List of Game of the Year awards (board games)

Game of the Year (abbreviated GotY) is a title awarded annually by various magazines, websites, and game critics to deserving tabletop games, including board games and card games. Many publications award a single "Game of the Year" award to a single title published in the previous year that they feel represents the pinnacle of gaming achievement that year.
Organizations and publications that award Game of the Year awards for board games include:
These are winners of the American Tabletop Awards, a US-based board game award selected by a committee of board game media creators for games released in the previous calendar year.
Early Gamers These are winners in the Early Gamers category, a category for games targeted at people new to board games.
Casual Games These are winners in the Casual Games category, a category intended for gamers of all experience levels.
Strategy Games These are winners in the Strategy Games category, a category for games that have additional "complexity, planning requirements, and duration" compared to Casual Games.
Complex Games These are winners in the Complex Games category, a category intended for "longer-form games that typically appeal to more experienced players".
These are winners of the As d'Or Award, which is awarded to the best board game of the year submitted at the Cannes International Game Festival.
These are winners of the Board Game Quest Game of the Year Award. This award is presented by the Board Game Quest editorial team, a United States-based board game media outlet, to the best board game of the year.
Source:
The Deutscher Spiele Preis (German for "German Game Prize") is a prestigious award for board games started in 1990 by the German magazine Die Pöppel-Revue, which collects votes from the industry's stores, magazines, professionals and game clubs. The results are announced every October at the Spiel game fair in Essen, Germany. The Essen Feather is awarded at the same ceremony.
These are winners of the Diamond Climber Awards, awarded to the best board games of the year by Meeple Mountain, a United States-based board game media outlet. Even though the nominees of 2021 were revealed they haven't announced the winner. No 2022 nominees were given
The Dice Tower (a website, podcast and video network founded by Tom Vasel) has been announcing awards since 2007.
The annual ENnie Awards (previously known as the Gen Con EN World RPG Awards) are annual, fan-based awards for role-playing game products and publishers hosted at Gen Con in Indianapolis, Indiana. The name of the award is derived from the EN World website that hosted the awards from their inception in 2001 until 2018, and retains the name, although is no longer part of EN World. The ENnies were created by Russ Morrissey and Eric Noah and were run and owned by Morrissey until 2018.
These are winners of the Jogo do Ano, awarded to the best board games of the year submitted to Spiel Portugal.
The winners of Games magazine's Game of the Year award are chosen by Games editors.
After the 2019 Golden Geek Awards, it was decided to replace "Board Game of the Year", "Best Strategy Board Game" and "Best Family Board Game" with "Light Game of the Year", "Medium Game of the Year" and "Heavy Game of the Year". Splitting it into 3 different categories.
The BoardGameGeek Golden Geek Award was originally presented at the BGG.CON event in November, but is currently announced annually in March. The winners of the Golden Geek are selected by the nomination and voting of the user community of BoardGameGeek.com website.
Gra Roku [pl] is a Polish award (the name of the award literary means "Game of the Year" in Polish) awarded since 2004 by the Gry-Planszowe.pl portal.
Each year a list of around fifty “expert” management games known as eurogames, chosen and tested by a large number of pre-selectors, brings out eight games among which the Golden Diamond jury establishes a ranking and devotes the prize to the best game of the year category expert to their favorite.
These are the winners of Mensa Select Award, for the five best board games of the year submitted to Mensa Mind Games.
The Origins Awards are American awards for outstanding work in the game industry. They are presented by the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design at the Origins Game Fair on an annual basis for the previous year; for example, the 1979 awards were given at the 1980 Origins. Categories for the Origins award can vary from year to year, and there is not a "Game of the Year" per se.
The Origins Award is commonly referred to as a Calliope, as the statuette is in the likeness of the muse of the same name. Academy members frequently shorten this name to "Callie".
This award is for Game of the Year in Spain, "Premio al Juego de mesa del año" (Premio JdA), by an independent jury of game industry representatives.
These games are winners of the Spiel des Jahres, a German board game award widely considered the most prestigious in the industry.
These are winners of Kennerspiel des Jahres, an expansion of the German Spiel des Jahres board game award starting in 2011. It translates to "connoisseur/expert game of the year" and is meant for more experienced gamers.
The Kinderspiel des Jahres is awarded annually to the best children's game by a jury of German game critics. This award is to children's games what the Spiel des Jahres is to family games.
2001 was the first year that the Kinderspiel des Jahres was officially awarded. Prior to that year, it was a subcategory of the Spiel des Jahres awards known as the Sonderpreis "Kinderspiel" ("Special Prize for Best Children's Game"). Since the intent behind both awards is the same, it is customary to refer to the 1989–2000 Sonderpreis winners as having won the Kinderspiel des Jahres.