Gen Con exhibitor numbers rebound to record levels despite tariffs uncertainty, biggest-ever attendance reaches almost 72,000

North America’s biggest tabletop gaming convention, Gen Con, has scored another year of record attendance and exhibitor numbers, despite fears that ongoing US tariff volatility would see publishers and visitors choosing to skip the 2025 show.

Almost 72,000 people flocked to Indianapolis for another sold-out event this year, while the number of exhibitors rebounded to a record of more than 575 – well up on the roughly 540 showcasing their games and services last year.

Those record numbers were not necessarily mirrored in sales at the booths, although the sentiment of staff at several larger publishers speaking after the show indicated that it was their best Gen Con yet.

Several other mid-size publishers BoardGameWire spoke to after the event suggested sales had been “robust”, “solid”, and “better than expected”, without reaching record levels.

Cephalofair COO Price Johnson, who has been at the forefront of raising awareness of the impact of tariffs on the board game industry through lobbying and media appearances, said on Reddit after the event, “As a publisher I can’t tell you how tired, beat down, and exhausted we all are just GETTING here with SOMETHING.

“Delays, cancellations, staffing losses, lost profit margins, etc. I heard it from so many peers directly, I saw it in their faces, and moral.”

“US Tariffs are a tax on US Business and Consumers. Period. Ours was north of $100k this last month, down the drain, no benefit gained.

“Despite any records broken this year, they absolutely had a crushing impact on what COULD have been an even bigger, exciting, and successful Gen Con. “

While a clutch of publishers chose to trim the size of their booths at this year’s event in the wake of the tariffs uncertainty, Gen Con’s long waiting list for exhibitors ensured the event’s huge trade hall area remained filled.

Notable absences from this year’s event included Flip 7 and Hues and Cues publisher The Op, which cancelled its booth when US tariffs began to soar earlier this year, and Flat River Group, which has slashed its North American hobby game distribution operation in recent months due to tariffs.

Licensed game specialist Gale Force Nine also chose not to run a booth this year, ending a three-year run of exhibiting at the show post-pandemic.

Gen Con media spokesperson Stacia Kirby told the Indianapolis Star last month that “a few” international exhibitors and press correspondents cancelled planned visits to Gen Con this year, adding that some companies confirmed they were “concerned about the environment” in the US.

That included RPG publisher Rowan, Rook and Deckard, which decided not to bring over staff from the UK. A statement from Matt Sanders and Grant Howitt at the company in May said, “Crossing the border into the US simply isn’t safe for us at the moment, and it doesn’t appear to be getting safer.”

Fears that manufacturing delays, clogged up shipping schedules and elevated freight costs would prevent publishers getting their latest games to the show also proved relatively unfounded, although some publishers had already pushed back the timings of their release schedules while the threat of increased tariffs continues to loom.

One of the biggest casualties of the tariffs disruption was Portal Games, which was unable to get its new release Age of Galaxy to the US in time for Gen Con due to tariffs-induced shipping delays.

Portal Games founder Ignacy Trzewiczek said in an update on the publisher’s YouTube channel, “Of course it is grim, terrible, pretty devastating news.

“…It’s a clusterfuck. We already paid for these additional trump tax called tariffs, we of course paid for the manufacturing of the game, we paid for the shipping of the game, we paid for the hotels in Indianapolis in Gen Con, we paid for the booth at Gen Con, we paid a lot of money.”

He added, “We’ve been at Essen since 2007, we’ve been at Gen Con since 2014, never ever before have we had such a situation.”

Gen Con president David Hoppe told the Indianapolis Business Journal last Thursday, just ahead of this year’s show, “Tariffs have been hugely problematic, both from the threat they create in terms of cost and pass-through costs but also – particularly in the last six months – the uncertainty about what it’s going to mean.”

Gen Con has its eyes set on further expansion and record crowds in future years, with construction of a new Signia hotel set to provide more than 140,000 sq ft of available event space in addition to more than 800 extra rooms near the show.

Hoppe told the IBJ, “We’ve been growing so much. Right now, we are capacity-constrained, in terms of what we can do. We fill every nook and cranny of this downtown core area.”

He added, “Could we get 80,000 folks here someday? I would love to see that happen”.

Gen Con is contracted to Indianapolis until 2030. Next year’s show is scheduled to run from July 30 to August 2.