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All the news, reveals, and tabletop gaming announcements

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The best board games for the kids, and parents, on your shopping list
Clank! on the floor of Gen Con 2016. Deep inside the dungeon is a market where players can purchase keys and other goodies, a la Spelunky.
Charlie Hall/Polygon

Now in its 58th year, Gen Con is the biggest tabletop gaming convention in the United States. The annual show in Indianapolis brings together more than 70,000 fans of tabletop gaming, and hundreds of publishers and vendors, showcasing the best that the hobby has to offer. During the four-day Gen Con 2026, we’ll have new details and reveals on your favorite TTRPGs, collectible card games, and board games, plus exclusive announcements from the industry’s top developers.

Follow along with all of Polygon’s Gen Con 2026 coverage below.

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    The 10 hottest board games you should play at Gen Con before they sell out

    Huge crowds are gathered in the Gen Con exhibit hall Photo: Gen Con

    Gen Con, the largest and longest-running tabletop convention in North America, kicks off on July 30 in Indianapolis. The center of the event is the Exhibit Hall where vendors from around the world will be showing off their latest products. While free demos are available throughout the weekend, many products sell out almost immediately as shoppers line up for the first chance to buy games that won’t be widely available for months.

    If you’re in Indianapolis and planning your first stop, here’s where you can find 10 of the hottest games of the year — including some much-anticipated tie-ins with Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings. If you’re not attending or miss out, we’ve also added preorder links to make your shopping a little easier.

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    A D&D legend is expanding Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere RPG with a thrilling new pitch

    A woman uses a VR headset while versions of her in the background take on the role of a racer, a demon, a farmer, and a space explorer in art from the TTRPG Infinite. Image: Twogether Studios

    Brotherwise Games teamed up with Brandon Sanderson in 2024 to launch the Cosmere Roleplaying Game, a tabletop game that allows players to have adventures across the prolific fantasy author’s many interconnected worlds and series, such as Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive. That meant devising original rules to enable combat, negotiation, and exploration in settings with very different technology levels and magic systems. Brotherwise announced during the opening ceremony at Gen Con that it is now using that versatility to power new projects, including one from legendary Dungeons & Dragons designer Keith Baker.

    Brotherwise is following a trajectory similar to Monte Cook Games, which published the science fantasy TTRPG Numenera in 2013 and then broke out its mechanics in the 2015 Cypher System Rulebook. That success has since led to numerous other Cypher-based games, including Old Gods of Appalachia and The Magnus Archives. Brotherwise will be providing free online rules and templates for designing games using the Plotweaver RPG System, the underlying mechanics of the Cosmere Roleplaying Game. An open alpha begins on Aug. 5, utilizing an original fantasy setting called Erstwild. More settings will be released this fall, with an open beta kicking off next year.

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