Tabletop Scotland 2026 opens from 4 to 6 September at the Royal Highland Centre in Ingliston, presenting hundreds of playable titles across the main trade floor, the prototype Playtest Zone, and the First Floor roleplaying suites. Finding hands-on table space across a busy convention floor requires clear planning, especially with publisher demos, scheduled prototype sessions, and tabletop roleplaying tables competing for floor space.
The main exhibition hall features running demos from independent studios alongside established UK distributors. Upstairs, the event hosts one of the largest dedicated roleplaying programmes in the country, separating tabletop systems from the rapid board game playtests running downstairs.
Publisher and Studio Demos on the Trade Floor
Commercial stands across the Highland Hall offer open drop-in gaming throughout the weekend:
- Grumpy Gorilla Publications (Stand B-01): Running live demos for the Revised Edition of Rosebyrne Manor. The studio is showcasing new character expansions, fresh power sources, a convention-exclusive character, and physical rulebooks alongside its gamer coffee line.
- Neowulf Games (Stand D-02): Hosting walk-up sessions for Viking Raiders, a card and resource game centred on clan building and naval raiding. The studio is also running a dedicated tournament on Saturday at 19:00.
- Medusa Games (Stand X-01): Demonstrating the period trading title Oranges & Lemons and its expansion, Here Comes a Candle. Designer Richard Denning is showcasing the title alongside the co-located UK Games Expo stand.
- BadCatGames (Stand T-07): Featuring running sessions of DreamEscape alongside tabletop demos for Zen Monkeys.
- Play-It-Now (Stand S-04): Presenting Death Mancer, a competitive dark fantasy card game built on combo chaining and engine development.
- Escape Envelope (Stand G-05): Running hands-on puzzle sessions for its tabletop deduction envelope titles Lock Ness and Disappearance at Blackridge.
- Zatu Distribution (Stand R-01): Hosting table demos for The Glasgow Train Robbery (designed by Ferran Renalias and Eloi Pujadas) alongside Reiner Knizia‘s tile-placement strategy game Rebirth.
- HABA UK (Stands A-02 & I-01): Operating the dedicated HABA Family Zone with accessible titles including Rhino Hero, Monza, First Orchard, and Animal Upon Animal.
The Main Hall Playtest Zone
The ground-floor Playtest Zone hosts over 20 scheduled slots for unpublished prototypes. These sessions allow creators to test game mechanics directly with convention attendees under live conditions:
- Saturday Schedule: Featured prototypes include Dead End (a tactical, two-player cooperative zombie shooter), Onex (a pattern-recognition card game), Deep Trouble (a push-your-luck mining game), Match 51, Artifacts of Linmarch, Mercenary, Farm Tycoon, The Alterra TCG, Explorers of the Lost Isle, Happy Valley, Spylinks, and single-player tile puzzler Puzzle Tracks.
- Sunday Schedule: Highlights include Parhelia (a semi-cooperative generation-ship colony builder), Panopticon (a hidden-faction orbital surveillance game), The Alterra TCG, Cinder, Majority Rules, Pipe Down, SpyJinks, The Tree Game, Kentucky James, Pressure Dive, and Christmas Cat-astrophe!.
First Floor Roleplaying Games
The ground-floor Playtest Zone does not host traditional roleplaying games. All tabletop roleplaying sessions run upstairs on the First Floor, which operates 35 dedicated tables per slot across seven sessions over the three days.
The RPG schedule features established systems and indie releases, including Call of Cthulhu, Dragonbane, Draw Steel, Mothership, Daggerheart, Delta Green, Twilight 2000, The One Ring, Wildsea, and Dungeons & Dragons (2024 rules). Players looking for unscheduled games can use the Games on Demand desk on the First Floor, where boarding passes for hourly games are issued 1 hour before each start time. The convention enforces the X-Card safety tool across all roleplaying tables as a mandatory standard.
Organised play forms a core part of the First Floor setup. As an official Premier Organiser for D&D, Tabletop Scotland is running five new Forgotten Realms regional modules set in Murghôm, written by Colin Tweddle, Ian Hawthorne, Richard Green, Bulb Donaldson, and Greg Foster, alongside Colin Tweddle‘s new multi-table Epic, Flotilla of Fate (EP-01-02).
Tabletop Scotland 2026 Coverage
Our thanks to Thistle Tavern for sponsoring our coverage of Tabletop Scotland. Visit their spacious store at 79 Shandwick Pl, Edinburgh for a huge selection of wargames, board games, and TCGs.
Loading articles…
- Dates: 4th to 6th September 2026
- Location: Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh
