Majen Immink – Director of Fairs & Events at the BTHA – on what to expect from next week’s London Toy Fair

Majen, it’s great to catch up. How was 2025 for the British Toy & Hobby Association? What were some highlights?
2025 was another productive year for the BTHA, with Toy Fair once again kicking off the calendar year bringing industry together for three days of business, networking and product showcasing. The event featured more than 250 exhibiting companies and welcomed visitors from across the sector, including retailers, licensors, inventors and designers, media, influencers and the wider industry, who came to explore new products and emerging trends.

Toy Fair TV captured the vast spectrum of products on show including many new launches, illustrating the incredible design talent and innovation in our industry. The 2025 event also marked the rebranding of the former ‘Greenhouse’ as the ‘Gold Zone’, created to put the spotlight on new companies and emerging talent.

Elsewhere in 2025, we also worked closely with the Play Commission and the Centre for Young Lives to support the launch of their new report – ‘Everything to Play for’ – calling for a new national play strategy for England. The BTHA sponsored their event in Parliament to discuss the importance of play in childhood development with parliamentarians, sector leaders and key decision-makers. Our Director General, Roland Earl, opened the event by reflecting on the value of play, emphasising that toys are the tools of play and play is essential to childhood development.

The BTHA’s annual Industry Day once again continued to provide an opportunity for members to hear key updates about the Association, learn from keynote speakers and have the opportunity to network with colleagues from the industry. This year’s keynote speakers was Alastair Campbell, former Director of Communications for the Labour Party and co-host of ‘The Rest is Politics’ podcast, who provided insight into the current political world – and attendees also got to hear about the current retail climate from Ashley Rolls of KPMG.

Throughout the year, the BTHA continued to represent the interests of its members to government and policymakers on changing regulations. One of the Association’s biggest priorities was to continue highlighting the high levels of unsafe toys being sold through online marketplaces that put children at harm and undermine reputable toy makers, and to push for new regulation. After many years of campaigning on this issue, in 2025, the UK government finally introduced and passed legislation entitled the Product Regulation & Metrology Act, which gives the government the ability to create new requirements for online marketplaces regarding the safety of all the products on their platforms. The BTHA worked with other organisations to strengthen the primary legislation in Parliament, with detailed work on regulations continuing into and throughout 2026.

2026 London Toy Fair is next week! What can we expect from the show this year?
We are gearing up for another exciting event packed full of new product launches. We will welcome back many returning companies, but we will also have more than 40 new exhibitors joining the show for the first time, including Thumbs Up!, OOLY, KTL, MCHUGS and many more. They add to an already diverse range of exhibitors, including The LEGO Group, Basic Fun, Orchard Toys, Vivid Goliath, Skillmatics, Marvin’s Magic, Baby Republic, Paper Engine and many more.

Terrific. What else is new?
We have launched a brand-new app designed to enhance the networking experience for everyone at Toy Fair. The new app will allow exhibitors and all attendees to connect before the show and arrange meetings in advance, ensuring attendees make the most of the three busy days of Toy Fair. The app features detailed exhibitor profiles, interactive floor plans with navigation function, sponsor information, media information, exclusive show offers and other show information. Once registered to attend the show, visitors will receive a login key via email, giving instant access to their personal profile within the app.

The last few years has seen the BTHA engage more with inventors, adding a dedicated ticket option for them alongside the Inventor Lunch. Why do you feel it’s important for the show to engage with inventors directly in this way? And is this a community the BTHA would like to engage with further?
Inventors play a vital role, bringing fresh innovation and creativity, keeping the sector exciting and dynamic. Over the past two years, we have enjoyed running the Inventors Lunch at Toy Fair, and it has been a wonderful way to highlight how integral inventors are to the toy and game community whilst facilitating valuable connections.

This year, Toy Fair will welcome back the Student Design Seminar on the third day of the event, offering a great opportunity to inform and inspire product design undergrads who may be thinking about the toy industry as a future career destination. We are grateful to the speakers who will generously share their expertise with the emerging talent.

Olympia is also going through some exciting changes. Will these impact this year’s show?
While Olympia’s developments will not be completed until mid-2026, they will enhance the Toy Fair experience in the years to come. Once finished, the venue will offer new restaurants, cafés, hotels, theatre and a live music venue, creating an impressive and vibrant destination for all our exhibitors and attendees to extend their Toy Fair experience and networking after the show’s open hours.

Alongside the core reasons for attending, do you think London Toy Fair can be a great source of inspiration for creatives?
Toy Fair can be a fantastic source of inspiration for creatives, with its vibrant, buzzing atmosphere to fully immerse yourself. Toy Fair is filled with an enormous variety of innovative, creative and sometimes wonderfully whacky products – from board games and puzzles, plush toys and tech toys, to arts and crafts, ride-on-vehicles and construction toys, there’s so much to take inspiration from. Walking the aisles and getting hands on with thousands of products from across the categories will inevitably spark ideas and fuel the imagination.

The Gold Zone is a hotspot for discovering emerging trends, innovation and talent, as it is known to showcase smaller, up-and-coming companies and entrepreneurs. Conversations with designers, inventors and exhibitors across the show floor often will lead to unexpected connections, and we have seen products that started as a simple chat at Toy Fair go on to become fully developed concepts.

Last question! What helps you and the team have ideas for innovations to bring to the show?
Inspiration for new initiatives at Toy Fair comes directly from the toy and game industry itself. The innovation and ambition inspire us to explore new initiatives. We are constantly looking for ways to elevate Toy Fair as a leading platform for business, networking, and product showcasing. Feedback plays a big role in this. We actively listen to all feedback from exhibitors and visitors, using it to refine and adapt the Toy Fair experience year after year.

Ultimately, it’s the creativity, innovation and passion of the toy and game industry that motivates us to keep improving Toy Fair to be the best it can be.

Thanks Majen – see you next week!

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