Poster for the Viana do Castelo Board game convention VianaCon for 2022

The 5th edition of VianaCon is approaching, the third at the Cultural Center of Viana do Castelo, the place with the best conditions for a convention. It is an organization of ArtMatriz – Cultural and Artistic Association, with the support of Viana do Castelo City Council, with whom we also count on promoting the event.

Over the past two years the number of participants has been increasing a lot, an evidence that there is growing interest in modern board games.

Our VianaCon has two aspects that are the same as in our association: art and board games. That's why we offer wokshops, lectures and contests with these themes: game creation workshops, use of games in classrooms, team building through board games, board game creation contest and prototype presentation - in partnership with IPVC and the Product Design degree.

We also offer new game presentations - with volunteers explaining the games - as well as several iconic game tournaments.

VianaCon is in February - the first convention in the calendar of board game meetings in Portugal - and we are working to make it a reference convention, in a prime venue and with Viana do Castelo in a privileged location, close to Spain and Porto.

We have had good media coverage and are increasingly promoting the event both in the media as on social media. The partner companies have benefited from the increase in media coverage of the event and the resulting increase in the number of visitors.

We were the last convention to take place before the pandemic and one of the first to return, with a huge increase in demand for our event (having sold out a lot of local accommodation on the event weekend as well as the area's catering offerings).

Visitors of VianaCon come from all over the country, from Spain, with various groups organizing trips by bus and train from Lisbon.

Our games collection, available to all our visitors, has increased both with the investment of ArtMatriz and with the participation of publishers and partners.

In these last editions, partner stores and publishers have been registering an increase in demand and sale of their games. This is largely due to the presence of volunteers explaining the games’ rules - after learning how to play at our convention, buyers look for games either from representatives present at VianaCon or from the publishers themselves.

For all these reasons, we are sure that VianaCon has everything to grow and gain in importance and prominence. We are certain that supporting and helping this initiative will continue to bring even more benefits to our partners and greater visibility to their businesses.