JinxO wins 2026 Spiel des Jahres, Rebirth secures historic triple for Reiner Knizia

Word association party game JinxO has been crowned the winner of this year’s hugely influential Spiel des Jahres award, on a night which also saw legendary game designer Reiner Knizia make history with his Kennerspiel award win.

Martin Ang’s design won over the judges ahead of Corey Konieczka’s Cozy Stickerville and Markus Slawitscheck’s Morty Sorty Magic Shop, becoming only the fourth word-focused game to win the 47-year-old prize after Barbarossa, Codenames and Just One.

JinxO’s win brings an end to a three-year run of cooperative games taking home the Spiel des Jahres prize, in the shape of Dorfromantik: The Board Game, Sky Team and Bomb Busters.

Indonesia-based Ang’s victory underscored the growing internationality of the venerable German award, which until last year’s triumph by Hisashi Hayashi’s Bomb Busters had never been won by an Asian designer.

The 2026 ceremony also delivered a historic first for veteran designer Reiner Knizia, whose tile-laying title Rebirth claimed the higher complexity Kennerspiel des Jahres prize.

That win made Knizia the first designer in history to complete the full set of Spiel des Jahres, Kinderspiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres wins, having previously picked up awards for Keltis and the children-focused Whoowasit? in 2008.

Morty Sorty Magic Shop designer Markus Slawitscheck narrowly missed matching that feat this year after finishing runner up to JinxO, following his 2023 Kennerspiel victory with Challengers! and 2024 Kinderspiel win for Magic Keys.

Rebirth contended with Michael Palm and Lukas Zach design Boss Fighters QR and Donald X Vaccarino’s Moon Colony Bloodbath in the final for this year’s Kennerspiel.

The children-focused Kinderspiel award this year was won by Florian Sirieix’s Mooki Island, ahead of his co-design with Benoit Turpin, Boo Party, and Verflixt Verzaubert, a localisation of Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance’s Mimose & Sam et le Voleur de Fruits.

Winning the Spiel des Jahres can transform the fortunes of games, designers and publishers alike, with Pegasus Spiele co-founder Karsten Esser previously telling BoardGameWire the award can increase sales by 10 to 20 times in the months following the ceremony, thanks to huge exposure in Germany’s mainstream retail market ahead of Christmas.

Receiving his trophy at the ceremony in Berlin, Ang thanked Swiss publisher Game Factory “for really believing in Dito! [the German-language localisation of JinxO] and in us”.

He dedicated the victory to supporters across Asia, adding: “Thank you also to all the friends and publishers from Asia, especially from southeast Asia… finally we made it, and this is all for you also.”

Speaking separately during the ceremony, Ang said the game’s origins lay in Indonesia’s enthusiasm for social games.

“We made a party game because in Indonesia people really love to play party games,” he said. “It’s really famous in Indonesia right now and a lot of people like it, even the gamers also like it.”

Spiel des Jahres Association chairman Harald Schrapers said Ang’s success reflected the awards’ increasingly international reach.

He said, “We have had nominees from Japan and New Zealand in past years, but we always had a blind spot on the world map. We have never had a nominated author from the global south here on stage, and we are very proud of our Indonesian game author.

“Maybe there will also be a game from Africa or South America in the future. That is the great thing about playing – we play the same games here in Germany as they play in Indonesia.”

That geographic expansion has not been similarly reflected in the gender of nominated designers, however, with non-male designers once again heavily underrepresented.

The Spiel des Jahres jury looked at a record 571 games for this year’s awards – but just 2.3% of those games were from women designers, with male creators making up 94% of the cohort, and the rest being designed by mixed teams.

That figure has barely moved in recent years, having stood at 2% in 2025 and 2.6% in 2024 – an ongoing lack of diversity highlighted in great detail in this excellent feature by Wargamer’s Mollie Russell earlier this year.

The 440 titles reviewed across the Spiel and Kennerspiel categories was up 14% on last year, while the 92 games considered for the Kinderspiel marked a roughly 50% rise compared to the 61 from 2025. Another 39 titles were considered by judges across both the Spiel and Kinderspiel awards.

