How a small Alberta company built Canada’s largest gaming convention

Canada is one of the largest producers of video games in the world, and yet, we historically haven’t had much in the way of big consumer gaming events. The U.S. has various PAXes. Europe has Gamescom. Japan has Tokyo Game Show. But in Canada, gaming shows have been few and far in between outside of business-to-business (B2B) industry conferences, especially in recent years as major public events have either gone away (EGLX) or reduced their gaming programming (Fan Expo).

One small Alberta company, however, has quickly been changing that. After helping to organize events across North America, including the Alberta Food and Beverage Expo, Lethbridge-based Meibel Consulting expanded in 2023 with the inaugural Game Con Canada (GCC). As the largest gaming event in Canada, the three-day show features all kinds of gaming programming, including video game demos, esports, tabletop tournaments, merchants, celebrity guests and more.

Matthew Lillard at Game Con Canada. (Image credit: Meibel Consulting)

Following its successful first show in Calgary, GCC moved to Edmonton for an even bigger venue, ultimately attracting more than 40,000 visitors in 2025. Now, Meibel’s fourth annual gaming event is nearly upon us, taking place from June 19-21 at the Edmonton Expo Centre. In total, $1.2 million worth of production and setups now goes into making the show happen. That scope would be impressive for any relatively new Canadian event, and that growth is particularly notable when you consider both how quickly it’s occurred and the small size of Meibel, which only staffs a few people. But fittingly enough for a Canadian venture, GCC had rather humble origins.

“During COVID, I think everyone had a lot of time to reflect, and we were like, ‘Man, we love what we do […] but I’m tired of having to drive into the States for a big gaming convention. Why is nobody doing this [in Canada]?” says Meibel co-founder and CEO Chris Meilleur. “So that’s what started the conversation, and we just started mapping it out, and we started putting the puzzle pieces together, calling some of the people we knew that could help us, some of the bigger partners that would maybe share in our vision […] Canadians deserve it, and we just really wanted to do it.”

From there, Meilleur says he and Meibel co-founder and VP Marc Belisle drew from their lifelong love of games to help build out the programming.

“Being fans of other gaming conventions, one of the things that we always loved is the indie developers. That was where it started for both of us,” says Meilleur, adding that they also love the bigger AAA games. “We’re also tabletop enthusiasts, especially Marc, and we recognized that there was a really big crossover on those two things […] So when we built this, we built it from a fan’s perspective of what we would want to see, but then also talking to the people we know in the industry. What are the things that indie developers want to see? What are the things that we need to do not just to put on a good event, but also uplift the industry?”

Belisle says Meibel regularly gets submissions for programming pitches, and that’s helped inform the evolution of the show over the past few years. One key example that he cites is tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), which have become an increasingly large part of GCC since its inception.

“It wasn’t a huge category of Game Con Canada [in 2023], and then you fast forward to today with the passion of that community and what they really wanted to see. Now we have Deborah Ann Woll [Daredevil star and host of multiple tabletop web series] doing one-shot adventures, and we’ve got [YouTubers like] Ginny Di and the Dungeon Dudes and Taylor’s Tavern Sales and Ice Cream Sandwich and Dungeon Dad, and we’ve built a 3,000 square-foot castle to host all these adventures,” says Belisle. “We always listen to our partners, our community, to see what we can do to make it better and grow this thing together. Because this is our Canadian show, so we want it to be as cool as possible for everyone involved.”

It’s this level of attention and growth that Belisle says has allowed GCC to attract celebrities like Scream‘s Matthew Lillard last year and Midnight Mass‘ Rahul Kohli in 2024, feature dozens of indie games annually in the GCC Studio Showcase (and even given awards by our friends over at CGM) and bring on hundreds of IPs and 400-plus exhibitors and vendors, including Warhammer, Asus, Intel, Catan, Warner Bros., EB Games, Cineplex, Rogers, and Razer. This year, some of their biggest sponsors are doing even more events within GCC, too, like Asus hosting Valorant and Street Fighter finals or Warhammer hosting Canada’s first-ever Grand Tournament that’s also one of only four total in North America.

“These IPs have trusted you to be like, ‘Hey, we’ve chosen you to represent us and to make sure that you’re the event that we want to partner with,’ and it’s been a wonderful journey getting the trustees’ IPs working together, and each year making those activations bigger and better for them, for the fans, and, ultimately, for the whole experience,” says Belisle.

