Around 60 studios will represent Belgium at Gamescom 2025 in Cologne, Germany this week, in the country’s most organized showing yet at Europe’s largest video game trade fair. The delegation spans developers, publishers, and industry professionals from across Belgium’s main regions, heading to an event that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year and remains one of the industry’s biggest annual gatherings outside North America.
The trade fair opens to industry visitors on Wednesday. Public access runs Thursday through Sunday.
Belgium at Gamescom 2025 with two regional pavilions
This year marks a first: rather than sharing a single national booth, Belgium is running two distinct exhibition spaces. One pavilion is dedicated to Wallonia, the other covers Flanders and Brussels. Around 30 organizations are participating across both areas.
Jean Gréban, coordinator at Walga (the Wallonia Games Association), said the dual setup was driven by “a desire for efficiency.” The logic is practical. Flanders is home to more established studios with the resources to pursue international co-productions and distribution deals. Wallonia’s contingent leans toward smaller developers, newer ventures, and educational programs still building their footing in the industry.
That split shapes what each region wants from the fair. Wallonia is focused less on closing deals and more on awareness, skills development, and reaching new export markets. Gréban pointed to Brazil and Asia as specific targets. For a smaller studio without an existing international profile, getting in front of the right distributor or publisher at Gamescom can change a project’s trajectory entirely.
A crowded market and the shift toward self-publishing
The broader gaming market adds real pressure. Steam listed nearly 18,000 titles in 2024, and that number may reach 20,000 by the end of 2025. For any studio without a substantial marketing budget, discoverability is a genuine obstacle, and the gap between games that get noticed and games that don’t continues to widen.
Gréban’s position is that independent games remain more financially viable than chasing the scale of major-budget franchises. More Belgian developers are moving toward self-publishing and direct promotion rather than relying on traditional publisher arrangements. Walga supports that direction, and Gamescom gives those studios a rare opportunity to meet press, platform holders, and distributors in person without the filter of a publisher intermediary.
Who is attending and what they want
The Belgian contingent covers a wide range of stages. Commercial studios are looking for investment, publishing deals, or distribution agreements. Newer teams want visibility and industry feedback on work that has not yet launched. Academic programs are presenting student and graduate work to a professional audience for the first time.
No single game defines Belgium’s presence at this year’s fair. The push is broader: dozens of studios across two pavilions, representing different sizes, stages, and goals, all under the same national banner for a week in Cologne.
Trade access starts Wednesday. Public days run Thursday through Sunday.