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UK-based events business Fragers Ltd and Colchester Events have announced that the Rapture Gaming Festival will be returning home to Charter Hall in Colchester this summer.
The gaming event will take place on the weekend of Saturday 2 and Sunday 3 August 2025.
It will feature a new outdoor event arena with expanded content delivered in partnership with Colchester Fibre, Colchester City Council’s (CCC’s) wholly owned fibre broadband provider.
The show promises ‘massive gaming arenas featuring hundreds of gaming stations and esports tournaments offering thousands of pounds in prizes across titles like Valorant, Fortnite and Mario Kart’.
Rapture Gaming Festival was first launched in Colchester back in 2017 by Fragers Ltd, a European-wide events business based in Colchester, which then went on to expand across the UK. Most recently, the show was based in Medway, Kent, where the Medway Gaming Festival increased in size and popularity over the past few years.
The 2025 event will take over Charter Hall and the adjoining multi-use hall, along with a range of activities and pop-up gaming experiences taking place on the outdoor sports pitch, next to the skate park.
Visitors can experience retro gaming at Retroland, meet indie developers in Devland, watch live wrestling from SOS Wrestling, and watch robot battles in the Robot Arena. The event also includes the award-winning life-size Dungeons and Dragon experience, a Cosplay Village, military esports activities, live music stages, a merch market and family-friendly attractions for all ages.
Gary Kirby, CEO of Fragers Ltd and Rapture Gaming Festival, said: “I’m really excited to announce that, after four amazing years of successful MGF events, we are bringing Rapture Gaming Festival back to Colchester, where the show started in 2017 before it went across the UK. The show is a real hybrid event, with stacks of indoor and outdoor features and activities thats become popular with exhibitors, traders and visitors alike.
“Bringing Rapture Gaming Festival back to Colchester is a dream come true. After launching here in 2017 the show went on to some amazing locations in England, Scotland and Wales, and following the pandemic, the Medway Rapture Gaming Festival went from strength to strength.”
Gary Kirby, Rapture Gaming Festival
“Rapture has grown so much since our last Colchester event, and I am excited to show my hometown how incredible it really has become.
“With gaming events struggling the last few years its been great to see this show grow well at Medway, and we’re looking forward to bringing the larger format home! Wish us luck!”
Gary Kirby also added on LinkedIn that he would like to bring the event back to Scotland in the future, and that if the Colchester event is a success, then this may happen.
Simon Coward, Managing Director of Colchester Amphora, CCC’s wholly owned company operating Colchester Fibre, added: “We’re thrilled to welcome Rapture Gaming Festival back to Colchester, bigger and better than ever. With Colchester Fibre powering the event connectivity, visitors and participants will benefit from ultrafast, reliable connectivity – essential for modern gaming, streaming, and digital experiences.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity to showcase not only the strength of our Events team but the cutting-edge digital infrastructure that Colchester Fibre are delivering across the city.”
The festival spent three consecutive years at the Historic Dockyard, with a fourth edition delivered in 2024. Back in 2021, one of the event’s exhibitors had some issues with its Lions League CS LAN.
The event’s return to Colchester comes after The Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust confirmed that it would not be taking place in Medway this year, ‘due to a combination of rising operational costs, changes to the public funding available to support the event, and insufficient visitor growth, leading to the event becoming financially unsustainable’.
Olivia Horner, Director of Commercial & Operations at the Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust, commented: “This was an incredibly difficult decision and one we did not make lightly. We have a genuine fondness for the Medway Gaming Festival and take pride in the events we have hosted over the last few years. Unfortunately, the current economic climate – marked by escalating prices, public funding constraints and ongoing cost of living pressures – has placed significant financial strain on events like these.
“While the Dockyard provided an iconic backdrop for MGF, sadly the event fell short of the financial targets necessary to justify its continuation. As an independent charity, our priority must remain the preservation of our unique 80-acre site and its many listed buildings.”
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.
