Anyone whose Codenames deck has a few too many cards bearing the words "BANK" and "CAR" is about to get some new ammunition. Czech Games Edition has announced three pocket expansion packs for Codenames, all dropping in Q2 2026 at around £8 each. After ten years and 16 million copies sold, the world's most-played party game finally gets official themed packs.
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Start organising for freeThe first two packs, Sci-Fi and Fairy Tales, follow the same format. Each adds 50 themed words and phrases on 25 cards, three new agent tiles, and four extra picture cards for Codenames: Pictures players. The Fairy Tales pack stitches in crossover characters like Red Riding Hood and Captain Hook, while Sci-Fi leans into spaceships, aliens and the kind of vocabulary that gets your spymaster confidently saying "PLANET, four". Both work with the original Codenames or the two-player Codenames: Duet.
The third pack, Cute Critters, is for Codenames: Pictures only and stuffs 40 new animal images into the box. Designer Vlaada Chvátil, the brain behind the original 2015 game, signed off the contents, and the artwork has been refreshed to match the cleaner look of the 10th anniversary relaunch that hit shelves last year.
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See how it worksCodenames is the Spiel des Jahres winner from 2016 that everyone's mum has played at Christmas, but the joy of these packs is they target the people who play it weekly. Mixing in fresh themed cards is also the easiest excuse going to run a Codenames night for your local group. If you do, list your session on Backseat Gamer and pull in a few extra players. Word games are the lowest-stakes hook there is, and a themed pack night is exactly the kind of casual evening that turns a curious newcomer into a regular.
Sources: Czech Games Edition | ICv2 | Thinky Games
