Game Essen 2025 and Catan World Record

On Wednesday evening, we settled in our RV in the parking lot of the Messe Essen, ready to be at the opening of the game fair early the next morning.
We arrived a bit before 10 AM and waited with a large crowd of other gaming enthusiasts at the doors, until finally the gate opened and we could reach the game tables.

The game fair in Essen is the largest public fair for board games worldwide. Nearly 1000 exhibitors from over 50 countries were present to showcase their games.

On Thursday, we tried many different games at the booths of various publishers and played some entertaining rounds with other Germans, as well as some French attendees.

Time flew by and in the evening we left the fairgrounds only at 7 PM, wrapped up with several new games that we had tried out and then purchased.

On Friday, it seemed even busier, although Thursday was reportedly sold out as well. In total, more than 200,000 visitors are expected over the four days of the fair.
We also checked out the exhibition halls that we hadn’t managed to visit the day before and tried out a few more games.

Some publishers had special promotional ideas: to draw attention to the game “Ticket to Ride,” a small train - monitored by several attendants in suits - drove through the exhibition halls, ringing its bell to clear a path for the visitors.

On this day, we did not stay until the fair ended because we had bought tickets for the “Catan Connect - World Record Event.”

We were two of a total of 1170 players who came together at long tables to play “Catan Connect,” surpassing the previous record of 1096 participants set in 2017 in Rotterdam.

After an introduction and explanation of the rules, the actual game unfortunately went by much too quickly, but it was still a lot of fun.