E3 is officially, permanently dead: ESA confirms it's bringing the event to an end after 28 years

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"Thanks for the memories"

E3
(Image credit: ESA)

After 28 years, E3 is officially no more. 

That comes from The Washington Post, which reports that The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has decided to bring the US-based video game showcase to a close after more than two decades. 

Not long after the story broke, the news has been confirmed on Twitter. 

"After more than two decades of E3, each one bigger than the last, the time has come to say goodbye," a Tweet from the official E3 account reads. "Thanks for the memories."

The fate of E3 has been in question for a while now. The 2020 show was canceled due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and returned in an online-only format in 2021—another attempt to run the show in 2022 ended with total cancelation, once again due to COVID. 

There had been some hope for this year after the ESA announced it would be working with PAX organizer ReedPop for future E3 events. Unfortunately, though, E3 2023 would be canceled as it reportedly "did not garner the sustained interest necessary to execute it in a way that would showcase the size, strength, and impact of our industry."

Not long after that, fears began to grow over the fate of E3 2024 after the ESA split with new organizer ReedPop after just 14 months. While the ESA had reportedly told the Los Angeles Convention Center that the show wouldn't be returning to that venue in 2024, talk at that point was more about evolution than cancellation.

E3 has changed a great deal over the many years it ran. Once designed as an opportunity for press and industry members to see games ahead of launch, it expanded to include fans of those games in 2017, representing a pivot to being more of a fan event. As time marched on, though, big publishers elected to hold their own showcases around the time E3 ran, whereas other shows like Summer Games Fest have stepped in to represent a semblance of what E3 once was.

Meanwhile, The Game Awards has essentially become the winter E3, though it's facing growing pains of its own.

Iain Harris
Iain Harris
News Editor, Games

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.