IAAPA Expo Europe 2026: The Arcade Round-Up

Welcome to the Arcade Heroes round-up of IAAPA Expo Europe 2026, where we will be taking a look at all the arcade video games that were shown off at the biggest European amusement trade show this year, between September 22nd and 24th at the Excel Center in London, England.

This show marks the first time IAAPA Expo Europe has been held in the UK since the 2022 edition, and for a positive development it was significantly bigger than that one. So much so that at 22,800sq.m, it was in fact the largest in the European show’s history, with many exhibitors focused on arcades as a result.

Thanks to Ted Haydon and Kevin Williams for many of the photos and information you will see below; if you’re interested in seeing the show through video form, Pinball News have a full tour of the show floor in three parts, and we also have a streamed run-through of the photos from Ted and Kevin.

TouchMagix

We start off as always with our loyal advertisers, meaning TouchMagix come first. In the time since they started sponsoring us, they have been starting to focus more on traditional redemption games, meaning that the only two titles they had here on their booth were Pickleball Toss and the brand new Knock ‘A’ Duck, though their augmented reality pool system was also being promoted.

Wahlap

Wahlap recently wowed the crowds at September’s other amusement trade show, GTI Asia China Expo 2026, but as expected, their presence here was significantly smaller. That didn’t mean they had nothing on offer, however, as they packed in the new Miraculous video redemption game, Phantom Vanguard, and the two Plus updates to the Asphalt games. Out of shot here was also Nerves of Ale (which had a video on YouTube about, then when the show ended, they deleted it) and, oddly enough, two Pop-A-Shot cabinets. There had been no indication of Wahlap having anything to do with them (especially with Wahlap already having their own video basketball games), but PAP did reach out to say they have some big upcoming plans, so watch this space.

Ace Amusement

Ace Amusement also had a much more self-contained booth than that of the one they had at GTI. Of the games they showed off (Crossbow Fishing, Hover Rush, and Dragon Kingdom), these were all in their smaller standard cabinets; only Crossbow Fishing could be found in its deluxe iteration elsewhere at the show on ELMAC II’s booth. This won’t be the last we see of Ace’s releases though, as UDC did also have a couple other newer titles from them on show.

Bandai Namco Amusement Europe

Onto the other exhibitors, and it’s convenient that the first of them had many games from one of our other advertisers, Raw Thrills, who did not have their own booth. With BNAE being a major distributor in Europe, that as always means that their booths over there end up featuring games from the likes of Raw and others; as can be seen below, Stranger Things Arcade in particular took center stage, with it being shown at the front. This was also right by one of the main show entrances, which meant that it grabbed a lot of attention.

Other releases from Raw Thrills on hand included Top Gun: Maverick, Jackpot Racer, and Godzilla Kaiju Wars Deluxe seen next to it here. Top Gun was in the deluxe cabinet and not the standard one recently revealed, though it seems like that one is oddly only available in North America at this moment in time.

Elsewhere on their booth, two new kart racers from two of the other companies that BNAE represent in Europe could be found: Adrenaline’s Disney Speedstorm Arcade, and Andamiro’s Nickelodeon Kart Racers Arcade. These were seemingly not sporting too many differences from the versions seen back at Amusement Expo in March.

JET Games and Flamestone’s GIGA SHOT was also on hand, as well as GoldStorm Pirates just out of shot here. Unsurprisingly, Resident Evil 2: Arcade wasn’t around, but hold a little tighter on that one and look forward to IAAPA 2026… as Bandai Namco will have a presence to remember there, with several new games of their own.

ELAUT

ELAUT were not mentioned in our preview, as they and their group of companies do focus much more on redemption, but video redemption does occasionally intersect with their offerings and that did happen here. Coast To Coast are now releasing the Crabzilla Strikes video redemption pusher by Baohui and IGS through them, and this debuted here, appearing alongside their other pieces like The Smurfs and E-Claw 2.0.

As for Crabzilla, this combines a typical coin pusher with a underwater fish shooter. It is a little interesting to see more video-based examples of these come to the fore; IGS mainly work with either Baohui (as seen here) or Playmore on them.

Electrocoin

It would not be a European amusement trade show without Electrocoin, one of the longest standing distributors on the scene, and they appeared here with a similar booth to the one they had in January at EAG. Their selection of pinball from Stern was updated to feature Pokemon and Fallout, and the DDR Universal model was running newer software, but other than that their lineup only had one or two new redemption pieces.

