With the biggest board games expo in the UK just around the corner, The UK Games Expo judges have announced the winners of the UKGE 2026 Judges Choice Awards! There are a lot of great games on the list, some of which I’m yet to play so this will be giving me a solid list of new games to try and play at the Expo in a few weeks time. There were a lot of awards handed out and here are a few of them.
The Winners
The winner of the best Abstract Game was Ink by Final Score Games which is a beautiful tile laying, hand management game that looks absolutely gorgeous!
Best Adventure, Story or Legacy Game went to Vantage by Stonemaier, a game a lot of people have been saying a lot of positive things about, it’s not one I’ve played but I would love to give it a go.
Best Board Game (American Style) went to Battle of Hoth from Days of Wonder, and this is a worthy winner. A light battle game, thematically recreating the famous battle from the beginning of Empire Strikes Back with plenty of dice chucking for good measure!
The Best Board Game (Euro Style) went to Luthier, which is a beautiful and complex game about crafting instruments and courting patrons using a mix of worker placement and bidding.
Epochs won Best Board Game (Strategic), which is a big and long sprawling 4x game where you build up your civilisation up over 3 epochs, expanding your territory, researching inventions and building wonders.
The Best Card Game (General) went to Duel For Cardia which I’ve played a couple of times, and it’s a really fast and tense quick game where you’re secretly placing cards in a bid to gain scrolls.
The Best Card Game (Strategic) went to Pondscape from Pink Troubadour Games which I’ve not yet played but will be looking out for.
Crits and Tricks won the Best Dice Game which is something I really want to try, as I love trick taking games and also rolling dice! I’ve heard really good things about this so I hope I get to try it out.
The Best Family Game was Sanibel which is the new game from Elizabeth Hargreaves who created Wingspan and is about collecting shells on the beach.
The best Children’s Game was Splendor Kids, which looks like a really fun take on a game I really love and is definitely something I’d consider picking up to play with my kids.
There were plenty of other winners, but this is a good selection of them, and gives me a few new games to check out at the end of the month at UKGE!
