Gen Con 2026: The best new board games, card games, and tabletop RPGs

Gen Con, the largest and longest-running tabletop convention in North America, kicks off on July 30 in Indianapolis. The center of the event is the Exhibit Hall where vendors from around the world will be showing off their latest products. While free demos are available throughout the weekend, many products sell out almost immediately as shoppers line up for the first chance to buy games that won’t be widely available for months.

If you’re in Indianapolis and planning your first stop, here’s where you can find 10 of the hottest games of the year — including some much-anticipated tie-ins with Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings. If you’re not attending or miss out, we’ve also added preorder links to make your shopping a little easier.

Brotherwise Games teamed up with Brandon Sanderson in 2024 to launch the Cosmere Roleplaying Game, a tabletop game that allows players to have adventures across the prolific fantasy author’s many interconnected worlds and series, such as Mistborn and the Stormlight Archive. That meant devising original rules to enable combat, negotiation, and exploration in settings with very different technology levels and magic systems. Brotherwise announced during the opening ceremony at Gen Con that it is now using that versatility to power new projects, including one from legendary Dungeons & Dragons designer Keith Baker.

Brotherwise is following a trajectory similar to Monte Cook Games, which published the science fantasy TTRPG Numenera in 2013 and then broke out its mechanics in the 2015 Cypher System Rulebook. That success has since led to numerous other Cypher-based games, including Old Gods of Appalachia and The Magnus Archives. Brotherwise will be providing free online rules and templates for designing games using the Plotweaver RPG System, the underlying mechanics of the Cosmere Roleplaying Game. An open alpha begins on Aug. 5, utilizing an original fantasy setting called Erstwild. More settings will be released this fall, with an open beta kicking off next year.

Brandon Sanderson is almost finished writing the screenplay for his Mistborn film, the first adaptation of the prolific fantasy writer’s work that will be released as part of a mega-deal he signed with Apple in January. That partnership includes his entire Cosmere shared universe, with his Stormlight Archive series becoming a TV show.

While these projects are still a ways off, another way to experience Sanderson’s rich world is expected to release next year. Stormlight: War for Roshar, an epic asymmetric board game from Mystic Vale designer John D. Clair, is heading to Kickstarter this fall. Players will be able to control heroes and villains from the series, including Dalinar, Kaladin, Raboniel and Taravangian, as they play out the fight between the Knights Radiant and Odium’s forces. The game is published by Brotherwise Games, whose previous adaptations of Sanderson’s work include Mistborn: The Deckbuilding Game and The Cosmere Roleplaying Game.

Magic: The Gathering brought in $1.72 billion in annual revenue in fiscal year 2025, and much of its recent success can be attributed to massive sales of its Universes Beyond sets. While some of the game’s most dedicated fans have expressed frustration with the many crossovers, tapping into the fandoms of Final Fantasy, Marvel, and Avatar: The Last Airbender has proved hugely profitable. Now Wizards of the Coast is extending the strategy to Dungeons & Dragons, kicking off its own version of Universes Beyond with tie-ins to World of Warcraft and Star Wars.

Both collaborations were announced during Wizards of the Coast’s keynote presentation at Gen Con 2026 on Thursday. The first release will be Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft, a 256-page book that features content from throughout the MMORPG’s 22-year history, including the 2026 expansion, Midnight. The book will introduce 11 new species, like Pandaren and Draenei, along with new elven lineages and pages of lore. Six entirely new subclasses and three updated versions for the D&D 5.5e ruleset will allow players to become Death Knights, Demon Hunters, Shadow Priests, and more World of Warcraft classes. Players will also have access to more than 60 new spells.

In a game with 50 years of history, it is inevitable that the creators will come and go. When it comes to Dungeons & Dragons, some names have become so iconic for their contribution to the game and its lore that fans still want to see them involved, no matter how much time has passed. That's exactly the goal of a new product line announced during the D&D Vision Keynote 2027 at Gen Con.

D&D Icons is a new initiative that brings together some of the most iconic and influential creators in D&D's history to work on new stories. The authors involved include Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, R.A. Salvatore, and Luke Gygax. Actor, producer, writer, and D&D enthusiast Joe Manganiello will serve as chief creative officer for the D&D Icons line. (Manganiello is also developing his own setting, called Death Saves.)

It's a new age for Dungeons & Dragons, or at least, that's the message that the game and its parent company, Wizards of the Coast, are pushing after the D&D Vision Keynote 2027 at this year's Gen Con. Among the news and exciting announcements that will shape the course of D&D for the next year or more, one stands out as the most hardcore: D&D is going back to Dark Sun, and no punches will be pulled.

Among the many campaign settings created for D&D, Dark Sun and its world of Athas are the most controversial. To get an idea of the vibes, think of Mad Max or, for the old-school anime fans, Fist of the North Star. This is a desolate, post-apocalyptic world where evil has won and heroes mostly fight for survival rather than salvation. Slavery is also rampant, which is likely one of the reasons why D&D has not returned to the setting since a 4th edition sourcebook was released in 2010. Many fans feared that, if the company ever decided to publish new official Dark Sun products, the gritty, dark fantasy themes and elements of the setting would get sanded down to cater to modern sensibilities. They were wrong.

Dungeons & Dragons has officially cemented Gen Con as the premiere event during which Wizards of the Coast will announce each upcoming year’s slate of TTRPG content. During Thursday night’s D&D Vision Keynote 2027 panel hosted by Baldur’s Gate 3’s Theo Solomon, D&D designers and leadership talked about new releases for the game, including updates on new books, digital tools, video games, and collaborations for the next year and more.

