Origins Game Fair Confirms 19K Attendees in 2025

Origins Game Fair just took place in Columbus, Ohio, and GAMA has announced the attendance figures for this year's event.

Last year (2024), the convention attracted 17,706 unique attendees. This year (2025), that number is up 8% to 19,171 attendees.

This included 410 exhibitors, an increase by 26% over last year, and 8,810 scheduled events, up 27% on last year.

These figures confirm Origins as the 5th largest tabletop-specific convention in the world, following Essen Spiel, Gen Con, UKGE, and PAX Unplugged. In June, UK Games Expo attracted 42,000 attendees.

Convention​	Attendance​
Essen Spiel	204,000 (2024)*
Gen Con	71,000 (2024)
UK Games Expo	42,000 (2025)
PAX Unplugged	30,000 (approx)**
Origins Game Fair	19,171 (2025)

*It's not clear whether Essen reports uniques or turnstile figures.
**PAX does not provide figures, but estimates are available.

 

[Nikosandros]

As mentioned in the UK Games Expo thread, Play in Bologna had 34,000 unique visitors and should be #4 in the listing.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Origins felt more crowded this year, definitely. Also, by about the third day, the entire convention center smelled of sweat. Not a fan of that.

 

[Uta-napishti]

Essen can have only 50,000 people in the Convention center at one time, and it runs for 4 days. 204,000 is the max number of day tickets they sell times the 4 days. So the big number is essentially turnstile. Uniques are probably significantly less than 204,000 because of day to day overlap.

 

[teitan]

I remember the days when Origins was massive. Sigh. I was there Sunday and had a great zoom around.

 

[Hex08]

It was my first time there and I was only there Saturday but I enjoyed it.

 

[Morrus]

I remember the days when Origins was massive.

When do you mean? This is the second highest attendance ever. It peaked at about 20K in 2019. Pretty close to this year’s figures.

 

[MGibster]

Origins felt more crowded this year, definitely. Also, by about the third day, the entire convention center smelled of sweat. Not a fan of that.

I thought we were past this as a people! Darn it, folks. If you can afford to go to Origins you can afford clean clothes and bathing facilities. There's just not many excuses not to smell like a bouquet of flowers.

The biggest convention I ever went to was a trade convention, Workday Rising, back in 2019 with a little over 13,000 attendees. I found the sheer scope of that to be overwhelming, and can scarcely imagine a fun convention being even bigger.

 

[Marc Radle]

I went to Origins once in the ‘90s when it was held at the Philadelphia Convention Center.

I was really cool, but I have no idea what the attendance numbers were …

 

[dave2008]

I am sad to say I lived in Columbus Ohio for 51 years and only ever attended Origins once and by mistake / happenstance before I even knew what it was!