01Discover
Road to Essen 2026 Competition
The competition discovers and nurtures Vietnamese board game design talents from around the world, with a prize pool of up to 200 million VND and the opportunity to exhibit at SPIEL Essen 2027.
Road to Essen 2026
Road to Essen 2026.
Road to Essen 2026 is Vietnam's largest professional board game design competition, connecting domestic creators with the international board game community.
Overview
Road to Essen 2026 project overview.
The contestant handbook frames the 2026 season around competition, education, and the Vietnam booth at SPIEL Essen 2027.
02Develop
Your Turn Podcast Season 2
A 7-episode podcast series with leading board game creators from Vietnam and across the globe, sharing practical experience with the Vietnamese game designer community.
Listen here03Showcase
Vietnam Booth at SPIEL Essen 2027
A Vietnamese board game booth in Essen, Germany, welcoming more than 250,000 international visitors and showcasing board games alongside Vietnamese cultural products.
2025 momentum
The new season builds on a strong first year.
Road to Essen 2025 created visible traction across submissions, press, community channels, the award ceremony, and SPIEL Essen.
Road to Essen 2025 concluded its first phase with an award ceremony on July 20, 2025, at Sky Expo Convention Center in Ho Chi Minh City.
The award ceremony attracted more than 45,000 attendees and more than 200 distinguished guests from partners, experts, board game communities, and media.
Strategic partners included AHK Vietnam, Spielwarenmesse, Comicola, VCCorp, and Chieu Minh Cac.
SPIEL Essen 2025 welcomed 220,000 visitors from more than 180 major and independent publishers worldwide.
The Everjoy booth attracted more than 10,000 visitors and showcased the 6 most outstanding, fully developed entries from Road to Essen 2025.
Mission & applicants
Vietnamese creators, global stage.
The handbook welcomes Vietnamese creators everywhere, with routes for both studios and individuals.
What the handbook promises
The handbook positions Road to Essen 2026 as a professional, transparent competition where entries are evaluated by domestic and international judges, contestants learn from industry experts, and winning work can appear before more than 250,000 attendees at SPIEL Essen 2027.
Road to Essen 2026 continues to seek outstanding creators and promising new board games for the Vietnamese and international markets.
The competition encourages innovation in board game design and gives talented designers a path to turn ideas into products for the broader board game community.
The program is open to Vietnamese creators everywhere, including studios with uncommercialized titles and individual contestants of all ages. Contestants under 18 need parental guidance.
Studios
All board game studios are eligible to enter with uncommercialized titles.
Individuals
Contestants of all ages may enter. Contestants under 18 need parental guidance.
Vietnamese everywhere
The mission scope covers Vietnamese designers in Vietnam and around the world.
Awards
Prizes, publishing paths, and SPIEL Essen 2027.
The handbook lists a Grand Prize, category awards, publishing opportunities, and global commercialization support.
Grand Prize: fully sponsored expenses to participate in SPIEL Essen 2027 in Germany.
Grand Prize package includes round-trip airfare, visa processing fees, 6 nights' accommodation, and a dedicated product exhibition table.
Category awards include People's Choice, Best Visual Design, Vietnamese Cultural Resonance, Best Card Game, Best Family Game, Best Junior Designer, Best Youth Designer, and Sponsor's Choice.
Publishing opportunities with Everjoy Publishing and global commercialization opportunities with Everjoy Global.
Total rewards are listed as up to 500,000,000 VND across contestant benefits and prize opportunities.
January - February 2027 (tentative)
Award Ceremony at Hobby Horizon
Everjoy will host a dedicated area for showcasing and playtesting winning games, with official award announcements on the main stage at Hobby Horizon.
45,000 - 50,000 expected attendeesHobby enthusiasts in comics, board games, arts, and related communities, primarily aged 18-25.
Timeline
From soft launch to SPIEL Essen 2027.
A structured season moves contestants through application, evaluation, mentoring, finals, production, and the international showcase.
