You’ve probably seen the little badges. A red dot on a box, a gold logo on a Kickstarter page, a “winner” sticker on the shelf at the game store. Board games hand out a lot of awards, and once you start paying attention you realise nobody ever explains what any of them actually mean.
So we dug into it. This is a plain-English guide to the awards that carry real weight: who gives them out, where they come from, when they land, and what they’re really judging. We’re not covering who won this year (we might add that later). Think of it as the “what is this badge and should I care” guide.
One thing to keep in mind before we start. There’s no single “board game Oscars.” Different awards judge completely different things. Some are picked by a tiny expert jury, others by tens of thousands of regular players voting online. A game can win one and get ignored by all the rest, and that’s normal. Knowing which is which is the whole point.
Spiel des Jahres — the big red one
If you only learn one award, learn this one. The Spiel des Jahres (“Game of the Year” in German) is the most influential board game award there is. It started in Germany in 1978, with the first prize handed out in 1979, and the red badge (“der rote Pöppel,” the red meeple) on a box can sell hundreds of thousands of extra copies.
People get one thing wrong about it constantly: it is not an award for the best, deepest, heaviest game of the year. It’s an award for the best family game. Accessible, well-made, easy to teach, fun at the kitchen table. War games, hardcore strategy, and hobbyist games are deliberately out of scope. A small German jury of game critics picks it, and they care more about elegant rules and broad appeal than complexity.
Over the years it grew into three separate awards:
- Spiel des Jahres — the original. Family games. The red badge.
- Kinderspiel des Jahres — Children’s Game of the Year, its own award since 2001. Aimed at games for kids roughly ages 4 to 8.
- Kennerspiel des Jahres — Connoisseur Game of the Year, added in 2011. This is the one for experienced gamers who want more depth and a meatier challenge. If a game feels too involved for the family award, it usually lands here.
When it happens: nominations come out in May, and the winners are announced in early-to-mid July. It’s a German award, but it’s the global benchmark. When this jury speaks, the whole hobby listens.
A few games that won it: the back catalogue here is basically a list of the games that built the modern hobby.
- Catan (1995) — the one that arguably kicked off the whole German-games wave. Check price on Amazon
- Ticket to Ride (2004) — collect train cards, claim routes, the gateway game half the people you know started on. Check price on Amazon
- Dominion (2009) — the game that invented deck-building as we know it. Check price on Amazon
- Codenames (2016) — two teams, one-word clues, the best word game we own. Check price on Amazon
- Azul (2018) — gorgeous tile-drafting that looks as good as it plays. Check price on Amazon
Want a sense of the two younger categories? On the heavier Kennerspiel side, 7 Wonders (2011) and Wingspan (2019) are both winners worth owning (7 Wonders on Amazon, Wingspan on Amazon). On the Kinderspiel side, Ghost Blitz is a fast kids’ reflex game our group still pulls out (Ghost Blitz on Amazon).
Most recent winners (2025):
Bomb Busters (Spiel des Jahres) — Check price on Amazon
Endeavor: Deep Sea (Kennerspiel) — See it at Board Game Bliss
Topp die Torte (Kinderspiel) — Check price on Amazon
Golden Geek Awards — the people’s vote
The Golden Geek Awards are the opposite philosophy. Instead of a small expert jury, these get voted on by the huge community at BoardGameGeek, the giant database and forum that most serious hobbyists treat as home base. They started in 2006 and are presented each year around the BGG.Con event in Dallas, Texas.
The process runs in two rounds. First a nomination phase (usually early in the year) where eligible members nominate games; only the most-nominated games survive to the voting round a few weeks later. To vote you need to be a paying or supporting BGG member, which keeps it to people who are actually invested in the hobby.
Because it’s community-driven, it’s the broadest award going. There are categories for just about everything: best overall game, plus board game artwork, solo games, two-player games, party games, card games, expansions, even best board game app and best podcast. If you want a read on what the dedicated hobbyist crowd actually loved this year, this is the one to watch.
A few games that won it: the hobbyist crowd tends to reward bigger, crunchier games than the family awards do.
- Wingspan — the bird-themed engine builder that crossed over to non-gamers without losing its depth. Check price on Amazon
- Terraforming Mars — a sprawling, card-driven race to make the red planet livable. Check price on Amazon
- Scythe — alternate-history mechs, area control, and one of the best-looking boards in the hobby. Check price on Amazon
Most recent winners (2024 games):
SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Heavy) — Check price on Amazon
Harmonies (Medium) — Check price on Amazon
Castle Combo (Light) — Check price on Amazon
The Dice Tower Awards — the critics’ pick
The Dice Tower is one of the longest-running board game media outlets, with reviews, podcasts, and a mountain of YouTube videos behind it. Their annual Dice Tower Awards are chosen by a committee of well-known podcasters, reviewers, and bloggers from across the hobby, so think of these as the “critics’ circle” award rather than a public vote or a single jury.
