From 12 to 15 November 2025, the 18th Play – Creative Gaming Festival will take place in Hamburg's HafenCity under the motto 'Take Care'. The festival will explore how responsibility, care and social participation can be made visible and tangible through games.
Visitors can look forward to a diverse programme of interactive exhibitions, talks, workshops, training courses and shows at the new festival venues, Urbaneo - Junges Architektur Zentrum and New Work. Admission to all events is free.
In the interactive exhibition, visitors can explore a total of 20 experimental and playful works focusing on care as a calling, human interaction, global responsibility and personal awareness. These include works from Hamburg, contributions from local game schools and a special selection curated by the Young PLAY youth team. There are also five games nominated for the Most Creative Game Award. In total, there are over 40 works from 17 countries to be discovered on the first day of the festival during the opening tour on 12 November at 1 p.m. A jury of experts (Senta Gohr, Gamecity Hamburg; Hannah Berecke, YoungPLAY; Christina Kutscher, lecturer and journalist; Sven Ahlgrimm, game designer; and Su-Jin Song, Cologne Game Lab) will select this year's winning projects for the Most Creative Game Award. All exhibited works will compete for the Audience Award. The awards ceremony, hosted by OddNina, will be held at the festival and can also be attended virtually in the PLAYvalley festival location or via a Twitch stream on 15 November at 7 p.m.
The organisers emphasise: "Parallel to the exhibitions, a diverse discussion program will take place over the four days of the festival. It will address current topics in gaming culture. In the talk “Criticism of Capitalism in Games” (November 14, 5 p.m.), Christina Kutscher and Eric Jannot will discuss how economic systems are represented in games and what opportunities the medium offers for questioning capitalist structures. The talk “Take Care?! – Responsibility and Care Work in Digital Gaming” (November 15, 5 p.m.), moderated by Nora Beyer, will address the question of what care actually has to do with digital games, which perspectives become visible and which are suppressed."
The festival offers interactive workshops and creative stations exploring the intersection of gaming and social issues, including climate change and discrimination. Visitors can join discussions, take part in inclusive gaming projects and listen to short talks about ethics, identity and game world design. As part of the third Young Play programme, there is also a Game Jam on 15 November. Here, participants aged 12 and over can develop their own games, either alone or in teams, in just five hours. At the Indie Meetup, festival attendees can attend talks, play games developed by indie developers based in Hamburg, and network with their peers. Gamecity Hamburg invites FLINTA* individuals from the gaming industry and their allies to meet each other and support each other at the FLINTA* Games Meetup on 13 November.
Since 2008, the PLAY – Creative Gaming Festival has connected games with media art, education and social discourse. In 2024, the festival attracted around 9,000 visitors to Hamburg and reached over 800,000 people online. This year, the programme will again be streamed live via Twitch, enabling participation both digitally and on site.
PLAY25 is an event organised by Initiative Creative Gaming e.V. and jaf – Verein für medienpädagogische Praxis Hamburg e.V., and is funded by the Medien und Bildung Hamburg project fund, the BürgerStiftung Hamburg, the BSB's Center for School and Youth Information (ZSJ), the Haerlin Foundation, and Gamecity Hamburg.
