Toy Fair was back in London on the 20th of January for another year of amazing Boardgames, Collectibles and Trading Cards Games. As you may know, the Toy Fair is an annual event organized by the British Toy & Hobby Association (BTHA) and it is the UK's largest dedicated toy, game and hobby trade exhibition. The BTHA was first established in 1944 to represent the interest of British toy manufacturers and to raise the standard of practice in the industry. The First Toy Fair launched in 1954 in Brighton and represents a great moment to showcase the best product the industry has to offer and to take a peak into new lines that will be launched through the year.
I was extremely happy to be able to join the Fair right on the first day. This year it was the 72nd anniversary of this event and there were more than 200 exhibiting companies including new startups and some of the biggest toy companies in the world. Visiting the Toy Fair offered an great opportunity to be closer to the toy industry, and “to touch, feel and experiment with the products of the future” as the organizers mentioned. It is also an opportunity to learn more about the Toy market in UK and to see first hand the products that won the “Hero Toy Award” of this year.
If you are curious to learn more about London Toy Fair and to see which products won the 2026 awards, I recommend visiting the website of the event. I personally enjoyed the time(and numerous steps) I spent at the Fair and I wanted to share some of the most interesting items I saw there. The list below is obviously just a small peak into the infinite number of great products I saw as there were too many to fit in just one content. In order to make this easy, I would like to focus on the Collectibles and Trading Card Games here while I left the Boardgames in a different content (that you can obviously see on Zatu). Let's get started!
FIRST STOP: Ravensburger and Disney Lorcana
My very first aim for 2026 London Toy Fair was to meet the Disney Lorcana team at the Ravensburger stand. Timing this year was perfect as the Toy Fair literally started the day after the Lorecast that kicked-off the card reveals for the new set thus I was pretty excited to see the Winterspell product line in person. Daniel (@professordantcg) also posted his card reveals on the same day from that very same stand therefore I could not wait to get there as soon as possible.
As you can see from the pictures, the new Winterspell artwork is amazing and it just stands-out beautifully. The Illumineer's Trove and the new Stitch Rockstar Collection Starter set were on display together with the two new playmats and the set Booster box. The Trove is a favourite product of mine and Winterspell one is just too beautiful. First, it does not only share the same artwork of the booster box but it is fully themed around it with the artwork showing on all sides of the box. The components are also great with some great dice that look like small cubes of ice and a Lore tracker wheel featuring Stitch and Angel together with some nice spacers and the usual eight Booster Packs.
If you are looking for a smaller product to get into the set of if you never played Lorcana, the Stitch Collection Starter set can be a great option to consider. The product is a pretty new addition to Lorcana as the first one of these Collection Starter was released for the Fabled set. As the upcoming Stitch one will be the second one of its kind, I personally hope we may see Ravensburger releasing one of these every other set as I quite enjoy this little product. In fact, I think this product holds a lot of value considering its price is almost just the value of the four Booster packs it features. On top of this, you get a super nice promo card with exclusive glimmer foil finish and a small themed portfolio binder with 80 pockets. The portfolio may be on the smaller side but it is perfect to store all your rarest cards or the signed ones if you are into collecting them.
Overall, the trip to the Ravensburger stand was well worth as usual and I cannot wait to start opening Winterspell products and show you what I got from them! In the meantime, make sure you keep an eye on Disney Lorcana website for news and product reveals.
SECOND STOP: Konami and Yu-Gi-Oh!
No visit at the Toy Fair can be completed without visiting the Konami stand and taking a peak to some Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and products. Yu-Gi-Oh! was one of my favourite TCG growing-up and it still holds a special place in my heart even if I have only been playing it casually recently. This year I was very interested to chat with the team there about the new all foil deck from the new “Yu-Gi-Oh! The Chronicles” which was going to be released a few days after the Fair.
For those who don't know, “The Chronicles” is a special short-length Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series that is produced directly by Konami Animation and that can be watched on the official Yu-Gi-Oh! channel on YouTube. The series aims to “bring to life the story that lies within the cards” and each storyline includes a few different episodes/chapters. The Series is overall pretty exciting to watch and I personally found it is very well made. Moreover, Konami released a themed deck basing on the second storyline of this series that tells the tale of monsters like Fallen of Albaz and Dogmatika Ecclesia, the Virtuous. “The Chronicles Deck: The Fallen & The Virtuous”, features a deck of 51 foil cards including 2 brand-new cards never seen before. The deck also includes 4 new variant arts of some old favourites, together with a Secret Rare repeat of one of the Deck’s Ultra Rare cards. It is also worth knowing that each of these Secret Rare has a chance to actually come as Starlight Rare, instead that is the same foil upgrade seen in the Structure Deck: Blue-Eyes White Destiny. “Spirit Charmers” the second Deck of the series will release just at the end of the week and I cannot wait to get a copy and see which amazing cards it features.
If you are a Yu-Gi-Oh! collector and a fan of the artwork on its cards, 2026 will also be a great year for you as extended artwork cards are finally coming with the Rarity Collection 5! This set will be available around like the previous Quarter Century Bonanza and Quarter Century Stampede sets, will feature a card in each pack that comes from a different card pool than the rest of the pack. The possible rarity options for this set are expected to be as complex as the two sets mentioned above but the key message is that the 5th card in each pack may either be a variant art card with new backgrounds, highlights, added elements, catch phrases and zoom-in or one of the 10 new cards with extended artwork. A few of them were on display at the stand and I really wished they allowed me to take one back home with me.... Unfortunately, we will need to wait until the 9th of April to get our hands on these cards but make sure you keep an eye on www.yugioh-card.com/eu for all the news and release dates....
A few more stops and some great Collectibles
London Toy Fair this year was filled of TCGs and related accessories. Asmodee stood out as they had a lot of the most recent Pokémon, One Piece and Riftbound products on display including a box of Phantasmal Flames. As the year just started there will be tons of new set coming for all of these games and undoubtedly, Pokémon TCG will be taking centre stage considering this year marks the 30th anniversary of this amazing games. I was hoping to be able to take a peak at some of the products coming in just a few days for the Pokémon day but I think it is understandable they were not there. I remember last year the staff had to hide some products are some fans were very kin to buy them....
While walking across the stands, I also spotted the one managed by Bliss Distribution, a UK based distributor “of all things trading card and hobby”. The display there were fully true to this mission as it looked like Heaven of TCG players, where all games can be found and all accessories used. The staff there was amazing and they show me around all their games and products taking the time to answer all my questions about a few games I never heard about. Among them “Elestrals” caught my attention due to the very nice artwork and card design. I never played the game but I noticed it has a strong mythology vibe and the characters include some very cute and stylist creatures as you can find on their website. I am not saying I may have bought a few Packs after the show to test the game out but you may perhaps expect some content on this game in the future....
Among the other things of note, I cannot refrain from talking about the gigantic Gundam model that was standing tall at the entrance of the Bandai stand. I am a big fan of these models and it was quite impressive to see such a wide range of kits and accessories on display together with a lot a Banpresto plastic figurines and other collectibles. If you are wondering, the models from “One Piece” and “Demon Slayer” series were the most represented ones at their stand and I would say that I can fully understand why.
On the topic of models and collectibles, this year the Toy Fair welcomed “Momo Toko” for the first time. As you can read on their website they aim to “create playful, story-driven collectibles that connect through character and emotion”. For example their main Character, “FIF-A-LIF”, is “a tiny French girl with a giant head full of feelings. She lives above a Paris bakery where the croissants are warm, but her heart is always a little cold. She worries about everything — mismatched socks, the sky falling, or if her sad face looks “too dramatic.” As the creator of these character mentioned while I was there, FIF-A-LIF and all other characters are based on human Characters that are perfectly imperfect and they include a wide range of different emotions and human behaviours. Most important, all their products are extremely cute and well made and I would recommend checking them out as you will likely start seeing them around soon...
