The fairs where the awards are handed out
Almost every award in this trade is handed out at a trade fair, usually on the evening before or after the exhibition, and knowing which goes with which explains a good deal about how they work.
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An exhibition sells floor space, and a ceremony is the cheapest thing to add
A fair exists to sell square metres, and once the hall is booked and the industry has flown in, an awards dinner is the least expensive product that remains to be invented. Three things are sold in the same week to the same companies (the "stand", the sponsorship and the table at dinner), which is an explanation rather than a complaint, and it accounts for most of what the calendar below looks like.
The objection is that this turns every ceremony into the "sideshow" of a sales operation, and in commercial terms that is what it is. The consequence is the practical one: the fair settles when a prize is given, in which city and in front of whom, while the body that gives it is often renting the room from the organiser.
ICE
19 to 21 January 2026
Fira Barcelona Gran Via. Run by Clarion Gaming.
Awards handed out here: ICE Landmark Awards, ECA Slot Floor Excellence Awards, Global Gaming Awards EMEA, International Gaming Awards
SBC Summit
29 September to 1 October 2026
Feira Internacional de Lisboa and the MEO Arena. Run by SBC.
Awards handed out here: SBC Awards
Global Gaming Expo
28 September to 1 October 2026
The Venetian Expo, Las Vegas. Run by RX, for the American Gaming Association.
Awards handed out here: no ceremony of its own
SiGMA World
2 to 5 November 2026
Fiera Roma. Run by SiGMA Group.
Awards handed out here: SiGMA Awards World, SiGMA Italia Awards
iGB L!VE
early July 2026, with the sources not agreeing on the days
London. Run by Clarion Events.
Awards handed out here: iGB Affiliate Awards
The five fairs, and what is handed out at each
ICE is the largest of them, run by Clarion Gaming in the Gran Via halls of the Fira Barcelona (19 to 21 January), and it held 143,000 square metres of "floor" in January 2026 against 120,000 the year before. We count four award names on its own list (three of them ceremonies we were able to place), and the exhibition itself falls inside a wider "World Gaming Week" (18 to 23 January 2026) that the organiser built around it; the 2027 dates are already out, 18 to 20 January.
The SBC Summit held Lisbon for three days in 2026, from the 29th of September to the 1st of October (two venues, one week), with the Feira Internacional de Lisboa for the exhibition and the MEO Arena for the dinner, where the SBC Awards close the "summit" on its final evening. Its 2027 dates move earlier in the month, to 21 to 23 September, which is the sort of change that breaks a badge dated by season rather than by year.
The Global Gaming Expo runs at The Venetian Expo in Las Vegas for four days in late September (28 September to the 1st of October), with RX as the organiser on behalf of the American Gaming Association, and its programme announces "no ceremony of its own" whatsoever. The 2027 edition is set for 27 to 30 September; we take that oddity up on the page which deals with it.
SiGMA World moved its "flagship" European edition to Rome, where the Fiera hosts it from the 2nd to the 5th of November 2026, and renamed it on the way. Two ceremonies belong to that stop, the SiGMA Awards World and the SiGMA "Italia" Awards, the second of them held on 5 November at the Corsie Sistine, and no date for 2027 had been published when we read the site on 20 October 2026.
iGB L!VE is run in London by Clarion Events, and its affiliate awards fall on 2 July 2026 at the Troxy, on an evening kept deliberately away from the exhibition "floor", for an audience of "affiliates" (sites that sell traffic to operators). The 2027 fair is announced for 7 and 8 July at ExCeL London.
One national award sits outside this pattern while obeying it exactly: the Premios Jdigital were given on 17 June 2026 at the Parador La Muralla in Ceuta, inside a small local event, with eight categories on the night (bet365, Casino Barcelona and PokerStars were the finalists for best operator). The pattern holds at every scale; a room, an audience and a list of categories are the whole of what an award needs.
The dates we will not print
The 2026 dates for the London fair do not agree between the sources we read, so we print "early July" and nothing more precise until the organiser confirms them. An invented date is the easiest error that anybody can commit on a page of this kind, and the hardest for a reader to catch.
The two weeks that carry most of the year
January in Barcelona is the densest week in the business, by our count, because three ceremonies run on three consecutive evenings: the International Gaming Awards on 18 January (the evening before the hall opens), the Global Gaming Awards "EMEA" on 19 January, and the fair's own "Landmark" awards during the exhibition. A fourth name on that list belongs to a body we did not grade, and the page for this fair carries it.
The last week of September splits the industry between two continents, since Lisbon and Las Vegas overlap almost exactly. The SBC Awards close the Lisbon summit on 1 October, the Americas edition of the Global Gaming Awards is handed out in Las Vegas on 28 September, and the North American winners of the Gaming Intelligence Awards are announced across those same four days (no dinner attached to any of them). Two continents, one week, and three bodies giving out prizes!
November in Rome and July in London are the quieter halves of the year, and between them they carry the affiliate awards and the whole of the Italian list.
Three evenings of this year still to come
The EGR Operator Awards are booked for 24 November 2026 (the Roundhouse, in London), with the "shortlist" already published and no exhibition attached to the evening, which is the pattern of this page in reverse. The SiGMA list splits across the Rome week (2 November for the World awards, the fifth for the Italian ones). None of the three had been held when this page was written, so a badge claiming any of them for 2026 does not yet exist, and you can date that claim before you even open it.
Two of the eleven bodies have no 2026 "edition" at all! Casinomeister's archive stops at 2025 after twenty-five years, and the American Gambling Awards had announced nothing for this year when we read them.
What the calendar is good for
A badge dated to a "fair week" comes from a body that hired a room near the fair (a ballroom, a theatre, an arena), and not from the fair itself. The Las Vegas case makes that plain, because an exhibition which hands out nothing still collects the credit for the two sets of results that are announced in its city during its days.
The timing of a ceremony is a second clue worth having. An evening held before an exhibition opens, or on the last day as it closes, is built to use an audience that somebody else assembled, which is why the winners reach the trade press before the fair's own news pages.
So the route from a trophy to a name is short, and your own browser is enough for it: take the year on the badge, find the fair week it belongs to, and read the line this page prints as "awards handed out here" (it sits on the fair's own site too). That list gives you the body, and the body is the only place where a category and a year can be confirmed.
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Questions
Why does it matter where an award is given?
Because the ceremony is a commercial event of the fair, and the fair pays for itself by selling space and tables. That is not an accusation, it is a business model, and it explains why there are more award nights than there are things worth awarding.
Which week has the most ceremonies?
The Barcelona week in January, when three separate bodies hand out awards on three consecutive evenings around the same exhibition.