Some announcements fill gaps in D&D’s previously announced lineup, including a renewed commitment to publishing full-length adventures. Others revive beloved campaign settings that have gone unsupported for years. The biggest reveal establishes an entire program dedicated to prominent crossovers, starting with a fittingly epic tabletop adaptation of a popular fantasy video game.

Dungeons & Dragons is getting ready to swap swords and sorcery for lightsabers and the Force next year. As announced at the end of the D&D Vision Keynote presentation at Gen Con 2026 on Thursday, a crossover with Star Wars is coming to the world's most famous tabletop role-playing game in 2027.

The announcement that Magic: The Gathering's controversial but lucrative Universes Beyond strategy is coming to D&D left fans wondering what properties would make their way into the fantasy RPG. The first crossover, World of Warcraft, feels like a natural fit, as the aesthetic and lore of the MMORPG are a great match for D&D. However, right at the end of the panel, Darth Vader snuck on stage to tell everyone that 2027's Season of Rebellion will be a crossover with Star Wars.

If you're someone who hasn't been entirely sure whether to commit to Critical Role and Darrington Press's fantasy tabletop role-playing game, Daggerheart, the news from the Daggerheart panel at Gen Con might be just the thing to pique your interest. After all, with everything new announced at Gen Con 2026, Daggerheart has finally stepped up to become a true Dungeons & Dragons rival.

The Daggerheart playtest open beta started on March 12, 2024, allowing players and Game Masters alike to push the boundaries of the TTRPG before its official release in May 2025. Since then, Darrington Press has revealed several upcoming expansions of the game, with Daggerheart: Hope & Fear — which adds new classes, subclasses, ancestries, and the like — scheduled for an early release in August, before a wider release in September.

Gen Con has more than delivered this year, with huge announcements from Wizards of the Coast, Darrington Press, and more about projects ranging from World of Warcraft to Star Wars. No matter what system you play or plan to play, there's something exciting coming soon for tabletop players.

There was even something for the Critters, fans of the most popular actual-play role-playing group in the tabletop games industry, Critical Role. Critical Role's tabletop publishing arm, Darrington Press, did more than wow with the reveal of future plans for Daggerheart, such as upcoming accessories, as well as an announcement of new collaborative projects with Roll & Play Press and Foundry Virtual Tabletop. But it was the announcement of a new Critical Role campaign that piqued our interest.

The gaming industry is in crisis. Layoffs at Xbox have led to still more layoffs from the studios Microsoft ditched. Bungie significantly reduced its staff right after releasing its final update for Destiny 2 and Epic Games cut 1,000 employees in March due to a downturn in Fortnite engagement. The tabletop industry has its own set of problems. Pathfinder publisher Paizo had to restructure after its book distributor Diamond Comics declared bankruptcy and CMON had layoffs, citing rising tariffs as it struggled to fulfill crowdfunding campaigns. The cancellation of projects like Plaid Hat’s The Monolith and the Altered expansion Roots of Corruption even after they achieved their crowdfunding goals further demonstrated the industry’s financing problems. Yet despite all the bad news, the creators of Gloomhaven and XCOM see collaborations across video games and tabletop games as the way forward.

“The crossover between video game players and board game players is big, and people are looking for popular IPs,” XCOM creator Julian Gollop told Polygon in a virtual interview.

Moana from the island of Motonui is drawn to the sea even as a little girl, and her father, Chief Tui, spends all of the song “Where You Are” trying to convince her to embrace her duty as the next village chief. The humble coconut is an important part of their culture (a part that, according to Maui, he gave to them). “Consider the coconut!” is a punchy refrain from that song, and it’s one that’s referenced in the codename for what’s ostensibly Disney Lorcana’s answer to Magic: The Gathering’s hugely popular Commander format — because, well, they’re considering it. Playtesting began this week at Gen Con 2026, which runs from July 30 through Aug. 2 in Indianapolis.

Traditional Magic is 1v1 with relatively loose deck construction rules (generally speaking) where you can have up to four copies of any card. The first player to lose all 20 health lost the game. Commander has you select one legendary creature which defines your entire deck since the colors you use depend on the Commander you choose. Each deck also must have a total of 100 cards (including the Commander) with no repeat cards. You also get 40 instead of 20 life and typically play at a table with four total players. While there are other nuanced rules to the mode, that about sums it up. It’s largely considered a casual format that’s far more expressive than traditional Magic, since your entire strategy revolves around your Commander.

Wizards of the Coast announced at Gen Con that it is bringing Magic: The Gathering’s controversial but undeniably lucrative Universes Beyond strategy to Dungeons & Dragons, starting by journeying to Azeroth for Dungeons & Dragons: World of Warcraft. That’s big news for tabletop role-playing game players, but also for the Magic community, since it almost assuredly means that World of Warcraft will also be getting a Magic set next year.

Wizards announced three Magic Multiverse sets at MagicCon: Amsterdam in July, but is likely saving the Universes Beyond reveal for MagicCon: Atlanta in November. One of the three Universes Beyond sets will almost certainly be tied to Marvel as part of the multiyear partnership that saw the release of Marvel’s Spider-Man in 2025 and Marvel Super Heroes in 2026. That leaves two more slots, the first of which is coming on April 9.