My friend (in Canada) and I (in South Korea) have conceded that we won’t be attending Gencon this year. We had rooms booked months ago and were looking forward to attending again (this would have been our sixth Gencon), but with the way foreigners are being detained and turned away at the border, it’s not worth risking thousands of dollars for prepaid rooms and flights to take the chance. Additionally, we were discussing how expensive the new games would be this year, given the massive tariff markups that are in place.
Between the two of us, we would have spent close to ten thousand dollars for the trip.  I also wonder if any foreign game companies will be able to afford to attend and bring their product to the con. 
This is not meant to be a political post; I’m just curious how other people feel about how the current situation will affect the con and the games in general. 

I think there is a lot of misinformed hysteria being sensationalized for engagement of online financial opportunity (clicks) and we have all been inundated with its fallout.

More to your actual questions:

Companies have already paid for their spot on the show floor and while they could ask for a refund they will likely be moved to the non-renewing vendor list for next year and have to apply for a new spot allocation. I cannot speak to any companies financials but it is often better to just not show than cancel (and potentially lose out on lower renewals or even a spot next year).

As for actual product; I am 50/50 on what we will see. I expect business as usual with a higher price point for major vendors and a lot of older stock (previously imported) for smaller ones. Overall the price of goods for these vendors is going to be interesting to see as they cannot maintain the previous profit margin so will need to test the customer on how much they are willing to spend for new product and if they will try and apply "tariff pricing" on previously imported product. In short if a game MSRPs for 30$ American the vendor will not try and sell it 67.50$ (125%) because the market just will not accept it.

Looking at the news American imposed tariffs across the board are already being lowered, which is good as I think tariffs should be used like a scalpel instead of a war hammer on countries imposing them on others. Though I am also pretty disgusted with how quickly a lot of gamers got real cool real fast with low wage labor because their click clacks now cost more (at least vocally online).

FFS, you aren’t going to be turned away at the airport if you are coming here legally.

https://apnews.com/article/border-tourists-german-canadian-detention-immigration-408cd27338e8065268fabc835f8b0c34

Tourists detained by ICE treated like 'the worst criminal'

Getting dangerously close to dragging politics in here. Let's steer away from that please.

Mike

John Green has a story about trying to enter Canada back in 1995 with $42 in his pocket (and some food IIRC), being denied, and then having to go through extra security to the point he just doesn't go anymore. It is an interesting juxtaposition to the above linked article.

As for Tariff impacts; we have our first major casualty.

FRG Cancels GenCon Attendance

Update, April 24: Flat River Group had placed all of its productions on hiatus in mid-April 2025, and now it's decided that it will have neither a booth nor meetings at Gen Con 2025 as originally planned. Given that FRG had one of the largest booths in the exhibit hall in 2024, I can understand why the company wouldn't want to staff it with little new merchandise to sell and demo.
 

Cool Mini Or Not (CMON) is openly talking about making some hard decisions. They have NOT (to the best of my knowledge) stated that they won't be attending, and even if that were the case they are under Asmodee's banner, if I'm not mistaken, but it's hard to look at that release and not suspect there might be some reduction in personnel/materials/space coming.

https://www.cmon.com/press/an-update-on-our-internal-teams-and-company-focus/

"Our CMON community means a lot to us, so we felt it was important to share with you some difficult decisions at our company today. Given global conditions, and most notably the situation with tariffs, CMON has decided to focus on our current commitments to our customers and partners, and prioritize the timely delivery of existing projects. So effective immediately, we will be pausing all future game development and new crowdfunding campaigns until trade conditions have stabilized.Unfortunately, this involves extremely difficult staffing decisions, affecting all of our creative teams with reductions. We did not make this choice lightly, and our thoughts are with everyone impacted. We are incredibly grateful for their roles in our success over the years, and these talented people will be missed both professionally and personally.The industry continues to rapidly evolve, and unpredictable situations like the recent tariffs, or COVID just a few years ago, present challenges for everyone in board games. With that said, it is our responsibility to take these difficult measures to ensure that we can keep current projects on track and deliver them in a timely manner. We will of course resume new development as soon as possible.Please rest assured that these decisions will help ensure that we keep our commitments to our backers, partners, and community."

And this is after just a few weeks of tariff shenanigans.

I suspect that we'll see further changes in the next 3 months. Perhaps cooler heads will prevail, but it wouldn't surprise me if further curveballs leads to more exhibitors having to rethink their convention strategy, including GenCon.

Yes, there is a waitlist, but waitlisted potential exhibitors aren't immune to product shortages and delays.

@ opus69:

Frist, I'm sorry to hear that you & your friend won't make it out this year, but I totally understand why. I hope things settle down by Gen Con 2026 and that you two can make it out then.

Using your situation as an example, I also wonder how this will impact attendance...both in vendors and attendees. It's a bummer as I see Gen Con as a great celebration of our mutual hobby - gaming - even if we all participate in different ways.

My group & I will be attending Trade Day as well, and we've talked about how that will be impacted by current events.  We're expecting a smaller turnout, but we're getting our event ready, none-the-less.

Second, MY OPINION is that  prices and product availability WILL be affected by what's going on. I'm going to show up ready to buy, but my "want list" is pretty small, and yes, price will influence my decision to make a purchase. I would not be surprised if foreign attendees will just wait to get home and fulfill their "want lists" once home, if their purchases are such that they can avoid the U.S. tariffs.

Hopefully things will settle down and future Gen Cons will be less impacted by current affairs.  It makes me sad to think that there will be fewer attendees and vendors. Gen Con is such a great place to meet and interact will fellow gamers. It's unfortunate when politics take away from that.

@ mikeboozer: Hopefully I didn't stray into questionable territory.  Feel free to delete if I did. 

What I can say is that things are looking very good this year as far as attendance is concerned. 

Mike