We spend a lot of time talking about the BGG hotness and the latest million-dollar Kickstarter, but here is a different question: what are people actually handing over money for? Sentrybox, a game shop in Calgary, has published its top ten best-sellers for the first half of 2026, and it is a handy reality check on what really moves off the shelf.
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See how it worksTop of the pile is Flip 7, the moreish push-your-luck card game that has been a runaway hit and shows no sign of cooling. Behind it sits the Catan base game, still a pillar of the hobby a year on from its sixth-edition refresh, then Hues and Cues, the colour-guessing party game that keeps climbing. Fourth is the surprise of the list: Wyrmspan, the dragon-themed engine-builder, is now outselling the bird game it spun off from, Wingspan. Rounding out the top five is Horrible Therapist, a silly party game from Exploding Kittens.
There is a strong Tolkien streak too. The Allies expansion for the two-player card duel Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth sits at sixth, and the co-operative trick-taking game The Two Towers lands ninth. In between, Wingspan's Americas expansion takes seventh, the quick card game Sea Salt and Paper eighth, and the word party classic Codenames closes out the ten.
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Start organising for freeThe notable faller is Sky Team, last year's number three, which dropped out of the top ten entirely after stock problems, including a distributor warehouse fire that wiped out a shipment.
One shop's till is not the whole market, but it cuts through the hype nicely: cheap, quick, teach-in-two-minutes card games rule, propped up by evergreen classics and a healthy Lord of the Rings habit. If those are the games your table keeps reaching for, line up a game night and put them to work.
Sources: Sentrybox
