Are you developing a cool new board game? And could it be finished in time for Easter? If yes, we would love to see it on Fastaval's board game program, where we present a feast of new creative and innovative board game designs every year.
Send us YOUR board game!
We want to give participants at Fastaval amazing and unique experiences and welcome all genres and types of games. Fastaval’s participants are a very diverse crowd, from roleplayers with little board game experience to hardcore eurogamers, from casual gamers to miniature gamers. We welcome all kinds of games, from social games to immersive narratives, creative party games, innovative eurogames, dexterity games, and much more.
Why submit your game to Fastaval?
It is a very special experience to have a game on Fastaval’s program.
In the months leading up to Fastaval a special community grows around the designers. They can spar with each other regarding everything concerning game design, balance, interactional design, graphics and production. A lot of designers learn a lot from this.
You will get interim deadlines and support to make it easier to complete your design, and we will arrange a test day specifically for Fastaval games.
During Fastaval you will get the pleasure of seeing players play your game with great enthusiasm.
If your game excels in one of the board games categories you may even be honoured with a golden Otto. You can read more about these here.
During Fastaval we will also gather systemic feedback from the players and Otto Judges, and you will get access to this after Fastaval.
How to submit your pitch
Submit your pitch along with your information via our online submission-form. Please note that the form is in English, but you are free to choose whether you write your pitch in Danish or English. Click on the link here to open the form:
Pitches can be submitted between August 1 and August 31, 2025.
If you have any questions, please contact us at gamedesign@fastaval.dk
What should be in the pitch?
In the pitch we want you to focus on the following:
- What is special about your game? We receive many more pitches than we can accept, so you need to highlight exactly what makes your game stand out from the crowd.
- What do you want the players to experience playing the game? Try to describe the key choices, dilemmas, or emotions you want the players to experience playing your game.
- How far are you in the process? How much have you play tested? What are your current next steps and challenges?
- Please include pictures or sketches of your current prototype, if any. This makes it much easier to understand your game.
Fastaval isn’t a test event or a publishing fair. Instead it is a gaming convention where the focus is to give the convention attendees solid gaming experiences with newly developed board games premiering at the convention.
Everything is organised in a program with three play sessions of each game, and there is also a jury who will read all rules and play all games to judge what games deserve to win the golden penguin statues called the Ottos.
If your game is selected for Fastaval, you will have to complete a process with the following steps in the time between selection and Easter:
1) Develop and test the game (obviously :-))
2) Sort out the logistics with us so we can create a great program with space for everyone
3) Write a teaser for the game and make pictures to present the game on our website
4) Write the rules andsend a digital copy to the Otto Jury a month before Fastaval
5) Make several copies of your game (typically 3-5)
6) Send one copy to the Otto Jury before Fastaval
7) Sign up for and pay admission for Fastaval (you will get a designer discount :-))
8) Show up for the three playing sessions to prepare the games and explain the rules for the registered participants
To help you in this process we will create a Facebook group for this years designers and coordinators, where we can help each other with ongoing information, deadlines, sparring/experience sharing and collective hype. We will also arrange a test day specifically for the Fastaval games in both Copenhagen and Aarhus.
July-August:
In the run-up to the August deadline, we recommend that you work on your concept and test it with your gaming group. It will often benefit your pitch if you have ensured that the core mechanics of your concept actually work as intended.
September:
As soon as we have received all the pitches, we will start the process of reading, debating, and selecting the games we want for Fastaval. Some weeks after the deadline we will be in touch to let you know if your pitch has been accepted or not. If your game is accepted, we will contact you to agree on a specific timeline for your game towards Easter and Fastaval. You will also be invited to our Facebook group for all the designers, where there are rich possibilities for ongoing feedback and advice.
October:
During October, at the latest, we expect your game to have been tested in an end-to-end play-through, the first draft of the rules to have been written, and you should have gotten some feedback.
January:
At this point, the presentation of the game for the program and a poster/front for the game must be done
February:
By now the final version of the rules must be done, so you have the last month and a half available for the production of the physical games themselves
March:
Her skal du bygge/producerer et antal kopier af dit Fastaval spil. Typisk omkring 3-5 kopier. Vi kommunikerer med dig omkring det præcise antal til den tid.
March/April:
Fastaval!!
May-June:
After Fastaval you will receive feedback from the judges on your game, along with a summary of the feedback forms we have given to the players to fill out after playing your game
New board game designs at Fastaval
Board games have been a part of Fastaval since the very first convention in the mid 80’s, but since 2012 board games have been a category with its own program. Each year a number of board games have debuted at Fastaval – brand new, not yet published board games that our convention goers have been some of the first to try.
What is special about the board games at Fastaval?
At Fastaval you’ll meet innovative board games that push our idea of what board games are and what they can do. Social games that frame the interaction between players in new ways – like ‘Magic Maze’, where the players must cooperate without any talking. Board games that tell stories, like the double prize winner from 2017 – ‘Z’, where the players must work together to survive in the remnants of a world overrun by zombies.
Games for entirely new audiences – like ‘Fog of Love’, a romantic comedy as a board game, perfect for couples. Games that engage the players in societal challenges – at Fastaval 2018 we had games about climate change, the information war between superpowers, and the treatment of the mentally ill from 1700 to 1950.
World class board games
And we are talking world-class board games premiering at Fastaval.
