Dragonmeet 2025: Show Preview

Have you seen the new logo?” Dragonmeet’s John Dodd asks and we’re excited to see what mythological artist Art of Arklin has come up with. “In the previous logo the dragons were facing away from each other, but we are Dragonmeet so this time they actually look like they’re meeting each other. It’s the same convention it’s always been, just… XL sized.”
That logo isn’t the only change the popular London gaming event will see this year. Having outgrown the Novotel London West hotel in Hammersmith, the show has upped sticks and moved to Excel. John has also taken the reins as co-owner Chris Birch, Chief Creative Officer at Modiphius, bows out.
“Chris took over running Dragonmeet from Dom at Cubicle 7 and moved it to the bigger Ibis in Earls Court, then Novotel Hammersmith where I joined in 2018 to take it to where it is today with our fantastic team. Chris has been increasingly busy with his publishing company compared to when he started, so a couple of years ago I said, ‘Should I buy you out?’ and he was happy to officially pass the torch,” John reveals.
“And now, the story continues! Chris will still be at the event with Modiphius. By the time you read this, that paperwork will be done. Then it’s just me and the choir – the ‘choir’ being my able crew. The show has passed through several different hands to get to where it is, and as of this year, effectively passes into a new set of old hands. Time will tell if that’s a good thing, but we’ve got it this far and we’ve not had any problems yet.”

Where was your first Dragonmeet and what space did you have?
Dragonmeet had been at Kensington Town Hall prior to us running it, and when we took it over, we moved it to the Ibis Earls Court, larger than Kensington Town Hall, but it had it’s own problems. The seminars were crammed into one room, you had a bunch of demo space, with traders around the outside. The whole thing was maybe 1,100 square metres. We had some games upstairs, 15 to 20 tops. Then we moved it to Novotel London West.
We had the first floor of the Novotel, and we sectioned it so that the trade was in the Champagne Hall, and the seminars and games were on the bottom level, but everything else fitted into that one hall. But a lot of people saw the new venue and thought, that’s really nice, it’s comfortable, the space is good. As time went on, it grew organically. The following year, a lot more people came, and in 2019 we had nearly 3,000 people.
And then Covid hit. We had 513 people in December 2020, online. In 2021, the week before we opened, they announced the Omicron variant. Anybody who had a ticket and wanted a refund, we gave it to them, no question. But people desperately wanted events and 1,100 people still turned up, fully masked.
In 2022 the show doubled, in 2023 it near doubled again. In 2024 we knew we’d have to move out of the Novotel, because we’d reached the final limit – we had to stop selling tickets at the door. People said, ‘I always just walk up and buy a ticket.’ Not this year. We dealt with that by recycling tickets for free when people came out. People without one had to wait, but the response was astounding – ‘Sure, no problem, I’ll wait in the bar’ – and we got another 350 people in as a result.

Was Excel the only venue you looked at?
Because it’s London’s gaming con, you can’t move it outside of central London. It’s got to be within the A406. We looked at Wembley Arena, but there’s no disabled access, so we looked at three other places in the same vicinity. Box Park wasn’t suitable in any way. Olympia was great for the trade, but had no side rooms. There was no space for open gaming, no space to run the RPGs. We’d be reducing the capacity in order to increase the selling space, which is not a good trade off.
We looked at Tobacco Docks, but the space wasn’t actually much bigger than the Novotel and the cost was 11 times higher. We looked at the Truman brewery, which didn’t have enough space and some of what was available is called ‘industrial chic’ – so you’d be sharing it with the pigeons.
And then the pièce de résistance, we went to the O2. That was well beyond what we could afford. So we looked at a major hotel next door to it, which has a gigantic space for events. We went there and it suited most of our purposes, so we asked them to quote us for the main space, the side rooms, the ante rooms, some other bits – similar to the space we’ll have at Excel. Take a guess at the price? [What follows is over a minute of me trying to guess how much the space would cost, with John raising his finger to let me know the quote was more than that. When we arrive at a figure north of half a million pounds, it’s easy to see why we won’t all be heading there in November!].
Then we went to Excel – and don’t get me wrong it took us over a year to get Excel to talk to us, and as with any new venue, it’s had its challenges. But hell, they filmed Batman in Excel, the bit with the tumbler in Batman Begins. We’ve got the halls the Batmobile was running around!”

