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.

 

[Shawn Carman]

Having spent many years visiting Origins for enjoyment and working at Gen Con, I quit going to Gen Con in 2022 and now just hit up Origins. I miss some of the enormity of the GC vendor hall and some of the people that I could only see there, but the cost and the crowds at GC are just too much for me. Origins is much more relaxed and pleasant. I had a great time this year, the best I can remember in a long time. I missed out on the sweat thing someone mentioned, but I can assure you it wasn't me!

 

[EthanSental]

Not that I trust my google search results but when I searched for unique attendance for dragoncon in the Atlanta area, AI google results came back with 72k for 2024. I haven’t been since 2006ish as it’s grown too large to enjoy for me, which at the time was comic based hunts for missing holes in thr collection and getting artists to draw stuff.

 

[Von Ether]

204,000?!? Holy crap! I can't even imagine that sort of event. Of course, I've never done any mega events like SDCC.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

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.

It was weird - even when there weren't people around, it smelled.

One morning I went to the Center of Science and Industry, a little over a 20 minute walk. It was fine on the way there, but the temperatures had spiked on the way back. I went right to my hotel room and took a shower.

Also saw the World's Largest Gavel:

Having spent many years visiting Origins for enjoyment and working at Gen Con, I quit going to Gen Con in 2022 and now just hit up Origins. I miss some of the enormity of the GC vendor hall and some of the people that I could only see there, but the cost and the crowds at GC are just too much for me. Origins is much more relaxed and pleasant. I had a great time this year, the best I can remember in a long time. I missed out on the sweat thing someone mentioned, but I can assure you it wasn't me!

A lot of companies prioritize Gen Con, but it's become such a hassle scrambling for events and hotel rooms, is so crowded. Not to mention, for me it's over twice as far as Origins to travel.

 

[JohnnyZemo]

Just to balance out the earlier comment: I've been to Origins 24 times, and I have literally never smelled sweat. People love to perpetuate this unkind myth that gamers don't bathe, but I've had only positive experiences. There was one point I walked through the food court and it smelled like someone had spilled perfume (or used way too much), but it was no big deal.

 

[Morrus]

Just to balance out the earlier comment: I've been to Origins 24 times, and I have literally never smelled sweat. People love to perpetuate this unkind myth that gamers don't bathe, but I've had only positive experiences. There was one point I walked through the food court and it smelled like someone had spilled perfume (or used way too much), but it was no big deal.

I’ve definitely experienced it at multiple conventions.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Just to balance out the earlier comment: I've been to Origins 24 times, and I have literally never smelled sweat. People love to perpetuate this unkind myth that gamers don't bathe, but I've had only positive experiences. There was one point I walked through the food court and it smelled like someone had spilled perfume (or used way too much), but it was no big deal.

I would say that this was the first time there was an overwhelming and omnipresent funk. At past Origins, there'd be the occasional person with poor hygiene, but this was something else.

 

[Egg Embry]

Not that I trust my google search results but when I searched for unique attendance for dragoncon in the Atlanta area, AI google results came back with 72k for 2024. I haven’t been since 2006ish as it’s grown too large to enjoy for me, which at the time was comic based hunts for missing holes in thr collection and getting artists to draw stuff.

Good call out.
I make my way to DragonCon each year. It's well attended (over attended) as a general fandom convention/party, but it's focus in 2025 is geekdom, not a specific fandom. The tabletop gaming portion of the con is fun, but represents a few thousand attendees at most. The conventions listed above are tabletop gaming only. To that end, metro Atlanta is working on two local gaming conventions: Dice + Diversions (1,000 attendees in 2025) and LUG Con hosted by Level Up Games, a tabletop gaming store chain based around Atlanta (and not to be confused with EN Publishing's game of the same name). Those cons are modestly sized but they'll be pure gamers.

 

[EthanSental]

I’ll have to check out the LugCon, thanks for sharing. Is this years Con its first, if you know?

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Wow, I’m surprised that Origins is the 5th largest tabletop convention with those sort of attendee numbers. I thought there were more tabletop conventions pulling bigger numbers than that, but I’m likely thinking of a lot of “gaming” conventions that are more about tabletop miniatures games than RPGs.