2026 saw the 20th anniversary of the UK Board Game Expo held at the Birmingham NEC and what an occasion this is. With over 87,000 attendees and within this over 51,000 unique ticket holders it is truly an amazing event. From its humble beginnings of a couple of rooms hired in the Hilton among friends to now filling the Hilton and show halls 1-5 as well as spreading over areas, it is spectacular. So we have asked our bloggers what their favourite newly discovered game (to them) was at this year’s UKGE.
Coffee Rush - David Ireland
Sometimes how you can discover a game is quite random and special. This was one such for us. We make Sunday a family day at the Expo as mine are young and I love seeing the Expo through the children’s eyes as their take on it is totally different to my own and it is magic. We were wandering though halls 3/3a and in the Asmodee pitch and my boys just parked at a table needing a break and wanted to play the game (not because they liked the look of the game, I think they just wanted a rest and would have played anything). They had sat down at Coffee Rush and insisted on playing.
A very kind demonstrator came up to explain the rules and there was another mother and son that were desperate to try. So each of mine paired with my wife and I to set up a 4 player game. We had the rules explained and were off. The premise of the game is quite simple: you are a barista in a busy coffee house and you need to gather your ingredients to complete your orders for your impatient customers. You move a meeple around a grid of ingredients to gather what you need, to complete the orders and score. When you complete an order, you give a new order card to your opponents, compounding their challenge. If you cannot complete an order you score negatively and when someone doesn’t complete 5 orders, the game ends and you count up who has the most complete.
This didn’t feel like it should be a board game but it was amazing and we loved it. This one is not a case of if we get it, but when will we get it because it is high on the wishlist as we all really enjoyed the game. The people we met were lovely and it is moments like this that is what the Expo is all about. 
Farms Race - Sean Franks
Last year I saw a game on the shelves that looked like someone had taken a game of Catan, turned the farm animals sentient and armed them with nukes to take out the humans and vie for world domination. And, well, that’s basically exactly what Farms Race is. So when I found their booth full of demo games at the Expo I had to sit down and finally try it, which gave enough fun even in that short game to sell it to me.
There are similarities to Catan, but this goes away from the Euro style competitiveness to outright Ameritrash warfare. Mass your herds and roll dice in combat in order to remove those pesky humans, then eventually space runs out so you start trying to oust your rival players too.
As a direct comparison, trading with players is only outside of turn which stops slow down, resources are rolled by symbol per dice not numbers mitigating getting locked out by bad rolls and players start with asymmetric powers to change how you may play your strategy, and if anyone seems too powerful just make a temporary alliance with someone else to take them down, maybe with a nuke or two. Nukes were one of the most fun aspects of the game and really lended the ‘arms race’ to the title, you can build and use nukes to help clear out enemies or defend yourself, but as soon as you drop one on some unsuspecting farm herd they get a chance to drop some in retaliation, even on a completely different player!
The end of the game where the nukes went all flying was what really sold Farms Race to me, and I managed to not only take advantage of a discount for getting direct at the Expo, I even picked up the deluxe edition which allows for a 5 player! I can’t wait to start the mayhem!
Container by Sophie Jones
Another UKGE haul means even more new favourites to unpack and add to my collection. This year, though, I didn't have many games on my wishlist and instead came away with several unexpected purchases, including Container from Allplay Games.
A game that's been out of print for years is always going to catch my eye, but seeing it was for 3-5 players nearly put me off. Then I saw it being demoed and completely fell for the aesthetic. The bright colours, the boats and the shipping containers won me over. I'm a sucker for great components.
As soon as I got home, I gathered the gaming group and we dived in. It's a wonderfully tricky economic puzzle where you need specific coloured containers on your own island, yet you can't buy or ship the goods you produce yourself. Instead, you have to manipulate the market and persuade other players to do it for you.
When a ship finally docks at Container Island, the bidding begins. Players secretly commit money cards, but some are worth absolutely nothing, making bluffing a huge part of the game. The seller can either accept the highest offer or match it themselves and keep the containers, if they can afford to. With cash always in short supply, timing is everything.
Add in offshore bank auctions, risky loans with mounting interest and secret scoring cards that value each container colour differently, and every decision feels meaningful. To make things even tighter, the container colour you collect the most of is removed before final scoring, so you really have to be careful with how much you buy.
With adjustable game length, charming artwork and humorous shipping company names, Container is an engaging economic game full of personality. Now it's time to crack open the expansion, add trucks and player loans, and embrace the inevitable carnage.
Distilled by Kaisarion
Having played the very excellent Luthier by Paverson Games a lot, we didn’t really have Distilled on our radar, not for any reason other than already having Luthier and as it is so good there was no gap to fill so to speak.
However, seeing it displayed at their stall at UKGE, our appetites were whetted. It doesn’t quite hit the visual splendour on the table as Luthier as it is more card driven than board driven but don’t let that distract you from what is another absolute gem. In short, you take on the role of a new master distiller, and in an effort to produce and sell spirits you must source your ingredients, distill them, either sell them or age them depending on the spirit type and add flavours during the ageing process – oh and don’t forget to pop it in a nice bottle for a few extra coin or points, and if you’re swift you can grab a spirit label and collect some additional bonuses. The gameplay flows beautifully, from selecting your ingredients to adding essentials like yeast and alcohol to selecting a lovely barrel. The economy is tight and as smooth as a single malt.