What does Excel offer that those other places didn’t?
We went to Salute at Excel in April, because we’re good friends with them anyway. We went just to say hello but while we there we also asked, ‘How easy is this? How many problems do you have?’ We looked at the way they did it, and it’s like poetry. The people who set up the tables and chairs just roll them in and set them all up for you, and then at the end of the day, roll them back out. That usually exhausts your volunteers, who’ll always do it, but then there’s the sure dread that they know they’ll get to the end of that day and have to do it again. Since we’ve done that with a number of conventions over the years, we want to start as we mean to go on.
Also, for once, we won’t have the betting pool that the choir has every year, which is when the Novotel will run out of food and drink. When we went to Salute, we ordered noodles, and bang, there’s noodles. You want chicken? Bang, there’s chicken. A minute and a half from start to paying. I ordered meals for three people, with drinks, and was back at the table within six minutes.

Have you managed to keep prices down, despite the larger venue?
The ticket entry price is £16 but because the government wants its VAT, there’s a £3.20 charge on top of that. We’ve listed those separately, so people understand it’s not us putting the price up.
We’re also very aware that it’s the independent traders who got us here. We’ve deliberately kept the prices of the stalls low so they could keep coming. In the future, if Excel budges the prices up, then we may have to do something. But it’ll only be enough so we cover basic hall costs, and that’s it.

What can people expect at this year’s show?
This year we’re doing all the stuff that we’ve wanted to do, but didn’t have space for. Where we previously had around 3,000 square metres of trade space, this year we’ve got 200-ish traders with 6,000 square metres of trade space fully booked. That’s not going to be a five-minute walk!
The lack of open gaming is something that’s always been lamented. It’s maybe been 10-15 tables, tops. Because we are the only show in town that weekend, Excel has given us permission to use the main boulevard for open gaming. That in itself is 700 metres, which is more than most shows have. Now there’s going to be the best part of 800 tables, going on until 6pm. So all those who’ve been saying that we need more open gaming space, we’ve got it this year, come and see. We’ve also got open space in the halls, so when we get tournaments, we’ll run those inside the hall itself.
We’ve got Bridge Command coming in, which a superb starship simulator, running shows throughout the day. We’ve got the seminar schedule, which is now three tracks so there’s a huge number of different seminars throughout the day. Our podcasters are all going to be back doing a bunch of stuff and there’s the charity auction in the evening.
You can sign up to play RPGs – we’ve got a schedule of 60 games, morning and evening, as well as the on-demand games for those with limited time. We’re not taking on any more games, because we’ve already run out of space. Although by the time you read this, we may well have bought additional space for the games being offered. The system to book to play a game goes live at the end of October. Be ready to pounce, because if you’re not, they will go!
And we’re doing the awards again this year, the presentation will be in the morning just before the show starts. We can then announce the winners on all our channels and give out certificates they can show off on their stalls.

You worked with Westminster Council on the Dragonmeet: Call to Adventure event in April. Are they involved?
As part of our work with Westminster Council, we have a Literary and Literacy Zone – which is something you wouldn’t expect to find at a game convention, but it highlights the link between literacy, numeracy and gaming. We’ve got the British Fantasy Society, the British Science Fiction Association, the Society of Authors and a bunch of other people working to get kids into reading and writing.
Westminster Council currently has an initiative to try and get gaming into every school, not just in central London, so they’ll be there themselves with a variety of things. We’ll also have areas with Hachette and Imagination Gaming, including interactive zones where kids can paint figures and then immediately play – rather than just paint and take away.

How will you decide if the Excel show is a success?
It scares me to think that we might lose the feel of the small convention, so that will be telling. But I think Dragonmeet has become a break in London for a lot of people. You come down Friday, maybe catch a show – Modiphius has it’s Discworld show going at the O2 on the Friday this year – come to the event on Saturday, have a day in London on Sunday. We’ve got people coming from Canada, France, Germany. A lot of the people who have been running it through the years keep coming back as well. And Ian Livingstone comes every year – having the founder of the convention there has always been a great honour. If we can keep entertaining our audience, it’s a win.

Dragonmeet takes place at London Excel on Saturday 29th November 2025, see Dragonmeet.co.uk for tickets and further details.