The May 25 deadline for submitting a game for SDHistCon Summit 2026 Night Market is fast approaching! As we announced last month, we plan to feature a new and special Night Market event at this year’s SDHistCon Summit 2026 convention. That convention will be held in San Diego from Nov. 6-9, with tickets going on sale Aug. 8.
SDHistCon Summit 2026 Night Market is intended as a place for interested attending designers to create, bring, and sell their limited-print-run, self-published historical games (between 20-50 copies) to other attendees at SDHistCon Summit 2026. It will be held at the convention in the evening of Saturday, Nov. 7.
If you’re interested in attending SDHistCon Summit 2026 and selling an independently-produced, finished small-print-run game to fellow convention attendees, please send a one-page-maximum summary of your game (with a full listing of currently-planned components) via e-mail to conflictsofinterestsubmissions@gmail.com by Monday, May 25. If possible, please include a rulebook draft as well. The only requirements we have are that your game covers a historical topic and that it does not use AI-generated art. Only one submission per attendee is allowed.
SDHistCon Night Market 2026 submissions will be evaluated by the SDHist board and board of advisors. If your game is selected for this year’s Night Market, you will be notified ahead of Aug. 8, when convention badges go on sale.
If you submit a Night Market application that gets approved, you’re committing to bringing a minimum of 20 (and a maximum of 50) finished copies of your game for potential purchase by SDHistCon Summit attendees. We at SDHist can assist in connecting you with production resources, but everything from pricing to payment processing must be designer-led for this event. We also don’t guarantee sales of games.
There are two other things worth keeping in mind here. As mentioned in that April announcement, we’re also launching a prototype-focused SDHistCon Summit 2026 Skunkworks event to encourage aspiring designers. This event, on the Friday night of SDHistCon Summit 2026 (Nov. 6), will feature up-and-coming designers set up at their own tables, where they can give a five-minute pitch on a single game covering a historical topic to other convention attendees. Those attendees may be publishers, designers, reviewers or content creators, or others curious about what’s in the works. This event is intended to help newer designers show off what they’re working on, and to pave the way for them to set up more detailed playtests or meetings with interested parties later in the convention if desired.
SDHistCon Summit 2026 Skunkworks applications won’t be considered until after convention badge sales open on Aug. 8. But this is a reminder for those interested in designing a historic game and showing it off at SDHistCon Summit 2026 (whether through Skunkworks or another pathway) that you can start working on a prototype right now.
The last thing to mention is that our intention is to run the Night Market event at least next year as well. Thus, if you’re interested in the Night Market concept but don’t think you’ll be able to have a finished game by November, you can bring that prototype to SDHistCon Summit 2026 and show it off (through Skunkworks or another pathway) with an eye towards a potential future Night Market slot.
Have questions about SDHistCon Summit 2026 Night Market or SDHistCon Summit 2026 Skunkworks? Please reach out to SDHist board member and Conflicts of Interest Online editor Andrew Bucholtz at andrew@andrewbucholtz.com.