Asus is hosting some of the esports tournaments at GCC. (Image credit: Asus)

Another big change to GCC in 2026 is the addition of the North American Games Industry Summit (NAGIS), an overlapping sister B2B conference that brings together developers and other industry luminaries for panels, networking and other programming. With two of Canada’s biggest B2B gaming events, the Montreal International Games Summit (MIGS) and Toronto’s XP Game Summit, on the East Coast, NAGIS is uniquely positioned to help elevate Western Canada.

Meilleur notes that Meibel was actually thinking of kicking off NAGIS in a year or two, but partners had suggested that 2026 would be “a great time” for it, given that people have been increasingly avoiding the U.S. amid the wider geopolitical landscape. (To that point, GDC, a major San Francisco-based B2B gaming event, lost 10,000 attendees this year, with many global developers publicly admitting that they didn’t feel safe travelling to America.) Meilleur adds that having some of the big companies at GCC also helped show early interest in an adjacent B2B event.

“Because we have so many big companies coming, business was happening organically at the industry night mixer, so they reached out to us and said, ‘Guys, it’s already happening, just add it to the show already […] and if you guys can tie your world-class production into your B2B event, you might have something different and special here that the community will respond to,” he says. “And then for GCC, we’re going to get people in the room with massive companies, massive IPs, that probably wouldn’t have looked at us for another couple of years, and they’re now getting to see what we’re doing this year, which is hopefully going to expedite the success of Game Con Canada and grow us.”

He says the goal is to eventually get GCC to 80,000 attendees, and NAGIS is a key part of reaching that figure. It certainly helps that the conference’s inaugural lineup is already quite strong, featuring such notable names as Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, BioWare veterans like creative director Casey Hudson and co-founder Greg Zeschuk (who are taking part in a big reunion panel), and Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield.

BioWare reunion at NAGIS. (Image credit: Meibel Consulting)

Of course, organizing such big events is difficult, and often in ways that many people likely wouldn’t appreciate. In addition to dedicating as much as 16 hours per day to GCC, Meilleur says it’s sometimes been difficult to convince U.S. companies to come to the show. “Some of the biggest challenges have been proving to a lot of the U.S. partners that are bringing some of the big IPs down that this is an event worth bringing some of the big stuff to,” he admits. “That was the the tough part — it was just convincing people that Canada had a market that could support an event of this caliber. We had to call in lots of favours — we had to do lots of deals to get people to give us a shot.”

Meilleur adds that there was also some skepticism about doing the event in Alberta in the first place instead of other Canadian cities like Toronto or Vancouver. But ultimately, Meibel insisted on holding the event at home.

“We’re an Alberta-based company, and a lot of our resources and people, the favours that were owed to us, and people that want to work with us — a lot of [that comes] out of Alberta. So we had to lean on 100 per cent of our resources to actually get this pulled off. But Alberta is just an amazing place to do it,” he says, adding that Meibel recently re-signed its deal with Edmonton to host GCC in the city through 2031.

“Alberta is just such a beautiful place. It’s more affordable to travel to Alberta, and there’s a lot to do here. If we were to do this event, say, in Toronto or Vancouver, your hotel blocks would be obscene, and the costs would go through the roof, and then we might not be able to attract some of these big IPs to give Canada a shot, because the expenses then get too high. So I actually think this is one of the few places we could have done it successfully.”

City of Edmonton. (Image credit: Explore Edmonton)

And, of course, Meibel suggests checking out more of Alberta while you’re in town.

“You’ve got to get up to the Rockies. If you stick around for a few extra days, head up into Jasper and Banff, and those areas. Calgary and Edmonton, obviously, both have a ton of great things to do,” says Meilleur. He also shouts out the famous West Edmonton Mall, noting that it’s even a GCC tradition for Meibel to drive them to the shopping centre to check it out.

“But the real answer to that question is: there’s nothing else to do. It’s just Game Con Canada,” he says with a laugh. “You won’t have time to do anything else, except have a great night’s sleep at one of our hotel partners, and then come right back and spend your entire day at Game Con Canada!”

Game Con Canada takes place from June 19-21 at the Edmonton Expo Centre, with NAGIS running June 18-19 in the same venue. GCC tickets start at $45 (single-day) or $108 (weekend pass) for adults, with lower-cost options available for children and youth. A limited VIP pass is also available for $350 that offers a $600 value, including a weekend pass with early entry, VIP seating and a buddy pass, game keys from the likes of Focus Entertainment and Beamdog, a Warhammer introductory set, mystery gifts from EB Games Canada and more.

Meanwhile, NAGIS student passes cost $100 and include admission to GCC, while $235 and $350 Industry and VIP passes with additional perks are also available.

Finally, an official GCC app is available on Android and iOS featuring customizable schedules, an interactive 3D map and more.

Header image credit: Meibel Consulting