Categories cover the ground you’d expect: game of the year, best artwork, best small-publisher game, best new designer, best party game, and so on. Nominations usually come out in early summer with winners following later in the year. Because the voters play and review games for a living, the Dice Tower picks tend to lean a bit more toward the hobbyist end than the family-friendly Spiel des Jahres.
A few games that won it:
- Pandemic — the co-op classic where you team up to stop four diseases from wiping out the planet. Check price on Amazon
- Wingspan — turns up on a lot of these lists, and for good reason. Check price on Amazon
Most recent winner: SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence took the Dice Tower Game of the Year. Check price on Amazon
As d’Or — the French one from Cannes
The As d’Or (“Golden Ace”) is France’s biggest board game award, and it carries a lot of weight in Europe. The city of Cannes launched it in 1988, and it’s handed out each year at the Festival International des Jeux in Cannes. Yes, the same Cannes as the film festival, different event.
A jury of players, journalists, and industry pros tests hundreds of games across the year, then deliberates and picks winners across a few tiers: a main “casual” award for broadly accessible games, a children’s category (roughly ages 3 to 7), and expert-level categories for heavier games. They judge on things like how addictive a game is to play, how original it is, how it looks, and how clearly the rules are written.
When it happens: the festival runs in late February, so the As d’Or is one of the first major awards of the year. If the Spiel des Jahres is the German benchmark, the As d’Or is the French equivalent.
A few games that won it:
- Splendor (2014) — collect gem chips, build a renaissance trading engine, a tight little game that teaches in two minutes. Check price on Amazon
- Camel Up (2014) — chaotic, hilarious camel racing with betting that turns the whole table into a casino. Check price on Amazon
Most recent winners (2025):
Odin (general audience) — Check price on Amazon
Behind (intermediate) — See it at Board Game Bliss
Kutná Hora: The City of Silver (expert) — Check price on Amazon
Opération Noisettes (children’s) — Check price on Amazon.ca
Origins Awards — the long-running American one
The Origins Awards are one of the oldest awards in the hobby, first handed out back in 1975 at the very first Origins Game Fair in Baltimore. They’re run by GAMA (the Game Manufacturers Association), the trade body for the tabletop industry, and presented each year at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio.
These cover a wider tabletop world than just board games, reaching into card games, role-playing games, miniatures, and accessories too. The categories get reshuffled fairly often, but on the board game side they’ve recently included Gateway Game of the Year, Cooperative/Solo Game of the Year, party games, and both light and heavy strategy games. It’s an industry-rooted award with a lot of history behind it.
A few games that won it:
- Pandemic — a multi-time Origins honoree and still one of the best co-ops to hand a new group. Check price on Amazon
- Carcassonne — tile-laying, meeple-placing, and the game that introduced a lot of us to the word “meeple.” Check price on Amazon
Most recent winners (2024 games): Origins splits into a lot of categories, so this is just the core board game slate.
Seaside (Gateway Game) — Check price on Amazon- Endeavor: Deep Sea (Heavy Strategy) — See it at Board Game Bliss
Fromage (Light Strategy) — Check price on Amazon
Flip 7 (Party Game) — Check price on Amazon
Marvel United: Multiverse (Co-Op/Solo) — Check price on Amazon
A few more worth knowing
Once you go down the rabbit hole there are dozens, but these come up often enough to be worth a sentence each:
Spiel der Spiele — Austria’s national game award. Similar family-friendly spirit to its German cousin, just across the border.
So which badge should you actually trust?
Honestly? It depends entirely on who you are.
Shopping for something to play with family or a mixed group of non-gamers? A Spiel des Jahres badge is about as safe a bet as exists in this hobby. A few hundred games deep and want to know what the obsessed crowd rated highest? The Golden Geek and Dice Tower awards will steer you better. Want strategy and heft? Look at the Kennerspiel des Jahres and the International Gamers Awards.
No single award is “the real one,” and a game with no badge at all can still be the best night you’ve had all year. But the badges are a useful shortcut. Once you know which jury or crowd is behind each one, you can read them like a recommendation from a friend whose taste you’ve finally figured out.
That’s the whole hobby, really. Lots of opinions, no wrong answers, just people who love games trying to point you toward a good one.
Sources: Spiel des Jahres official site, Spiel des Jahres (Wikipedia), Golden Geek Awards (BoardGameGeek), The Dice Tower Awards, As d’Or (Wikipedia), Origins Awards (Wikipedia), International Gamers Award, UK Games Expo Awards.
Thumbnail image artificially generated for illustrative purposes.
