Board games are now officially Intangible Cultural Heritage in Germany

Playing board games has officially been part of Germany’s Intangible Cultural Heritage since March 2025. It doesn’t bring in any money, but it could open new doors.

Nationwide Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage
People dance, celebrate, sing and play. They cultivate traditions, relationships and their environment. In doing so, they preserve and shape their cultural heritage. The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage promotes the visibility and further development of this living heritage, for example through international UNESCO lists or entries in the nationwide Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Germany. The inventory includes other playful entries alongside board game culture: playing Skat was added in 2016. The same applies to the chess tradition in Ströbeck.

What do bell music, the Nikolaus post office and playing board games have in common? They have all officially been part of Germany’s Intangible Cultural Heritage since 26 March 2025. A total of 18 living traditions were newly added to the nationwide inventory on that day. It currently contains 168 entries. The path to inclusion involved a multi-stage process. The federal states, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, and the German Commission for UNESCO were all involved. Thuringia had proposed the inclusion of board game culture.

“Board game culture connects generations”

The Minister of State for Culture, Claudia Roth, welcomed the decision and said: “Board game culture connects generations and promotes social cohesion.” The President of the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs, Barbara Klepsch, added: “Intangible Cultural Heritage is an important part of our cultural identity. The inclusion of new traditions and practices acknowledges the commitment of the communities that preserve and pass on this heritage.” Board game culture in Germany is nurtured in clubs, cafés, youth centres and private homes.

In the justification, it also states:

Playing together creates an integrative and intergenerational practice that connects people, regardless of social or cultural differences!

Board game culture in Germany is widely accessible to the general public and imparts specific knowledge and skills, particularly in applying and explaining game rules as well as in designing games. Playing board games fosters the formation of communities. From its originally more family-oriented use, board gaming has expanded into a social and cultural practice in communal spaces. Since the 1970s, board games have been continuously developed, with new types and formats addressing social issues such as integration and intercultural exchange.

Board game culture: a long road to recognition

The official recognition is the result of years of effort. The idea came from Ferdinand de Cassan of the Austrian Museum of Games, writes Prof. Dr. Jens Junge in a blog post. Shortly before his death, de Cassan reportedly commissioned Tom Werneck of the Bavarian Games Archive to push for recognition.

Werneck and Prof. Dr. Karin Falkenberg, then at the German Games Archive in Nuremberg, made their first attempts in Bavaria in 2017. Two experts supported them: Prof. Dr. Junge from the Institute for Ludology in Berlin and Ernst Kick, then Managing Director of the Nuremberg Toy Fair. The first application was rejected by the responsible commission without explanation. Two years later, in 2019, the group submitted a new application. This was more successful and led to inclusion as a “Good Practice Example” on the Bavarian state list. However, Bavaria did not recommend inclusion in the national inventory.

The breakthrough came in May 2024 with an application in Thuringia. It was driven forward by Werneck, Prof. Dr. Falkenberg and Prof. Dr. Junge. The Altenburger Spieletage, the Ali-Baba Spieleclub in Nuremberg with its eleven regional associations, and the non-profit board game cafés Spielzeitcafé in Flensburg and Spielecafé der Generationen in Pfarrkirchen also got involved. Dagmar de Cassan made her late husband Ferdinand’s significant board game collection available. Together, they succeeded in achieving inclusion in the Thuringian state inventory – and finally, in March 2025, nationwide recognition of board game culture as Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Indirect benefits of inclusion

The Spiele-Autoren-Zunft (SAZ) welcomes the inclusion in the Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage and renews known demands. The recognition underlines the need to collect, preserve and make analogue games accessible for research and the general public in the German National Library or in a games archive funded by federal funds. The archive’s database could serve as the basis for the distribution of the library royalty for analogue games. The SAZ hopes that the 21st German Bundestag will lay the groundwork for this.

Otherwise, the inclusion is primarily symbolic. It does not bring in direct money. However, the recognition indirectly facilitates access to funds and other resources and opens up funding opportunities. Harald Schrapers draws a comparison with digital games in his blog games we play.

There [in the budget of the Minister of State for Culture] is also a €6.5 million scholarship programme for digital game development: 132 people are funded with 18 months at €2,750 each. In the analogue sector, there is a scholarship for just one person, who receives a one-off payment of €3,500 financed by Spiel des Jahres e. V.

The disparity is huge. But perhaps the recognition as cultural heritage can help board games gain a little more attention.

Thanks to its inclusion in the nationwide inventory, board game culture could also be proposed for one of the three international UNESCO lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Germany currently has ten entries there.