France’s biggest board game award changes rules for 2026, requires entries to name artists on box for first time

France’s highest-profile board game prize, the As d’Or, has updated its rules for 2026 to ensure that artist names must appear on a game box in order for designs to be eligible for the award.

The award, which traces its history back to 1988, has required entries to show designer names on their game boxes for several years, in addition to requirements for the game to be published in French and available in the French market during the preceding year.

Board game designers and artists are frequently namechecked on box covers in the current hobby – a far cry from the time of the “coaster proclamation” in 1988, when 13 designers – including El Grande and Tikal creator Wolfgang Kramer – signed a beer mat at the Nuremberg toy fair vowing that none of them would give their games to a company without their names being written on the box.

Exceptions to that have long existed at the mass-market end of the hobby – but further cases have begun to appear in recent years, some due to the use of AI generated images in titles, and others due to stylistic choices by publishers.

Last September Alex Hague, the chief executive of Monikers and Daybreak publisher CMYK, defended the company’s decision not to credit artist Angela Kirkwood on the box for its new edition of Magical Athlete, saying that her credit was “clearly visible in the rulebook, on our site, and in the YouTube video for anyone interested”.

Several months earlier the company had made the decision not to include the name of Quacks of Quedlinburg designer Wolfgang Warsch or artist Ryogo Toyoda on the cover of its new version of the game, while its Magenta line of reimagined card games only features the name of one designer, Reiner Knizia, in tiny writing on the front of its box.

This year’s As d’Or sees Flip 7, Rebirth and Toy Battle fighting it out for the main prize, with Arcs, Civolution and Ants competing for the expert game award.

First Rat, Take Time and Zenith have been nominated for the intermediate award, while the children’s category winner will be one of Mooki Island, Archeo or The Twisted Spooky Night.

Viking-themed card shedding game Odin won last year’s As d’Or, while city-building eurogame Kutná Hora triumphed in the Expert Game category at the 2025 awards, Operation Noisettes won the children’s game prize, and Behind scooped the “Initié” award – which targets regular board game players ready for more challenging mechanisms.

The 2024 winner was also a small-box card game, Trio, potentially giving Flip 7 a boost in this year’s contest.

French board game website Ludovox noted that a long-held belief around the As d’Or was that two-player games could not be nominated – a premise which crumbled this year with the nomination of three such games.

It added, “It also reflects the current trend: playing games as a couple, and smaller-format games are appealing to the public, and publishers are offering more and more of them.”

The As d’Or traces its history back to 1988, when it was launched to highlight the best games available at France’s Festival International des Jeux in Cannes. The award was merged with the Jeu de l’Année in 2005.

This year’s winners are due to be announced on February 26 during the annual Festival International des Jeux in Cannes.

Last year’s FIJ had a record 110,000 admissions across the five-day event, with 60,000 sq m of exhibition space – up a third compared to 2024.