And so the back and forth over what will happen with gamescom 2020 has ended. It has now been confirmed that the European gaming expo, which drew in around 370,000 people in 2018 and about 373,000 people in 2019, has been canceled. Rather than this coming as the result of talks by team members responsible for the event, it happened due to Germany declaring a nationwide event ban.
The German nationwide ban on major events first came up in the news on April 15, 2020 and will impact all events until August 31, 2020. This came up at the same time as news about the country’s government pushing to extend its shelter-in-place orders from April 19, 2020 to May 3, 2020. Later that day, the gamescom 2020 cancellation announcement was released and confirmed the ban would affect it too.
Here is the official gamescom 2020 statement. While it announce there will be no physical event, it did confirm there will be a digital one.
Even though not all details are known at present, the nationwide ban on major events until the end of August will also affect the planning for #gamescom2020. Furthermore: gamescom 2020 will definitely take place digitally! We will provide further information shortly.
Later in that same announcement, it confirmed that people who had purchased tickets will be receiving refunds.
Back in the first half of March 2020, planning for gamescom 2020 was continuing as planned, though the team behind it were already confirming there would be refunds if it was canceled and vouchers could be used toward future events. Then, as March 2020 ended, the team confirmed that it did have more digital events already planned and would reevaluate the situation in May 2020.
gamescom 2020 was set to run August 25-29, 2020 at the Koelnmesse in Cologne, Germany.
[Image Source: gamescom]
