There is never a bad time to get your group round a table, but Asmodee has just handed you a ready-made excuse. The publisher behind Catan and Ticket to Ride launched Board Game Fest on 4 June 2026, a summer-long celebration of tabletop play designed to run well beyond the single day of International Tabletop Day.
Got a regular group? Create a private community, poll for the best date, vote on games, and let your friends RSVP in one place.
Set up your group for freeThe idea is to spotlight games and, more to the point, the people who play them, spanning board games, card games, trading card games and miniatures, basically anything played around a table. There is a store locator to point you at your local game shop, a batch of free print-and-play games to try, and a run of featured summer picks including modern staples like Azul (tile-laying), Pandemic (co-operative disease-fighting) and Ticket to Ride (route-building). The thread running through it all is the one most of us already know: games are at their best with other people around.
The best way to mark a festival about playing more games is, well, to play more games. If Board Game Fest nudges you into organising something, you can list a game day for free on Backseat Gamer and find or start a local community to fill the seats. The festival runs through the summer, so there is plenty of runway to plan a session, raid the shelf and rope in a few friends.
Run game nights? Backseat Gamer handles RSVPs, waitlists, date polling, and game voting so you can focus on playing.
Start organising for freeSources: Asmodee UK
