Gamescom Asia Draws 219,546 Visitors From 113 Countries in Bangkok

Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show pulled in 219,546 attendees from 113 countries, and organizers at Koelnmesse are calling it the most international edition yet. The four-day show ran October 29 to November 1 at Bangkok's Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre, filling 38,519 square meters of floor space.

The numbers that matter for publishers and investors sit in the business area, and they moved sharply upward. The first two days drew 6,923 trade visitors from 78 countries, up 24% from 5,590 in 2025. More than half of those visitors flew in from outside Thailand, which is the whole point of staging a regional flagship in Bangkok.

What changed on the dealmaking side?

The Xsolla-sponsored Invest Circle and VIP XPerience programs connected 509 developers, publishers and investors, up from 418 last year. That's a 22% jump in structured matchmaking, and it's the metric executives tend to read first.

Koelnmesse's Managing Director and Regional President APAC, Mathias Kuepper, put it plainly: "This was the most international show we have staged." He added that exhibitors from 29 countries and regions came to Bangkok "to sign deals, not only to show games. That tells the global industry that Southeast Asia is no longer a market to watch. It is a market to be in, and this is where deals get done."

Strong words. The attendance figures mostly back them up.

How international was the exhibitor floor?

The show hosted 335 exhibitors and pavilions, up from 294 last year, with 64% representing countries outside Thailand. Exhibitors came from 29 countries, including 20 national pavilions and industry delegations. For studios shopping their games to regional publishers, that's a wider bench of potential partners than any previous edition offered.

The conference program ran 81 speakers from 27 countries across four stages, headlined by id Software co-founder John Romero. Media turnout reached 720 partners, influencers and press.

Playable content stayed substantial: 582 titles were on the floor, with 347 of them from indie developers spread across the business and entertainment areas. Indies accounted for roughly six in ten playable games — a ratio that signals how much of the show's substance comes from smaller teams hunting distribution.

Digital reach ran large too. Livestreams and content from the show generated nearly 34 million views across platforms.

Why Bangkok instead of Cologne?

Project director Daria La Velle framed the strategy in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz before the event. The show's "north star," she said, is to cover all of Asia, but "at the fundamental level, we are a show for Southeast Asia's games industry and its fans."

Her logic on geography is blunt. Referring to the flagship Gamescom in Germany, she noted that "the number of attendees that come from Asia Pacific is still relatively low compared to the number of attendees that come from Europe, the US, and South America. So instead of travelling to Gamescom, we tried to bring the Gamescom experience to their backyard."

It's a sensible read. Asia-Pacific developers face real cost and visa friction getting to Cologne, and a show 24% bigger in its trade days suggests the backyard approach is working.

What's the takeaway for studios?

Three operational facts stand out. Business attendance grew 24% year-on-year. Investor-developer matchmaking grew from 418 to 509 participants. And nearly 60% of playable titles came from indies, meaning smaller studios had unusual proximity to the 509-deep capital side of the room.

For Southeast Asian developers, the show has quietly become the region's most efficient single location for publisher meetings, national pavilion contacts and press access. For Western publishers, the 78-country business audience suggests due diligence trips now justify themselves.

The question worth watching next year is whether the trade-day growth curve holds. A second consecutive 20%-plus jump would confirm the trend; a plateau would suggest the 2025 spike was pent-up regional demand spending itself in one go.