Your local game shop probably felt busier last year. Now the numbers confirm it. The hobby games market grew 40 per cent to $3.66 billion in 2025, according to ICv2's annual White Paper presented at GAMA Expo 2026. That is the biggest single-year jump the industry has ever recorded.
The headline comes with a caveat for board gamers, though. Trading card games drove the vast majority of that growth. TCGs now account for roughly two-thirds of all hobby games spending, powered by Pokemon and One Piece in particular, with the Cyberpunk TCG's record-shattering Kickstarter (currently north of $17 million with nine days still to go) showing the category is still accelerating. Not every TCG thrived equally: Disney Lorcana's sales actually dipped after the initial boom, though they settled at a respectable level. Board games, miniatures, and RPGs posted more modest numbers by comparison, growing slightly or holding steady. If you play board games rather than collect cards, the picture is less dramatic than the headline suggests.
ICv2 now combines board games and non-collectible card games into a single reporting category, so exact board game figures are harder to isolate. The miniatures market reached $585 million, up 7.3 per cent from the prior year.
The growth is even more remarkable given what the industry endured. The collapse of Diamond Comic Distributors, parent company of Alliance Game Distributors, disrupted product flow to game stores across North America. If your shop had trouble stocking certain titles in 2025, this is likely why. US tariffs on imported goods also forced some publishers to absorb higher costs, while others passed price increases on to consumers.
Consumer demand held up regardless. The hobby channel marked its 17th consecutive year of growth. For context, the entire market sat at just $1.675 billion in 2019. It has more than doubled since.
Sources: ICv2 | ICv2 In-Depth | ICv2 Miniatures Report
