Fabian Mehring Announces Funding and Bavaria’s Bid for DCP 2026

At the Games/Bavaria Christmas party held at Munich’s new Gamerei venue, Bavarian Digital Minister Fabian Mehring presented the Games/Bavaria initiative with a funding check for 644,000 Euro and confirmed Bavaria’s bid to host the Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2026 (DCP; German Computer Games Award).

For the first time, the Games/Bavaria network celebrated a Christmas party at the Gamerei, a venue opened this year in Munich. Among the guests was the Bavarian Digital Minister Fabian Mehring, who supports both the network and the Gamerei as a Games/Bavaria project. In his speech, Mehring not only looked back on an eventful and successful year for the Bavarian games industry, he also presented the Games/Bavaria initiative, which is based at Medien.Bayern, with a new funding check for 644,000 euros for 2025.

Mehring also revealed that Bavaria has applied to organize and host the Deutsche Computerspielpreis (DCP; German Computer Games Award) in 2026. The application was to be expected, but the timing of Mehring's announcement lends weight to the proposal.

Since the first award, the DCP has been presented alternately in Berlin and Munich, until the current government changed the mode to an open application process. Starting with the DCP 2025, all federal states in Germany can apply to host the award ceremony. The bid for 2025 was won by Berlin, which would have been next in line under the old scheme. However, the city has already indicated that it would like to host the DCP permanently in the German capital. Munich obviously sees things differently.

It will be interesting whether other federal states will seize the opportunity to apply to host the DCP in 2026. Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and others did not apply for 2025, partly because they support numerous other initiatives and an application would also tie up funds. But this could be different in the future.