They did tease a new racing game in previews, but that has only appeared at their own Funland arcade in London so far, and was not on hand at their booth for some reason. This is called Circuit Sprint, and interestingly uses a similar cabinet design to Yuto Games’ “shareware” version of Crazy Drift; who knows whether they got it right from the source or grabbed it from another Chinese company with a close lookalike:

ELMAC II

ELMAC had one of the smaller booths of the European companies, meaning that several of the titles they previewed in a recent advert did not make the cut, but they still crammed a few games into it. These included the aforementioned deluxe version of Ace’s Crossbow Fishing, and a four way setup of Chasing Speed from Yuto Games.

This unfortunately went down in the afternoon on the first day of the show, so Ted never got the chance to play it, but that was not the only racer from Yuto on the expo floor, as we will get onto later.

Sega Amusements

Sega Amusements had one of the two biggest arcade booths (the other being Bandai Namco’s), with a decent chunk of it being focused on their prize games and merchandisers like the new Match It and Prize Mart. Their main two debuts in video games meanwhile were Blue Motion Games’ John Wick: Continental Pursuit, and Storm Racer 2 from 3MindWave and Wahlap, which they are now selling into Europe. As such, these were taking pride of place out front:

As well as that, Daytona Championship USA Motion Edition and Speed Rider 4DX by IGS and Baohui put in return appearances after previously coming to EAG in January; note that the latter is available through Bandai Namco in North America rather than SAI. Both seemed to be getting plenty of play here: 

Among the redemption offerings, they had their own recent Putt It! Par-Tee and Simon Arcade again, as well as Go Go Ducky next to them. That one comes from Free Luck, who also make their Mini Cube Prize World machines which had a big display (not pictured here).

Out at the front of the other end of the booth was additionally Flamestone’s Shooting Carnival, which continues the trend of JET Games taking that company’s video gallery shooters, whilst SAI have the electromechanical ones like On Target and this. Who knows if anyone will grab the giant screen edition that was recently showcased in China…

UDC

UDC were rather hush-hush about what they would be bringing to the show in advance, so their lineup happened to be a surprise in both what it showcased and what was not, as we will get onto in a moment. A lot of their booth was focused on redemption, including the new Puck Off and Naughty Bombs seen out front here (Amusement Source International have the latter in North America).

In video games, they did have a couple of new titles from Ace Amusement: Thunder Jets, their vertical screen stab at Top Gun, and Cold Trigger, a Phantom Vanguard competitor using mini LCD screens in its gun mounts. Between them was also Racing Xtreme‘s single screen version in a new twin cabinet design, and to the far right, StepManiaX (being played by a familiar face from Step Revolution). We’re unsure if any of these particular games will be carried by ASI, Coastal, or some other North American importer, or if they’re just available through Ace.

One game that they did not have though was Dance Show (the Chinese Maimai-like game by Arccer) which they only began promoting a year ago and has missed a UDC trade show booth for the first time with this. Allegedly it has not being doing as well as expected… although there were positive noises about it in the last issue of InterGame, so who knows what’s going on there.

UNIS

For a little while now, UNIS and their UK-based distributor Instance Automatics have focused more on their redemption produce at trade shows in Europe, meaning that only one or two video games from them like Monster Kart and Spin City have appeared on their booths over there in the past few years. On this occasion however, they did have a more varied selection, including the recently-released Pickleball Rivals and Ski Hero, as well as a slightly larger booth to boot.

Chief among these was of course Cyberpunk 2077: Chrome Rush, which recently began shipping. The first appearance it made back at Amusement Expo in March was in a prototype capacity, and as such, the release version seen here featured a new Campaign Mode, which was nowhere to be found on the cabinet at AEI. This offers players objectives to advance through numerous stages (e.g. finishing in 1st place, taking down X number of racers), with cutscenes featuring the Cyberpunk characters interspersed in.

WIK

Poland’s WIK had one of the bigger arcade booths on the show floor not held by Bandai Namco or Sega Amusements, with it generally filled out by their brand of alley rollers, air hockeys, and other redemption machines, with some videmption mixed in there too.

The videmption included Night Zombie, which is their at a water gun shooter. Not sure what the big truck exhaust pipes are doing on it; they aren’t there on the official render, and look oddly reminiscent of the ones seen on Sega’s Transformers: Shadows Rising. They also had the latest rendition of their “Matrix” air hockey tables, which use LED panels around the edges to a nice effect, and can have a giant center marquee/scorebar linking them together as a showcase.

Others

Onto some odds and ends now, including the smaller companies that appeared at the show now, with lots of them being less prominent Chinese companies who had tiny booths. With it being an IAAPA show though, these were higher in number than the likes of EAG and Amusement Expo, although they were also easily outnumbed by the many attraction and simulator makers, which we will additionally take a brief look at.

