Is International Tabletop Day in April or June?

Shops and calendars now put it on the first Saturday in June, which is where you should look for events. Its organisers actually ran it in March and April for its first six editions and used a June date only once, in 2019.

Who runs International Tabletop Day now?

No one runs it centrally. Geek & Sundry stopped after the 2019 edition and its site now redirects elsewhere, so individual shops and clubs schedule the day themselves, and the publisher Asmodee has marked it since 2025.

Is International Tabletop Day the same as International Games Month?

No, they are separate observances. International Games Month runs through the whole of November and is coordinated by the American Library Association's Games and Gaming Round Table with library associations in other countries.

International Tabletop Day

Next celebratedSaturday, June 5, 2027

Board, card and role-playing games get played everywhere from shops to kitchen tables on the first Saturday in June, a date the day's own organisers used exactly once before the shops carried on without them.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 3, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEFirst Saturday in June

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYPop Culture

SUBCATEGORYGaming

ORIGIN

Media Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Geek & Sundry

FIRST OBSERVED

2013

“Wil Wheaton announced the day on 27 February 2013, a month before the first one, as a spinoff of Geek & Sundry's series TableTop.

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

Web series first, worldwide game day second.

Geek & Sundry, the YouTube channel Felicia Day launched in 2012, created International TableTop Day as an offshoot of its board game series TableTop, which Day and Wil Wheaton created and Wheaton hosted. Wheaton announced it on 27 February 2013 for a first observance on Saturday 30 March 2013, with the channel running tabletopday.com as the event registry.

Read the 2013 launch announcementvia WIL WHEATON dot NET

INTRO

One June Saturday that outlived its organiser

Look up International Tabletop Day and every calendar files it under the first Saturday in June. The people who invented it used that date exactly once. It was 2019, and it was the last edition they ever announced.

Before that, the day wandered. Geek & Sundry ran it on a Saturday in March, then on Saturdays in April for five years running, then moved it to June.

The last one came with a giveaway. The channel's own sweepstakes rules ran it from midday to 6pm Pacific, entered by retweeting the announcement and watching on Twitch. The day carried on anyway, in shops that never asked anyone's permission.

ORIGINS

International Tabletop Day history

INTRODUCTION

Geek & Sundry was Felicia Day's YouTube channel, and in 2012 it sat Wil Wheaton down at a table with a stack of board games. The series was called TableTop. Wheaton explained the rules, then played the game on camera with friends.

It was fussy about what it played. Each season the team cut roughly 200 suggested games down to twenty. The audience it built is the reason a worldwide game day was thinkable at all.

CHAPTER 01

Announcement day, February 2013

The idea was not new. Wheaton wrote that they had wanted a day for the show since it premiered, and had been working on it for almost as long. On 27 February 2013 he posted the news on his own site and called it the Very Big Tabletop Announcement.

Everything pointed at one address: tabletopday.com, where anyone could find an event nearby or register their own. The operation behind it was smaller than that map suggested. Its help page offered a phone number you could ring and an email address, boyan@geekandsundry.com.

CHAPTER 02

Antarctica counted

When the day came, the map filled up. Shops, libraries and living rooms put themselves on it, and the organisers' own tally afterwards covered every continent on the planet. Researchers in Antarctica played.

CHAPTER 03

Studio years

In August 2014, Legendary Entertainment bought Geek & Sundry. Terms were not disclosed. The day came with it.

Under a studio it became a retail operation, run on kits and preorder deadlines. For its 2016 edition the team cut supply hard. Only 300 kits were made for shops, and requests passed that number inside three weeks.

The series itself stopped first. TableTop ran its last episode on 7 June 2017, and the day carried on for two more editions without it. The domain that once carried the world's event map now redirects to Nerdist, and the last page it ever served was still advertising a Saturday that had already gone.

TIMELINE

Timeline

TableTop premieres

Geek & Sundry launched the board game series that Wil Wheaton hosted and made with Felicia Day.

First International TableTop Day

The debut edition ran on Saturday 30 March, with events registered worldwide on the day's own map.

Legendary buys Geek & Sundry

The studio acquired Felicia Day's channel in August, and the day passed to a corporate owner.

TableTop ends

The series that produced the day finished on 7 June after four seasons.

Date moves to June

The seventh edition ran on 1 June, after six earlier ones held in March and April.

Asmodee marks the day

The publisher and distributor tied International Tabletop Day to its own thirtieth anniversary.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love International Tabletop Day

OWNERSHIP

Shops kept their April date and ran the day anyway.

Hosts who had settled into late April did not follow the 2019 move to June. PuzzCulture reported that people could not confirm whether the day was April 6, April 27 or June 1, and many simply kept their own.

TRADE

Publishers built products that existed only for it

For the 2018 edition, publishers made items sold only at game shops during the event, including a Sparkle*Kitty with variant box art from Breaking Games and an Action Cats expansion from Twogether Studios. ICv2 listed five such products in the run-up, ordered through distributors on a fixed retailer deadline.

AFTERLIFE

Shops still schedule it without a central organiser

Geek City Games posted a full timetable for 6 June 2026, running tournaments through the afternoon with free entry. Asmodee, which had no hand in the day's creation, marked it in 2025 alongside its own thirtieth anniversary.

BY THE NUMBERS

International Tabletop Day by the Numbers

3,123: Events registered, first edition 2013
64: Countries taking part, 2013
200+: Barnes & Noble stores hosting, 2017
1,500: Free retailer marketing boxes, 2018

The most awesome thing about Tabletop is the community of people who have rediscovered their love of gaming, or started a game night, or have somehow been inspired by our show to play more games.

Wil WheatonHost and co-creator, TableTop

We had close to five times the sales that month that we would have had normally and the next month it continued to be extremely high as well.

Mark KaufmanVice-President, Days of Wonder

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate International Tabletop Day

Find a shop already running it

Independent game stores still put the day on their calendars and publish full schedules for it. Check the events page of your nearest shop rather than hunting for a central listing, because there has not been one since 2019.

HOST

Host it at home instead

The original instruction was to head for a game store, a coffee shop, a community centre, or simply your own living room. Pick one game and invite the people who never quite get round to playing.

PLAY

Play something from the show

Small World was the game TableTop opened with in 2012. Playing the series' picks is the most direct way to see what the day was built to celebrate.

ASK

Ask the question the day once asked

In 2017 the organisers asked shops to put one question to their customers: how did board games change your life? It still works as a way to get a table of strangers talking.

GIVE

Give a game away, as it once did

In 2015 the organisers teamed up with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles and promised the charity thousands of board games. A game passed to a school, library or youth group keeps that part of it alive.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know International Tabletop Day?

1 / 7

Wil Wheaton announced the first International TableTop Day on his own site. Who delivered the announcement video?

Answer

No. It has never been an official or public holiday, and no legal recognition of it has been located, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

16sources

8primary records

14independently dated

Primary records

WIL WHEATON dot NET2013-02-27

March 30 is International Tabletop Day

Wil Wheaton's own post announcing the day, a month before the first one.