London Games Festival 2018 dates announced

After a very successful 2017 edition, the London Games Festival is coming back bigger than ever in 2018.

Games London just announced the dates for the 2018 edition, which will take place from April 5th to April 15th. The organiser also revealed some figures about this year’s festival, which gathered over 50,000 people across 40 different events in 20 venues.

The festival’s Games Finance Market, which took place across two days, delivered nearly 20m potential business, the organiser also revealed. Since the launch of the initiative in January 2016, Games London has connected 145 UK games companies with 109 global investors, generating over 30m of potential business.

For the London Games Festival 2018, the organiser will bring back its Games Finance Market for the third time, from April 10th to April 12th, with Now Play This and EGX Rezzed (April 13th to April 15th) also coming back as part of the celebration. The BAFTA Games Awards will also take place on April 12th.

There’s also a new event called HUB, a two-day "B2B event housing the Festival’s summits, a demo zone for prototypes and start-ups, a pop-up coworking space and gallery,” the announcement said. More details are due to be announced in September.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan commented: London leads the world in culture, creativity and technology and the city’s games industry plays a major part in that success. In just a couple of years, the London Games Festival has become a major attraction for consumers and professionals alike and Games London is delivering significant investment for our cutting-edge tech sector – showing that London is open to creativity and innovation and open for business.”