Europe's Games Market: €29.7 Billion, 199 Million Players and 91% Digital
The industry's annual Key Facts report now covers 16 countries. Half of Europeans aged 6 to 75 play, the average player is 34, and nine in ten euros are spent digitally. Here is Europe's games market in numbers.
The average European video game player is 34 years old, plays for about nine hours a week, and buys almost everything digitally. That is the picture from the industry's annual Key Facts report, published in Brussels on August 26, 2026, by Video Games Europe and the European Games Developer Federation (EGDF).
The headline: Europe's players spent €29.7 billion on games in 2025, and 91% of it was digital. Physical boxes made up just 9%. The report counts 199 million players, 51% of Europe's population aged 6 to 75.
For the first time, the survey covers 16 countries instead of the five biggest markets, which makes it the most detailed picture yet of how Europe plays.
Who plays
The report, based on an Ipsos survey of 39,371 people, describes a player base that looks a lot like the general population:
- 46% of players are women.
- 77% are adults.
- The average age is 34.
- Average playtime is 8 hours 59 minutes a week.
- Most of the games people play are single-player.
The new markets added this year are Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Switzerland, alongside the original five: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.
Where the money goes
By revenue, mobile and tablets took 49% of spending, consoles 30% and PC 12%. By usage, the gap is bigger: 82% of players have played on mobile, 47% on console and 34% on PC.
That makes Europe more console-heavy than the global average. In Newzoo's figures, mobile is more than half of the world market. In Europe, almost a third of the money still goes to consoles, which helps explain why European publishers and studios remain so focused on PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo.
The report also measures the industry's own income: developers and publishers in the EU earned about €24 billion in net revenue, a figure calculated differently from consumer spending.
Who makes the games
Europe has about 8,700 game studios, according to the report, and the EU and UK together employ about 123,000 people in games, 24% of them women. Figures for the EU alone count about 6,600 studios and 95,000 workers in 2024, with employment flat or down slightly, a sign of the layoffs that hit the industry worldwide.
Yet European studios have rarely been more successful. The last few years brought Baldur's Gate 3 from Belgium's Larian, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from France's Sandfall Interactive, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II from the Czech Republic's Warhorse Studios and Split Fiction from Sweden's Hazelight, all among the most acclaimed games of their years.
Why it matters
Europe is the world's third-biggest games region, after Asia-Pacific and North America, and its industry leaders are pushing Brussels to treat games as a strategic sector. The EGDF's stated priorities include attracting investment, developing skills and talent, driving technology innovation and strengthening Europe's "cultural and technological sovereignty".
WGC's take: the most striking number in the report is not the €29.7 billion but the 46% share of women and the average age of 34. European gaming is mainstream adult entertainment, and the policies being written in Brussels, from consumer protection to the Stop Killing Games debate, will shape the industry far beyond Europe. Read more in our profiles of Larian and Sandfall.
What to watch
- PEGI's new purchase and interaction criteria as they roll out.
- EU debates on consumer rules for in-game currencies and game shutdowns, covered in our Stop Killing Games story.
- Next year's Key Facts and whether employment recovers.