Recommendations For Solo Board Games in 2026

I just realised it’s the time of year again! It’s August, we’re heading into the SPIEL Essen season, which will soon lead into the pre-Christmas season, which culminates in the “best of 2026”-recap season. Since the yearly cut-off always seemed rather arbitrary to me and I’m more interested in highlighting what I actually played and not necessarily what was released in a particular year, I started this solo recommendation series a couple of years ago. So if you’re new to this, please do check out 2023’s, 2024’s, 2025’s list! If you’re missing something here, it most likely is because I already showcased it before. New-ish Games That I Enjoyed These are games that either came out in the last 12 months or at least I got my hands on them for the first time in that timespan. Rebuilding Chicago: Going by pure fan, I’m having a great time with Rebuilding Chicago lately. This is a highly-interactive city-builder/tile-layer which seems to turn the all too familiar formula on its head. There…