Paris Games Week 2025 will be unlike anything we’ve ever known. Nicolas Vignolles, director of the PGW promised us a complete overhaul of the concept. This year, the Parisian show is abandoning its status as a video game showcase to become a true pop culture festival.
« The real novelty is that in addition to this show, we are going to be both a show and a show », Explains the General Delegate of SELL (Union of Leisure Software Publishers). Concretely, what does that mean? Halls 1 and 2 keep their old DNA with the latest gaming products to test with controller in hand. But the Dôme de Paris is making its debut with a program that should change the PGW experience.
Concerts every evening
The Dome will host e-sports competitions all day, then switch to concert mode at the end of the afternoon. On the program, a symphony concert dedicated to video games, Big Flo and Oli, the rapper Naza, and the highly anticipated philharmonic orchestra of 40 musicians for a concert dedicated to Clair Obscur Expedition 33.
« Every evening, there will be a show at Paris Games Week,” confirms the organizer. The preview evening will even set the tone with a concert highlighting more than a dozen great video game scores. A way of showing that the marriage between gaming and live music is not anecdotal in the new formula. »
Why this pop culture shift?
Historically dedicated to JVs, the PGW wishes to evolve with this edition. “ Our thinking is very basic, it is that there is no show that offers the experience that people live it all year round. » According to the organizers, players are no longer content to just play. They watch series adapted from their favorite licenses, they listen to OSTs on repeat on Spotify, they follow e-sport competitions, doing cosplay.
« In real life in fact, we are a video game player, but we are not just that », continues the SELL representative. The idea behind this transformation? Stop preventing yourself from being all of these things at once. Cards, cosplay, anime, cinema, music, the entire ecosystem will find its place at the show.
This approach also marks a real differentiation from the major international JV shows. Unlike Gamescom or the Tokyo Game Show, the PGW now fully assumes its spectacle dimension.
Finished the press evening
Another major novelty, the preview evening, traditionally reserved for professionals and the media, opens its doors to the general public. A limited number of tickets will allow the most motivated to discover the show before everyone else, in a fairly premium “night at the museum” atmosphere according to Nicolas Vignolles.
« We noticed year after year that we really had great Paris Games Week aficionados who were the first to take their tickets and who come no matter what. “. This opening aims to reward those hardcore fans who mark PGW in their calendar as soon as the dates are announced.
A 360 degree ambition
The shift is not limited to adding a few concerts. The organizers want reposition the PGW as the meeting place for all French geek culture. « We want a hyper-quality, hyper-dense, very nice video game brick, but undoubtedly be very different from other video game shows because we are going to have the world of anime, the world of cinema, the world of music which will be very present at Paris Games Week. »
This vision should be long-term. The 2025 edition serves as a showcase to test this new formula, but the ambition displayed also targets the following years. The challenge is to create an event that truly reflects how people consume culture today, without compartmentalizing practices. The basic promise remains intact. Players will still be able to test the latest releases with their controller in hand eight weeks before Christmasthe preview evening taking place this Wednesday, October 29.
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