SdJ 2026

The cat’s out of the bag and the winners have been announced 🗄️!

Did the ceremony get snappier again? No lengthy flashbacks to previous winners (only an epitaph for Reinhold Wittig 🗄️), no detailed lectures on the jury’s work, no dragging out the announcements. The show definitely had its entertaining moments, like when Donald X. Vaccarino subverted the jury’s narrative about his game’s critical commentary (“just a bit of fun”), or when chairman Harald Schrapers forgot what year it is (“The Spiel des Jahres 2024 is…”).

The waiting is finally coming to an end! On Sunday, July 12, the jury will announce the winners of Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres 2026. As always, there are six games hoping to win one of the two most important awards in gaming – and one hopeless geek trying to predict which will be the lucky ones. 🤓

Nominations are out 🗄️! The jury selected a total of sixteen games for their longlists, nine for Spiel des Jahres and seven for Kennerspiel des Jahres. Out of these games, three games each are nominated for the two awards and can hope to get the coveted meeple added to their covers on July 12.

Spiel des Jahres 2026 is around the corner! As with the previous six years, I’ll try to predict what games have the best shot at ending up on the longlist (aka recommendations) and the shortlist (aka nominations) when the jury announces their picks on May 19th.

As every year, I’ll let the algorithms speak, and I’m once again using the methodology established last year: 50% of the weight goes on the individual recommendations for the 14 jury members, and 50% on the “recommendations to the jury”. This way, I was able to calculate a score for all eligible¹ games using our recommendation algorithm to fill in gaps where jury members haven’t rated a game. Our very own Kennerspiel score is then used to sort those into the respective top 10 lists for each award. As always, you can find the complete code on GitLab and the complete results here.