"Getting a Vietnamese game -to- Essen was never really the goal - getting it there ready to sell is."
Galactic Cruise also picked up gongs for best strategy game and best game from a new designer, while Luthier from Paverson Games won best theme, best production and best game from a small publisher.
JinxO designer Martin Ang's victory underscores the growing internationality of the venerable German board games award, which until last year's success for Hishashi Hayashi's Bomb Busters had never been won by an Asian designer.
The awards, one of tabletop gaming’s longest-running prizes voted on by industry professionals, has crowned its latest group of winners after whittling them down from 120 nominees.
Alexi Piovesan and Julien Prothière’s design fought off competition from Florian Maas' citybuilding game Project Skyline and Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva's Railroad Ink sequel Railroad Tiles to take the 2026 award.
The award aims to celebrates "everything that’s the best about gaming", with previous winners across the award’s 26-year run having included Blood Rage designer Eric Lang, Nigerian games industry publisher and evangelist NIBCARD, and the entire ‘actual play’ movement of people livestreaming and podcasting roleplaying games.
The debut design from Iranian video game veteran Yasaman Farazan was praised by judges for its "genius" action selection system, which makes use of a physical 'astrolabe', calling it "thematic, toyetic, and an absolute joy to engage with".
Spiel des Jahres Association chairman Harald Schrapers said the jury looked at a record 571 games for this year's awards, underscoring the sheer mass of games being released through retail.
SETI's rapid success is striking following a year which has seen many publishers pivoting to smaller box titles over more heavyweight designs, as a response to economic factors such as US tariff volatility, as well as gamers having less money to spend due to inflation and general cost of living struggles.
ioGioco said the tabletop gaming sector continues to prove "particularly vibrant", with the market in Italy seeing a 27% rise in value last year compared to 2024 according to data from research company Circana.