01 Soft Launch
- Kick off media campaigns
- Pitch the project and invite partners
- Contact professional advisors
02 Application Phase
- Open for applications
- Community Leaders evaluate submissions
- Run online and offline workshops and playtests
- Community Leaders submit qualified games to organizers
03 Elimination Phase
- Announce the Top 20
- Conduct 45-minute 1-on-1 mentoring sessions
- Contestants submit updated games
- Open voting for the Most Popular Game
04 Finals
- Announce the Top 5
- Develop and print high-quality final prototypes
- Jury experiences the Top 5 prototypes and selects winners
05 Award Ceremony
- Host the award ceremony at Hobby Horizon
- Showcase and playtest winning games
- Present winners and category awards on the main stage
06 Attend SPIEL Essen 2027
- Sign commercial contracts for winning games
- Prepare visa and travel documents
- Mass production and booth preparation
- Select outstanding games for exhibition at SPIEL Essen 2027
Submission
What contestants submit and how entries are screened.
The handbook is explicit about submission materials, originality checks, commercialization status, and secondary award nomination.
Submission package
- Bilingual pitching video, 3-5 minutes.
- Sales pitch presented in 1 page.
- Detailed game rules.
- Illustrations or design prototype.
- Each entry contains only 1 game. Each individual or team may submit unlimited entries.
Submission screening
- Is the entry plagiarized from another game?
- Is the entry a retheme of a copyrighted game?
- Has the board game been commercialized through publishing contracts or third-party representation?
- Which secondary award categories is the entry nominated for?
- Can an outstanding entry recommended by a local Community Leader be considered for incubation?
Rules
Round-by-round contestant path.
Contestants submit original unpublished games, receive evaluation and mentoring, refine prototypes, and prepare winners for post-award production.
Submission Round
- Attend public workshops on basic design skills.
- Join in-person or online playtest sessions organized by Community Leaders.
- Submit a bilingual pitching video, one-page sales pitch, detailed rules, and illustrations or prototype.
- Entries must be original, unpublished, and not under a commercial contract.
Qualification Round
- Jury provides feedback and scores entries to select the Top 20.
- Contestants revise and improve submissions.
- Selected contestants receive 1:1 mentoring and resubmit updated pitch, video, and playtest material.
Finals
- Top 5 teams develop official high-quality prototypes for finals night.
- Jury conducts online and offline scoring sessions to select the Champion and secondary awards.
Post-award
- Support art redesign, component optimization, and final production.
- Assist winners with legal procedures, visas, flights, and shipping for SPIEL Essen 2027.
Rules & responsibilities
Fair competition, confidentiality, and contestant duties.
The handbook explains how updates, disputes, intellectual property, communication rights, and finalist commitments are handled.
General competition rules
- The Organizing Committee may adjust program content, schedule, and related matters to preserve relevance and value for contestants.
- Important updates will be provided as early as possible through the Road to ESSEN Facebook page.
- The Organizing Committee may disqualify contestants for fraud, rule violations, copying, plagiarism, or copyright infringement.
- Disputes or complaints should be sent in detail to roadtoessen@everjoy.vn before any public media action.
- The Organizing Committee commits to protecting contestant information, ideas, game designs, and intellectual property rights throughout the competition.
Contestant responsibilities
- Provide complete and accurate information when registering and submitting entries.
- Ensure the entry is original, never commercially published, and does not infringe copyright.
- Complete official activities including submission, training series, finals, and Demo Day.
- If reaching the finals, present and demo the game before the jury.
- Cooperate with the Organizing Committee on communications, finalization, portfolio preparation, and Essen Spiel 2027 preparation when awarded.
Contestants retain intellectual property rights to their product while complying with cooperation terms with the publisher if applicable.
Awarded contestants allow the Organizing Committee to use images and related information for competition communications.
Participants are expected to compete fairly, respect other contestants, and preserve the creative values of the board game community.
Public workshops
A practical learning track for creators.
The 2026 handbook schedules workshop topics from board game basics and mechanics to culture, pitching, sell sheets, and commercialization.
Changes and Opportunities with Road to Essen 2026
Rules, scoring criteria, timeline changes, prize structure, and contestant benefits.
From idea to the Essen stage
Practical lessons, common mistakes, and what helps a game stand out before the jury.