The winner of the Otto for the best board game in 2015, Magic Maze, was nominated for the biggest award for board games, Spiel des Jahres. Fog of Love from that same Fastaval was the first boardgames Wallmart bought the exclusive rights to in America, and Fog of Love was nominated to the Golden Geek Awards.
A long line of games from Fastaval has gone on to become published or Kickstarted. So it’s not just us who think our board games are pretty great.
A community for creativity driven by volunteers
Fastaval is a creative community where form and expression games can have is explored and experimented with, within our two core areas: role-playing games and board games.
Everything you will experience at Fastaval is carried out by volunteers, i.e. everyone who organizes Fastaval is unpaid and is a participant at Fastaval on equal terms with everyone else, this includes the main organizers, the board game-coordinators on this site, and you as a designer.
As a designer, you are considered a voluntary contributor to Fastaval by virtue of designing a board game experience for the other participants at Fastaval.
How we select games
When we read through the incoming pitches to make the selection for Fastaval, our task is to provide the participants with the best possible potential for great experiences playing games. As such we consider several factors that all influence our decision:
The presentation
Do we understand the description of the game well enough to get a good understanding of the ideas and core concepts of the game?
Quality
Is there good cohesion between game mechanisms and theme? Does it seem like a good game?
Appeal
Does the concept excite us? Do we believe that the game will provide a good experience for the players?
That special ‘something’
We have a great love for games that are different and innovative. Maybe games that might not have obvious commercial potential, but that bring something new to the table – in short: It is a game that fits into the spirit of Fastaval and the audience.
Development potential
There is not a lot of time to design a game from the pitch is approved in September and until the premiere at Fastaval during Easter. It is therefore important that the core elements are, by and large, in place and it seems realistic that the game development can be completed for Fastaval.
But at the same time we don't want games that are fully done already. It is part of the Fastaval experience to develop the game alongside the other designers.
Diversity
Finally, we wish to have a broad field of different games, covering the gamut from lightweight to heavy, short to long, from serious to humorous, from both Danish and foreign designers, both experienced and rookies, men, and women.
There are many parameters we try to take into account when selecting the line-up of games for Fastaval from among the submitted pitches. Each year we receive somewhere between 50-120 pitches and we only have room for about 20-24 in the Fastaval program. In the end, we often have to reject many good pitches to ensure the broad selection.
Unfortunately, we are not able to provide explanations for the rejections to everyone who receives a refusal. But keep in mind that a refusal from Fastaval does not necessarily mean that the game is bad, but simply that we did not have room for it in this year's line-up.
Requirements for designed board games
Fastaval’s board games program is an event with a focus on the design process, innovation and cool board game experiences for the attendees at Fastaval. We are not interested in publication of games or in supporting commercial processes. For this reason, games that have already been fully developed or are about to be published have no interest, as those games (and their designers) have reached their design goals without taking Fastaval or her attendees into account. udgivelse af spil eller understøttelse af de kommercielle processer. Derfor er spil, der allerede er udgivet eller er ved at blive udgivet, ikke interessante, da disse spil (og deres designere) har nået deres designmål uden at have Fastaval-oplevelsen eller Fastaval’s publikum i tankerne.
Games that are ready for publication or crowdfunding or where a signed deal with a publisher exists, will not be able to participate in the program.
The Board Game organizers 2026
The coordinators’ task is to ensure the guests of Fastaval have high-quality board game experiences from a broad selection of board- and card games. We want to be an active partner in the design process through sparring and guidance, setting up sub-goals and deadlines, and in particular opportunities to get prototypes playtested continuously along the way. Our goal is to customize the design timeline to the individual game’s needs.
The coordinators also have the task of selecting this year’s field of designer board games from among the submitted pitches based on criteria such as potential, state of progress, theme, and mechanics. The coordinators are not part of the jury who will judge the completed games at Fastaval, and select the Otto winners.
You can contact the board game organizers at gamedesign@fastaval.dk
The Board Game organizers for Fastaval 2026 are:
Elias Daniel Nielsen
Elias started at Fastaval with the game rush winner “Clockwork”. Then he became an organiser to support the cool community he had met. Elias is both a roleplaying gamer and a board gamer; he especially enjoys roleplaying games like Call of Cthulhu and board games like Avalon and Eldritch Horror. He is smitten with games with secret roles, but he also enjoys real time games and heavy euros like SETI.
Elias plans on studying physics and engineering at DTU and currently works as a temp teacher at a special needs school. Most of his board games consumption comes from hanging and playing with his friends.
Stefan Tonnesen Bubel
Stefan is a relatively new participant at Fastaval, with only two years under his belt, but with significantly more experience from the board game family he grew up in. There, he developed a passion for games built around rolling combos and interesting strategies, such as deck builders like Clank and tableau builders like Earth and Meadow.
Stefan is in his final year at an HTX (technical upper secondary school), where he also plays board games with his friends. That’s why he started a board game club, which he hopes will continue after he graduates.
Rikke Munchkin Sørensen
Rikke Munchkin first attended Fastaval in 1995 as 100% roleplayer but has over the years discovered the joys of cardboard too.
She designed the sardonically humouristic Old Gertrude’s Room for FV2020, and generally has a soft spot for the quirkier themes that tell a good story.
But she also thoroughly enjoys the more classic games and currently plays a lot of Forest Shuffle, 7 Wonders and Oh My Goods!
In everyday life, she works as an audiologist in a hearing research group at DTU which luckily also involves a decent amount of nerds.