The thematic jewel in this particular crown is the washback phase where during the distilling process you lose two ingredients via a skimming of the top and bottom card of your deck- mirroring the actual distilling process where you lose the top and bottom of your liquid in the still. This is a superb mechanic and adds a peril and edge to your decision making – do you take a chance or do you “over” prepare with extra costly ingredients – it’s a terrific way of adding a bit of push your luck but without being too punitive – if like me you tend to skim off the vital ingredients you can always fall back on being able to make basic spirits like Vodka and Moonshine which you can still sell and collect your label but you will miss out on your target spirit and the potential higher rewards and end game buffs they offer.
One of the real challenges is whether or not to go for your signature recipe from your master distiller. These are high reward but high cost recipes that you have to unlock via earlier sales and you have to decide if it is worth the risk…lose those key ingredients and you are potentially stuck with making a very very good vodka!
Master recipes can be a game breaker but often need ageing and so you are often left with a financially poor or limited round after you age a spirit as you don’t sell and age in the same step – another tight choice to make.
So, thematically this is brilliant and the gameplay reflects that, we are so glad we picked this up and it has already been to the table 4 times in the week since UKGE. I can see this being a staple for some time and the small box expansions are already on their way.
Salut!
Guildlands by Dan Street Phillips.
UKGE this year was bigger than ever and with only one day to visit I shot around as many publishers as possible demoing as much as I could. One game that surprised me was Guildlands from Outset Media and designed by Ken Boyter and Kendric Winks. I got speaking to Ken and managed to jump on a table with my husband along with four strangers. The game is quite simple in premise. A tile laying game where on your turn you are either laying a tile or rotating a tile. Each square has a number of locations that tie to the different factions and this is where the game really comes alive.
What could have been a rather mediocre Carcassonne wannabe elevates the genre with six completely unique factions, each scoring in very different ways. You might play as the wizard who wants their towers to create squares and rectangles around the city, or you want the longest road, or maybe you want to build walls around the outside. I played as the Wizard and the puzzle of trying to create as many squares and rectangles is a really interesting special one, especially when people are rotating tiles, however you also can play a worker on a tile to stop it being spun but with limited meeples it’s really difficult to know which tiles are the most important to you.
Each faction also has a number of special actions you can do. The wizard could play two towers onto the board that turned any space into one of their scoring towers. What appears as a fairly generic tile placement game from the outside, which the illustration doesn’t help, really has such a surprisingly fun puzzle within it. My husband also enjoyed playing the road builder and came first overall, so we had no choice but to buy a copy and it has already hit the table multiple times since the convention. I am definitely a Wizard…but which guild are you?
The Kinfire Delve Series - Chris Ridley
Kinfire Delve was new to me when I played it at UK Games Expo 2025. After two full days of demoing it at the show in 2026, I expected to be done with it. Instead, the opposite happened.
The more I played, the more I noticed. The decisions stayed interesting, new interactions kept showing up, and I liked it enough to pick up another box in the series.
Kinfire Delve is a rogue-lite dungeon crawler by Incredible Dream. Each box includes two playable characters, a dungeon deck, and a final boss, with a structure that will feel familiar if you’ve played something like One Deck Dungeon.
The two standout aspects for me was how it feels to play, and how good it looks on the table. The artwork is stunning, the iconography is clear, and it’s the kind of game that makes people stop and look at it at a convention.
Underneath the beauty is a tight, tactical resource management game. You play cards and roll dice to beat challenges, but your hand is limited and running out of cards makes the game harder as you go.
Do you go all-in now, or hold back and risk making things worse later? It keeps the game tense without feeling overwhelming, and offers plenty of discussions if playing as a group.
Replayability is where Kinfire Delve really surprised me. Even after 20+ hours, I’m still not tired of it. Each box gives you solo play, shorter games, harder modes, achievements, and enough challenge card variety that each run feels different.
The Well Master adds even more variety with three variants, though I do think the boss-phase challenge cards could have been mixed up a bit more.
Then there’s the bigger picture. The boxes work well on their own, but they get even better when combined. You can increase the player count - from 1-2 to up to 4 players - and try different character combinations, which opens the system up even more.
Kinfire Delve is one of those games that gets better the more you play it. The more time I spent with it, the more I liked it.
Fetching Feathers - Chris Ridley
My most anticipated game of UK Games Expo was Unfringed Games’ Fetching Feathers, a bird-collecting card game where you draft birds in hats and try to build sanctuaries that can actually support them.
I’ve been a fan of drafting card games like Sushi Go for a while - despite never owning one - so when Fetching Feathers went live on Kickstarter, I knew I had to back it. I also sat down with Chris Priscott for an interview ahead of the release, so my expectations were already pretty high. Still, Fetching Feathers was the first game I got to the table when I arrived at the open gaming area at UKGE, and it absolutely delivered.
What makes it stand out is the seasonal shift. The game plays over three rounds, and each round flips between Summer and Winter. That matters, because the sanctuaries you build with your location cards change between seasons, which means a setup that works beautifully in one round might not support your flock in the next. If you don’t plan ahead, you risk losing your dapper birds to another player.
That extra layer of planning gives the game a bit more bite than your standard pick-and-pass filler. You’re not just drafting the highest-scoring birds; you’re trying to think about how they fit together, which flocks are worth supporting, and which birds are better left to migrate elsewhere. Some flocks provide versatility, while others require a more focused setup, so there’s plenty of room to make different strategies work.
Fetching Feathers is a quick, fun card-drafting game that works well as a light evening play or as the perfect kind of game to break out at an expo. It’s easy to teach, easy to play, and has just enough strategy to make you want another round.
Final Thoughts
We love the Expo for the unexpected. It is a chance to try so many games you may have never played or even heard of before. It is a wonderful occasion and in every board gamers calendar year on year. So next time, you go give that game you have never seen before a try, it might just be your Expo highlight.
