BGG.Spring 2026 lands at the Hyatt Regency DFW Airport from 21-25 May, drawing the BoardGameGeek community to Dallas for five days of more or less continuous gaming. If you've ever scrolled BGG and wondered who all those forum regulars actually are, this is where they wash up, hunched over unboxed prototypes, hot-off-the-press releases and well-thumbed library copies.
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 freeStandard badges are $90 for adults, with $60 Gamers-In-Training tickets for kids aged 4-12 and a $75 military rate. Hotel rooms at the venue run $152 a night plus tax. The convention runs from 9am Thursday through 3pm Monday: roughly 100 hours of gaming on the clock.
The headline draw is the library. BGG.Spring pulls together a huge open-play collection that attendees can borrow on the fly, alongside a dedicated prototype area where designers run sessions of unreleased work. Perfect if you fancy testing the next mid-weight engine builder before it hits Kickstarter. Exhibitors and sponsors round out the experience, and the tone is firmly community-first rather than commercial.
Looking for board gamers near you? Browse local communities and find your next game night.
Find events near youIt's a less UK-friendly trip than Essen or UKGE. Flights to Dallas aren't cheap, and the badge prices are dollar-denominated. But for die-hard gamers in or near Texas, BGG.Spring is one of the calendar's quieter pleasures: lower-pressure than Gen Con, smaller than Essen Spiel, and dense with the long-tail games that actually get played at home.
The convention has run for years as the sister event to BGG.CON in November, and tends to attract the most committed segment of the BGG community: people who'd rather log a marathon Spirit Island campaign or a four-hour Twilight Imperium than queue for a celebrity panel. If that sounds like your scene, Dallas in late May is calling.
If you can't make it, check out who's running events near you closer to home. UK Games Expo follows just four days later in Birmingham, and the NEC has its own kind of cosy.
Sources: BGG.Spring 2026 official | BGG Events Wiki
