All "Spiel des Jahres🇩🇪 1981" game award winners & nominees in comparison 2026

Can't Stop is a classic dice game designed by Sid Sackson, renowned for its blend of luck, risk-taking, and tactical decision-making. It's a game that challenges players to wisely balance their boldness and caution as they aim to complete columns on the game board.

Enchanted Forest is a captivating family board game that combines memory, strategy, and a dash of luck. Set in a magical forest, the game's objective is to discover treasures hidden under each tree and recall their locations to win the favor of the king.

Players control six police officers and one robber each. The officers aim to bring the opposing robber to justice, while the robber attempts to evade capture. The game is thematically focused but is fundamentally an abstract movement game with black and white pieces moving on a square grid.

Fokus (or Domination) is an abstract strategy game where players aim to move pieces and capture them, leaving their opponents with no available moves. A player can move one piece or a stack of pieces based on their quantity, and if a stack exceeds five pieces, excess pieces are removed. Strategically reserving captured pieces for later use can turn the tide of the game by enabling powerful plays against opponents.

Players engage in an abstract strategy game for two, aiming to move their 12 pieces to the opposite side. Each player starts and ends with four stacks of pieces featuring numbers 3, 2, and 1, which dictate movement levels and the highest levels on which pieces can climb and move over others. There are also four additional variants to explore.

Players start by drawing 10 out of 120 hidden letter tiles. They have 5 minutes to form as many words as possible, scoring points based on the tiles' values. A third round adds more tiles, and players strive to create longer words, with scores tallied to determine the winner.