Gamescom Latam's plan to double in size for year two

It's safe to say the first ever Gamescom Latam was a success. More than 100,000 visitors from over 70 countries came to the São Paulo Expo centre during the final week of June to play everything from locally-developed indie curios, to AAA blockbusters and first-party smash hits.

Games came from 124 exhibitors from 66 countries, and the industry's presence included more than 200 publishers and 700 studios. Not bad for an event built on the foundations of the BIG Festival (Best International Games Festival), which last year peaked at 50,000 attendees.

For Gamescom Latam CEO Gustavo Steinberg, signs of the appetite for this event were clear from the start. He tells GamesIndustry.biz that the first promotional batch of tickets sold out in just 20 minutes – which caught the team by surprise.

"We didn't know what to do," he says as we catch up at the organisers booth on the show floor. "We didn't even have all the assets ready."

Confident that the first show would be a success, the Gamescom Latam team went into this year's event already gearing up for next year – including a change of venue.

"Next year, we are going to a bigger space, which is going to be double the size of this one. It's called the Anhembi Convention Center, it's the oldest venue in São Paulo, but it was completely run down and now it has been renovated. It's brand new, super technological in terms of venues, and no columns so it's really easy to build the different booths in different shapes and everything."

Moving to the Anehmbi will bring the floor space up from 25,000 square metres to 50,000, while Steinberg estimates "at least 150,000 attendees, maybe 200,000" – almost certainly cementing Gamescom Latam's position as "the biggest games event in the Americas."

"From the point of view of the developers, joining forces with Gamescom was the obvious choice once it was a possibility"

Gustavo Steinberg, Gamescom Latam

In fact, as we speak, the wall behind him is decked out with a preliminary floorplan, as well as details of exhibition and sponsorship packages. Work on Gamescom Latam 2025 was well underway before 2024 even closed its doors.

It raises a question that speaks to Gamescom's global plans: why Latin America? Of all the regions around the globe, why is the world's biggest video games show so determined to establish a foothold in on this continent?

"It's the upcoming region of the world. If you were playing Risk…," Steinberg laughs, before adding that he has some theories as to the geopolitical circumstances that make Gamescom Latam an ideal venture: "Eastern Europe is pretty unstable for obvious reasons. China is in a kind of cultural lockdown, everything is pretty controlled there and they have their own ways of thinking about how the population should consume electronic goods.

"So that leaves a big area on the map, which is Latin America, conveniently positioned in between Europe and the US. It has a Western culture, even though it's not considered to be Western per se, and has a connection with lots of creativity, lots of good programmers, lots of good designers. So I think it's something that makes sense from a geopolitical point of view.

"And then there is the actual fact that we have more than 1,000 studios in Brazil alone. So it's really an upcoming and booming region."

As announced earlier this year, Gamescom Latam is the result of a merger between Gamescom and BIG Festival, which had been running since 2012. Steinberg was instrumental in the organisation of that event, and says that, while BIG was steadily growing in both attendance and reputation, merging it with another event helps to unlock another level of growth.

"It's a shortcut for us as an event to get all the credibility and the traction that Gamescom already has," he explains. "It's also good for us in terms of the networking possibilities that we have, and it's working because we've just crossed the barrier of 1,000 companies [attending]."

He continues: "Everything that I've done in the past 12 years, all the decisions I made as the organiser of [BIG Festival], my main focus is to see it from the point of view of the developers. So from the point of view of the developers, joining forces with Gamescom was the obvious choice once it was a possibility."

It's not just the attendance of more companies, but the engagement between them. BIG Festival 2023 was host to more than 5,000 meetings through its own matchmaking platform, whereas the first Gamescom Latam hosted over 11,000.

There were also more influencers and content creators hosted than ever before, to the point where the organisers introduced a business element for them. The B2B area of the show floor was closed to publishers and developers after the third day, opening it up to content creators and their agencies for the final two, where they could network with exhibitors and other attending companies.

Crucially, BIG Festival has not disappeared. In fact, it formed the literal heart of the show floor with a substantial area of booths showing off a range of indie games, and even third-party hits for Xbox and PlayStation. Steinberg observes this stems from his experience in the film industry, where he says "the importance of festivals cannot be overlooked."

"We're not a regional event, we're a global event that happens to be in the region. That's a different thing"

"[BIG] was expanding to embrace everything, and now it's back to [its roots] being a festival with the award ceremony and everything," he says. "So this actually made BIG Festival stronger because it is already the platform for new releases from the region, and we get games from all over the world. Even there, we increased in numbers. Last year we had almost 700 submissions from 50 countries. And this year we had 920 submissions from 70 countries. So it's a win-win."

While the main Gamescom in Cologne and the Singapore-based Gamescom Asia are organised by the former's parent company and venue Koelnmesse, Gamescom Latam is jointly organised by BIG Festival, Brazilian events firm Omelete Company, and Koelnmesse. But all efforts have been made to ensure the new show feels like a sister event to the other two.

"It's going to take some time for us to integrate 100% with Koelnmesse," Steinberg explains. "But the idea is to behave more and more as a global event. We are already doing that. For instance, our Countdown show was streamed in Germany and in Singapore at the same time."

Much like Cologne's Opening Night Live, Gamescom Latam's Countdown presented an array of trailers, updates and announcements the night before the show was opened up to consumers. Steinberg tells us this was very much part of a statement the organisers are trying to make.

"We are saying we are not a regional event, we are a global event that happens to be in the region. That's a different thing. When they were pitching their trailers, publishers were asking, 'Should we send the trailer in Portuguese?' I would say, 'No, send them in English with subtitles.' We were streaming in Portuguese, English, and Spanish.

"And even Geoff [Keighley, host of Opening Night Live in Cologne] sent us a message, 'Oh, make sure you mention us as the next Gamescom event.' So Tiago Leifert [Brazilian journalist and TV show host] mentioned Opening Night Live as the next stop.

"And of course, I asked [Geoff] 'Well, make sure you mention us too'."

GamesIndustry.biz attended Gamescom Latam with the support of the show's organisers, which provided travel and accommodation