Update (December 20th 2021): Tickets for Insomnia68 are now on sale, with BYOC (bring your own computer) prices starting from £107.12.
On prices rising, organisers said: “Simply put, stuff costs more now! We haven’t changed the prices of our tickets for eight years, absorbing the rising costs of running an event of this size so you don’t have to worry. These costs have been rising steadily for years but especially now, off the back of Covid, the events industry has seen a massive spike in the price of event services.
“We’ve held out as long as we could but now we have to raise our ticket prices in order to keep bringing you the Insomnia Gaming Festival you know and love. We know we’ll get called “greedy” and ‘money-grabbing’ by some, but we hope you understand we’re only doing what is necessary to keep running Insomnia for everyone.”
There’s more info on i68 ticket types, Insomnia’s covid policy and the i68 FAQ here.
Original article (December 17th 2021): Insomnia Gaming Festival – one of the UK’s biggest gaming gatherings – will finally return with a physical event next year.
Insomnia68 will take place once again at the Birmingham NEC, this time from April 15th to 18th 2022. It will be the first physical Insomnia event in over two and a half years, with prior events after late 2019 being cancelled due to the covid pandemic.
Organisers made the announcement on the official Insomnia Gaming Festival Twitter account this evening:
Tickets will go on sale from Monday December 20th 2021, but ticketing info and prices have not yet been revealed.
Insomnia is of course a well-known gaming festival that includes both a family-friendly expo area, stage activities, a pub quiz and more, plus a BYOC (bring your own computer) LAN gaming hall, esports tournaments and more. Prior to covid, the events held amateur and casual competitons in games like League of Legends, CSGO, PUBG and others.
The most recent Insomnia – Insomnia65 – took place in August 2019. While Insomnia66 and 67 were announced, they were later cancelled due to covid. No events were announced in 2021, meaning the next is Insomnia68.
Prior to covid, Insomnia events took place twice a year – once during the Easter bank holiday and also during the August bank holiday.
Earlier this year, SuperNova Capital acquired Insomnia from previous owners GAME, the UK video games retailer, and Insomnia founder Craig Fletcher joined the Supernova exec team to help relaunch the event.
Esports News UK interviewed Craig Fletcher about Insomnia earlier this summer.
Insomnia isn’t the only LAN gaming event in the UK of course. Epic.LAN has been taking place in 2021 – the most recent Epic.LAN (34) took place in Kettering during late October.
We’ll update this article with more info such as ticket prices as they are announced.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
