Wingspan Pocket has just been revealed as a smaller, travel-friendly version of the family-friendly birding board game – and you'll be able to pick it up in just a few weeks.
Although it uses similar gameplay and comes from the same designer, Wingspan Pocket "distills the Wingspan experience down to a lighter, shorter, card-driven game" according to the official description. It'll be available to buy from publisher Stonemaier Games this July 15, 2026, followed by a wider retail release in late August.
While we adore the original here at GamesRadar+ and gave it four-and-a-half stars in our Wingspan review (putting it in contention with the best board games), there's no denying that it's a chunky critter. It contains a flock of playing pieces and takes up a lot of space on the table, so isn't exactly easy to stuff in a suitcase. Wingspan Pocket is the opposite, however; it's a card-based game that sees players activate just one row of cards per turn rather than an entire board of birds. These all provide benefits as usual, but each card is double-sided with food on one side and a bird (one of 106 from around the world) on the other. That means you've got to weigh up what to play, and when - a level of strategy that should hopefully put it on par with the best travel board games.
I'm a huge fan of this idea. I'd argue that the series stands amongst the best family board games around (Finspan became my summer obsession last year, for instance), but they're not the easiest to get into… or travel with. A more accessible, portable entry-point fills that niche, and it means we can take the experience with us. That means Wingspan doesn't have to stay home this summer if you're going away.
There's certainly an appetite for portable games like this. More of them are emerging from the woodwork with each passing year, and they usually make a point of streamlining things without compromising what made the original so beloved. I played Catan On the Road once and am now recommending it to everyone, for example.
Will you be picking up Wingspan Pocket, or migrating to something else?
If you want something with a little more bite, a Kingdom Come: Deliverance board game with all the gritty RPG elements fans love is on the way from the award-winning developers of Codenames and SETI.