Pilot Class for Newbies
Board game fundamentals, market overview, game classification, and development process.
Concepting and Building Storyline in Board Games
Worldbuilding, storyline development, brainstorming, and idea filtering.
Game Mechanics: Principle and Balance
Popular mechanics and principles for matching mechanics with story.
Art Direction: Building Visual Identity for Board Games
Commercial art direction, visual style, and briefing artists or designers.
Prototype and Graphic Design for Board Games
Prototype workflow, design tools, and technical print standards.
Commercializing Board Games
Self-publishing, publishers, licensing, royalties, rights, and market fit.
Crowdfunding and Kickstarter for Indie Board Games
Campaign pages, pre-launch strategy, communities, email lists, and social channels.
Vietnamese Culture in Board Games
Folklore, mythology, history, mechanics, storyline, and cultural case studies.
Vietnamese Culture Goes Global
Designing for global audiences without losing cultural identity.
Pitch Video and Sell Sheet
Three-minute pitch videos, sell sheet standards, and competition portfolio submission.
Scoring & jury
Clear judging criteria with domestic and international experts.
Entries are reviewed for originality, balance, player experience, rules clarity, production quality, and market potential.
Main scoring criteria
- Creativity and originality
- Game balance
- Strategic depth
- Engagement and player interaction
- Clarity of rules
- Art, graphic design, and component quality
- Commercial viability
Secondary award criteria
- Best Card Game: portability, circulation, and efficient card use.
- Best Family Game: skill gap bridging, positive interaction, and bonding.
- Vietnamese Cultural Resonance: cultural materials and cultural identity dissemination.
- Best Visual Design: aesthetic uniqueness, consistency, and component completeness.
- Audience Favorite: voting volume and event attraction.
- Young Designer Awards: logical ruleset and presentation skills.
Domestic jury
- Ly Quy Phuc - Board game designer, Xam Huong
- Dang Mai Anh - Head of Graduate Studies, University of Industrial Fine Arts
- Do Phuong Hien - CEO, Everjoy Publishing
- Ton That Hai Dang - YouTube channel host, Donut&Dragons (tentative)
International jury
- Carol Rapp - CEO, Spiel Essen
- Jamey Stegmaier - Co-founder, lead designer, and president, Stonemaier Games
- Maurice Lynch - Director of Partnerships, Asmodee
- Kelli Schmitz - Director of Sourcing and Innovation, Asmodee
Organizer & market
Everjoy Publishing and Vietnam market context.
The closing handbook pages explain why board games matter now, who the audience is, and what Everjoy brings as organizer.
Everjoy Publishing
Established in 2022, Everjoy Publishing inherited a leading position in the Vietnamese board game industry by merging with pioneering entities including Board Game VN. It develops, localizes, and publishes creative products with distinctive identity, and remains the first and only Vietnamese board game publisher present at SPIEL Essen.
Vietnamese youth are returning to real-life social bonding in a time of digital fatigue.
The Vietnamese board game market is framed with a 13.73% CAGR signal.
70% of board game revenue on Vietnamese e-commerce comes from Gen Z and young adults.
Target audiences include hardcore gamers, creative students and Gen Z designers, and DIY or cultural storytellers.
Benefits & documents
Support from submission to the international showcase.
Contestants receive fair scoring, workshops, mentoring, playtest opportunities, jury feedback, and support toward publication and SPIEL Essen 2027.
Contestant benefits
- Fair scoring with expert input and support from the Organizing Committee and Community Leaders.
- Top 20 contestants attend public workshops, receive local support, playtest at stores and events, and get detailed jury feedback.
- Top 20 contestants receive a 45-minute 1:1 consultation with the jury and enter public voting for the Audience Favorite Award.
- Top 5 games receive display and public playtest tables at the Award Ceremony.
- Total rewards up to 500,000,000 VND, with winning games considered for publishing and global commercialization.
- Outstanding games can be brought by Everjoy to exhibit at SPIEL Essen 2027 before more than 250,000 international visitors.
Contestant documents
Contact: Claire Trang Ton - Head of Organizing Committee, Road to Essen 2026. Email: trangton@everjoy.vn. Fanpage: Road to ESSEN.