You need these 7 board games from the UK Games Expo 2025 in your collection

People come to the UK Games Expo, Britain’s biggest board game and tabletop event, for many reasons. To buy or sell. To find out about and play the latest releases. To get a glimpse of future projects undergoing playtesting and development. But for me, it’s all about the people thronging the halls, revelling in their sheer, unabashed nerdery. To meet old friends and make new ones, to marvel at the cosplays, laugh at the t-shirts, and spend three days surrounded by folk who vibrate with a single, shared passion. Post-show numbers indicate 2025 was the most popular UK Games Expo ever, attracting over 40,000 visitors.

So, what was everyone getting excited about? Which board games were the talk of the show? Here's what stood out to me after visiting the UK Games Expo 2025 - and the titles I suspect may be in the running for our list of the best board games.

1. Fate of the Fellowship

The biggest draw of the 2025 show was undoubtedly Fate of the Fellowship, an upcoming cooperative Lord of the Rings adventure from Pandemic designer Matt Leacock. One gamer who initially dismissed it to me as a weak Pandemic clone was, after playing, thrilling with anticipation for its late August release date.

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That’s not surprising given that the bones of the system barely show: huge armies march across Middle-Earth, the Fellowship fulfil perilous quests that you can swap around to create “what-if” versions of the novel’s plot, and - unless you’re very good or very lucky - Frodo becomes Ringwraith food before getting anywhere near Mount Doom. The few preview copies available sell out so fast that the PR rep just laughs when I ask about them.

• Fate of the Fellowship: Pre-order at Z-Man Games

2. Gwent

Next on many people’s radar was Gwent. Yes, that Gwent, the addictive card-based minigame from The Witcher 3 that became so popular it’s now getting its own physical release. Fans can rejoice that the core of the game remains intact, but there are lots of new play modes to take advantage of face to face play, including group play for up to five and a two-versus-two team mode.

Its UK distributor, Hachette, was having a great show, celebrating two nominees for the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres prize, Faraway and Looot, alongside some fun new titles. Leaders is an intriguing abstract strategy game with asymmetry, a bit like chess except you assemble your pieces as you play, while Tag Team is an auto-battler that lets you leverage deckbuilding for some extra depth.

• Gwent: Pre-order at Hachette Games

3. Viking Route

Perhaps the most ingenious new design on show was Viking Route from Ares Games. It’s a cooperative affair where you control a longship, navigating adventures on the seas of Norse mythology. The on-board ship piece is a compass, which always moves where it’s pointing north, but you can control this by moving and rotating other magnetised pieces around the board, a completely new and hard to master movement mechanic.

Ares was also demoing Aeterna, a new game from veteran designer Martin Wallce, which does what Martin Wallace does best: a demanding, European-style strategy game with a properly realized theme. In this case, piloting a noble family through the history of the city of ancient Rome.

• Viking Route: View at Kickstarter

4. Timber Town

In terms of sheer volume of new games on show, the winner has to be Alley Cat Games. They expanded their range of tiny, play-anywhere mint-tin games with dexterity title Barbecubes and Tic Tac Trek, which transforms noughts and crosses into a cute exploration game. Message in a Bottle is a fresh, thematic take on classic Boggle, while Station to Station is a fun new entry in the neglected pick up and deliver genre.

Their hottest new release, though, is Timber Town. This looks like a traditional tile-laying game with the clever new twist that tiles float to you down a river, flowing from column to column, and must be placed in the matching position on your player board when you pick them.

• Timber Town: View at Alley Cat Games

5. Creature Caravan

Not long ago, Red Raven Games, founded by designer Ryan Laukat, was a tiny publisher - but the success of his games, particularly narrative exploration game Sleeping Gods, has let them expand. They were selling their new title at the show, Creature Caravan. This is a dice placement and tableau-building title in which players trade and explore a dangerous wilderness, trying to collect creatures and be first to reach the safety of the city.

They were also demoing a couple of upcoming titles that are revamped reprints of their early games. Six Sojourns is a super-fast area majority game that now includes twenty variants and expansions plus a campaign mode, while Above And Below: Haunted adds new narrative and spooky interaction to a beloved adventure title.

“I never win,” laments their marketing manager Tom Wetzel. “I get too caught up in the story.”

• Creature Caravan: Pre-order at Red Raven Games

6. Fathom

Another standout at the show for me was the undersea Fathom by Paper Fort Games, the team that's also behind the Terraria adaptation (more on that later).

This is a tile-laying game with an intriguing sonar mechanic that limits what you can pick up to try and form semi-realistic deep-sea ecosystems across a range of scenarios.

• Fathom: Pre-order at Paper Fort Games

7. Deep Regrets

Away from the big, gaudy publisher stands drawing in the big, noisy crowds, there are dozens and dozens of small independent publishers. The absolute standout success in this sector is Deep Regrets, a horror fishing title inspired by the video game Dredge. The designer, publisher, and artist Judson Cowan and his two helpers are deluged at their stall, fulfilling demand for demos and sales.

The theme is carried through the whole game not only by the mechanics but by horror aficionado Judson’s artwork. All the fish cards in the game are unique, an engaging mix of scary and hilarious, and even the inside of the box lid is illustrated. Judson went so far as to add illustrations to the shipping cartons that most people will never see.

It’s easy to forget that these folk are the lifeblood of the hobby. Often just one or two people pouring vast time and effort into creating and promoting games for the love of it, their passion pouring out when you talk to them. There’s Outbreak, described by its creator Richard Davis as a harcore zombie survival game. Two biologists are putting their time in the field into a game called Kavango, illustrated from their own photos, which pits you against the real-life challenge of running a successful nature reserve. Sakana Stack is a fast-paced shedding game that its creator is so enthusiastic about that he stayed at his stand after closing time to play it with me. Around every corner in expo, down every row, there are hidden gems, there is magic thrumming.

• Deep Regrets: View at Kickstarter

Honorable mention - video game adaptations galore

While Gwent is a video game spinoff, there are several promising full-blooded video game adaptations at the show. The biggest name here is probably Tomb Raider: The Crypt of Chronos, a bold, solo-only design being boldly promoted by a man cosplaying as Lara Croft. It features a very novel dynamic puzzle system which complicates solutions via enemies showing up and getting stuck in the mechanisms. Goliath Games, meanwhile, is working on a board game version of The Sims currently scheduled for release in the summer, although they don’t have a preview available.

However familiar those titles are, they’re matched in sales terms by the less well-known Terraria, which is getting its own tabletop adaptation from a less well-known publisher, Paper Fort Games. They specialize in the kind of fresh design concepts that are increasingly rare in board games nowadays: for Terraria that looks like boxed boss monsters with modular miniatures that you physically rearrange to reflect their changing abilities as you whittle them down.

Looking for something new to play right now? Why not check out the best adult board games, or the best 2-player board games?