Bologna Game Farm at Gamescom 2025!

Following the success of its participation in First Playable last June in Florence, which saw fourteen teams from the fourth and fifth editions of Bologna Game Farm take part, the video game accelerator will be attending Gamescom 2025, Europe’s leading video game event, which this year will take place from 20 to 24 August in Cologne.
Visitors will be able to meet Bologna Game Farm within the Italian Pavilion, organised by ICE (the Italian Trade Agency for the promotion abroad and internationalisation of Italian businesses) and MAECI (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation).
The participating teams, alongside Ivan Venturi, coordinator of the acceleration programme, and Sara De Martini from the City of Bologna, acting as project manager for Bologna Game Farm, will have the opportunity to connect with companies, publishers, independent studios and specialist media, to gain direct insight into the professional world and identify potential development opportunities for their prototypes.
The participation at Gamescom of teams from various editions highlights Bologna Game Farm’s strong commitment to continuing to support the selected projects as they grow, even after the acceleration programme has ended, always with the aim of creating networking opportunities that can lead to genuine professional collaborations.

The 2024 and 2025 editions were developed in collaboration with the Casa delle Tecnologie Emergenti in Bologna and are open to businesses and freelancers from across the country. In particular, for the 2025 edition, the collaboration has also been extended to the CTEs in Pesaro and Matera.

Bologna Game Farm is a project aimed at developing the video games sector, promoted by the Emilia-Romagna Region and the City of Bologna, coordinated by the City of Bologna and implemented with ART-ER as part of measures to support the cultural and creative industries, with technical support from IIDEA – the Italian Interactive & Digital Entertainment Association.

The objectives of Bologna Game Farm are to strengthen managerial and entrepreneurial skills within the video games sector in Emilia-Romagna, to raise awareness of the sector’s importance for the economic growth of the regional production system, and to develop links between the sector and the regional innovation ecosystem by fostering cross-sector initiatives with other sectors.