About 50,000 People Attend the Polaris Convention 2025

The Polaris Convention 2025 attracted around 50,000 people to the Hamburg Messe und Congress exhibition centre last weekend. This represents a growth in attendance at the event this year.

From 10 to 12 October 2025, around 50,000 people, including 400 exhibitors and over 1,000 creators, attended the fourth edition of the Polaris Convention in Hamburg. Saturday was completely sold out, with long queues forming outside the exhibition grounds hours before the doors opened. This represents a substantial increase on the 40,000 attendees in 2024, 27,000 in 2023, and 10,000 in 2022.

Game developers, streamers, artists, cosplayers and tabletop creatives took centre stage at Polaris, which describes itself as a curated crossover experience.

The Indie Area in the Sandbox World, including the Indie Arena Booth, offered over 30 playable titles from all over Europe, many of which were debuting in Hamburg. Gamecity Hamburg presented eight local studios as 'hidden champions' of the area, while Bandai Namco Entertainment attracted large crowds with Little Nightmares III. This meant that over 50 games were playable at the show in total. More than 1,000 creators were present, including Trymacs, PietSmiet, Crispy Rob, DoktorFroid, Starlet Nova, Maul Cosplay, and many other major figures from the German streaming and cosplay scenes.

Polaris connected the event experience with the digital world with its in-house exhibition app. The app was a success, with over 37,000 downloads, 20,000 prizes distributed and 50,000 digital friendships formed. For the first time, an interactive story by German fantasy author Mikkel Robrahn was also included.

The next Polaris Convention will take place from 9 to 11 October 2026 at the Hamburg Messe und Congress exhibition centre. Registration for exhibitors is already open.

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