of the fastest-growing video games markets on the planet, on which the organisers clearly have an eye fixed – the present’s present focus is simply South Asia. It is a broad and considerably noisy neighborhood, encompassing ten nations every with completely different languages and viewers habits, lots of them sustaining a robust desire for bodily releases. The present seeks to offer an area for all of them, an element which supported the merger with the adjoining Thailand occasion – eradicating the necessity to native corporations to determine which to attend, whereas lowering the attendance prices which represented a major expense for smaller studios.
La Velle is seeing speedy progress in indie improvement throughout South Asia. Alongside youthful startups, massive co-development homes in these territories are spawning indie spin-offs, notably in Singapore, which has actively courted bigger corporations to arrange APAC places of work within the territory and is now seeing smaller startups rise.
Indie outreach on the occasion features a devoted showfloor space, together with a pitching competitors. This provides builders from all nations the chance to get in entrance of publishers and buyers, with money prizes for the highest three. Extra retiring souls can keep on with a speed-dating spherical for builders, publishers and buyers; new for 2026 is a task reversal wherein a collection of publishers have been invited to pitch themselves to builders. La Velle says that is pushed by escalating writer demand for new titles, though it additionally chimes with wider developer curiosity in self-publishing.
With the B2C viewers increasing and an growing variety of notable names on the B2B attendee listing, the organisers are understandably bullish concerning the present’s prospects. The “north star”, says La Velle, is to cowl all of Asia, however for now “on the basic stage, we’re a present for Southeast Asia’s video games business and its followers.” It’s additionally, she says, a spot the place Western publishers and buyers can faucet into the burgeoning native improvement scene searching for their subsequent signing.
“You need to discover the subsequent massive factor in video games, I’d say, don’t remain in your places of work in Europe or within the US ready for any individual to go to you. Hop on a airplane and come to Bangkok and meet all of the indies, in addition to the AAs that shall be coming to the present.”