The show’s organiser has this evening sent an email to exhibitors advising that the event has been cancelled despite strong support.

Spielwarenmesse has been officially cancelled following weeks of speculation as to the fate of this year’s event.

In an email sent to exhibitors, the show’s organiser, Spielwarenmesse eG, said: “We are addressing you today with very disappointing news. We are unfortunately forced to cancel Spielwarenmesse 2022, at least in its stationary form in Nuremberg.

We have fought intensively for it to take place and initially received strong support from the global toy markets. In December, the many suppliers without an international sales network appealed to us to maintain the platform, which is important for their foreign business.

In the meantime, due to the strong increase in the Omicron variant, we have to deal with a significantly changed pandemic situation, which creates a significant deterioration in the framework conditions for the Spielwarenmesse, over which we as organisers have no influence.

In Bavaria, trade fairs are now threatened with an immediate ban in regions where the 7-day incidence exceeds 1,000. A look at other European countries shows that significantly higher values are already being achieved there.

In response, many of our exhibitors have cancelled their stands out of concern for the health of their team and due to the planning uncertainty. As a result, the broad overview of the worldwide toy market that the Spielwarenmesse stands for as the world’s leading event for the industry is unfortunately no longer available.

For us as the Spielwarenmesse eG team, who invested around 1.5 years in preparing the event, this decision is necessary but a great disappointment. Our special thanks go to all who were committed to the implementation of a face-to-face event until the very end.

We will refund any payments for Spielwarenmesse 2022 that you have made to the organiser Spielwarenmesse eG. You do not have to take any action for this. We will contact you about this in the coming weeks.

You can use the Spielwarenmesse digital industry platform for the exchange of information between all market participants and for presenting your new products at the beginning of the year. We will send you all the information on Spielwarenmesse Digital 2022 next week.

Until then, we remain with best regards from Nuremberg.”

Toy World will bring you more news and industry reaction in due course.