Cheer Amusement aren’t hugely known, but have made one or two games that have been picked up for distribution in recent times, most notably Chick A Boom, which Amusement Source International have as Rooster N Bro. Here they had Mech Hero, a four player shooter, and a Hanging Challenge bar game:

Epark had something slightly impressive on their booth at GTI Asia China Expo recently in the form of a model car and train racer. This unsurprisingly didn’t make it over, with their small space housing a few more derivative-looking racing, shooting and fishing titles, as well as a video redemption ball thrower.

Flamestone‘s gallery shooters were represented and mentioned elsewhere, but they also had their own booth with two of their bigger new games, Flamestone Jet and Robo Shot (originally known as Flamestone Armor). Unfortunately these were off throughout much of the first day for some reason, and an amusing photo of the former was posted on Facebook with a bored player in the cockpit watching something on their phone…

Joint Fun are a company that we haven’t seen venture outside of China much thus far, but perhaps this appearance heralds a greater international push for them. They had three games previously seen before on hand, most notably Running Ostrich DX and their Drum Pop rhythm game, which takes more than a few cues from IGS’ old Percussion Master.

Oculeap have focused on VR a lot in the recent past, however one non-VR oddity they are now making is their Ion Strike human pinball game visible below, which was a novel standout from the past couple Chinese trade shows. This has had some design tweaks since then, including redesigned pads and a support bar (though their official website does not show this yet; rather, just some poor looking AI generated renders…).

Superwin had their own booth here in addition to a few games found on others’ booths (e.g. Mini World at Bandai Namco), giving them the chance to show off some titles that haven’t been picked up as yet. These were Coin Topia (a new coin shooter based on the Mini World property), Crazy Football (a soccer redemption piece), and Mission X, which is another grab at Phantom Vanguard. Time will tell if these are distributed too:

Yuto Games have been mentioned a couple times already for their racers, and they appeared here in their own right with Crazy Drift and one or two other titles. On the driver they had here, the cabinet looks satisfactory, but the software seemingly isn’t the greatest. It would not be surprising if it’s based on part on a title InJoy Motion once made (as Yuto picked up lots of what they did).

Onto a few more attraction-focused happenings (whilst still staying arcade-adjacent), and one of the standouts in this space was the return of Robobike, who had a much bigger booth than the one they debuted with at EAG 2026. Big things have been said about this simcade concept, and it’s easy to see why:

Epark may have not brought the model vehicle racer they had at GTI, but one company did bring their own Sega Super Circuit-like piece, namely MiXR. This seemed to be grabbing more attention than their VR arena directly behind it, though the likes of Hero Zone VR and others still had these on hand too.

Valo Motion were previously mentioned in our preview for their new Valo Board, which is possibly one of the biggest boarding simulators this business has seen. Thanks to it being a multigame piece, it simulates both skate and snowboarding, something that Top Skater and Alpine Surfer could’ve never been capable of back in the day:

VEX Solutions brought along what is now their Party Dash range, including the original four player version, the new floor-only Smash Dash, and the compact single player variant (a two player one is available too). Some have said Smash Dash dilutes the concept’s uniqueness, with it being much more like any other illuminated floor, but it still looks good:

Finally, one of the biggest beneficiaries and friends of IAAPA has to be DOF Robotics, who routinely stay a “Platinum Sponsor” of them, and get the perks of appearing on everyone’s lanyards plus being put in a prime position near the show entrance as a result. Hard to deny their SphereFly (formerly Compact Flying Theater) is a big draw either way:

Overall

All in all, IAAPA Expo Europe 2026 looks like it was broadly a success, bringing the biggest ever piece to date of amusement industry action in trade show form to Europe. Few companies on the arcade video games side of things had new-new titles that we’d never seen before at all, but this was not unexpected, as previous years have only seen the occasional world debut in this space (e.g. 2024’s Angry Birds Boom, and 2025’s Ubisoft All-Star VR). Plus, Stranger Things Arcade, Cyberpunk 2077: Chrome Rush, John Wick: Continental Pursuit, and Storm Racer 2 all made their first European or UK appearances here, so the show was good for that at the very least.

However, that large size of the IAAPA expos can sometimes be a wrong rather than a right, and it does look like that may be partly the case with the upcoming main November show in Orlando. For some months, there have been various rumblings from industry figures that, with how the event is organized this year across multiple halls with a relatively haphazard floor plan, it will be even more difficult to traverse than usual. How this will play out remains to be seen, but with the promise of new titles from several names mentioned above, hopefully it won’t put too much of a dampener on things…

Either way, we still look forward to what November will bring, now that the opening tranche of 2026’s trade show season is done. Thanks once again to Ted and Kevin for their insights and photos straight from the show floor 🙂 Which of the new arcade games seen at IAAPA Expo Europe 2026 interest you the most?

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