JinxO’s victory marked a milestone for Zurich-based publisher Game Factory, which claimed its first Spiel des Jahres 18 years after being founded.

Game Factory previously won the Kinderspiel category with Magic Keys in 2024, and was also shortlisted for this year’s Kinderspiel through Verflixt Verzaubert.

The publisher had picked up a nominated for the Kennerspiel last year with viking-themed resource gathering game Looot.

Reiner Knizia’s win with Rebirth provided Germany publisher Frosted Games back-to-back Kennerspiel victories, having triumphed last year with its localisation of Endeavor: Deep Sea.

Accepting the award, Knizia – dressed in a kilt and tartans to reflect the Scottish map in Rebirth – paid tribute to his wife Margaret, whom he described as “the love of my life” and thanked for “giving me the space to fill my life with games”, before highlighting the importance of playtesters in modern game development.

“Developing games, you cannot do alone,” he said. “You can’t develop games without playing them. No matter how much experience you have, you have to play, play, play.”

He added that his Munich testing group had made “a very significant contribution” to the game, saying playtesters should not be underestimated because “without them nothing is possible”.

Knizia also praised Rebirth’s graphic designers, who he said made a major contribution to designing the game – “it is about haptics, it is about the visuals” – and the game’s original, Malta-based publisher Mighty Boards.

He said, “We are not publishers, we create one handmade prototype, and then we need somebody who puts this into practice very professionally and who makes the game even better.

“And now you will ask me, ‘why do you then pick a publisher on Malta? What can they sell on Malta?’ Well, today things are different, today we have many localisation partners across the world – that said, it doesn’t really matter where the original publishing house is located.”

Knizia closed his long speech by urging players not to overlook the other nominees.

“In the end, it doesn’t matter who wins, because we carry the message about good games out to the people,” he said.

“There has to be one on top, but the top is amongst equals… Buy the other games, play them and honour the authors and all the contributors as much as the winners.”

The 2025 Spiel des Jahres Awards longlists:

Spiel des Jahres

WINNER: JinxO – designed by Martin Ang (Published by Game Factory / Tabletoys Games)

Nominated: Cozy Stickerville – Corey Konieczka (Unexpected Games)
Nominated: Morty Sorty Magic Shop – Markus Slawitscheck (Schmidt Spiele)

Recommended
Hot Streak by Jon Perry (Strohmann Games / CMYK)
Meister Makatsu by Reiner Knizia (Amigo)
Take Time by Alexi Piovesan and Julien Prothière (Libellud)
Toriki by Wojciech Grajkowski (Mirakulus / Lucky Duck Games)
Toy Battle by Paolo Mori and Alessandro Zucchini (Repos Production)
Wilmot’s Warehouse by David King, Ricky Haggett and Richard Hogg (CMYK)

Kennerspiel des Jahres

WINNER: Rebirth – Reiner Knizia (Frosted Games / Mighty Boards)

Nominated: Boss Fighters QR – Michael Palm and Lukas Zach (Pegasus Spiele)
Nominated: Moon Colony Bloodbath – Donald X Vaccarino (Alea / Rio Grande Games)

Recommended
Artengarten (Sanctuary) by Mathias Wigge (Feuerland / Capstone Games)
Frosted Blooms by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc (Elznir Games / Synapses Games)
Grundstein von Metropolis (Foundations of Metropolis) by Emerson Matsuuchi (Kobold Spieleverlag / Arcane Wonders)
Tag Team by Gricha German and Corentin Lebrat (Kosmos / Scorpion Masqué)

Kinderspiel des Jahres

WINNER: Mooki Island – Florian Sirieix (Kosmos / Scorpion Masqué)

Nominated: BOO PARTY -Florian Sirieix and Benoit Turpin (Loki)
Nominated: Verflixt verzaubert – Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance (Game Factory / Locomuse)

Recommended
Kleiner Stinker (Little Stinker) by Elan Lee, Ken Gruhl and Quentin Weir (Kitten Games)
Magische Spiegel (Half-and-Seek) by Kseniya Kuznetsova (Ravensburger / Red Cat Games)
Paleolino by Marco Teubner and Peter Rustemeyer (Hans im Glück)