Reykjavik, Iceland · Startup CCP Games is the Reykjavik studio behind EVE Online, the long-running sandbox space MMO that has become one of the most culturally distinctive video games ever built in Europe: a single persistent universe shared by all players, with a player-driven economy, alliances, and wars that have produced academic papers and international news coverage. Founded in 1997, CCP effectively bootstrapped Iceland's modern games industry and remains the anchor of Reykjavik's interactive-entertainment cluster. The studio was acquired by South Korea's Pearl Abyss in 2018 but kept its Icelandic operations and brand, and has since expanded into new IP explorations, third-party developer partnerships, and blockchain-adjacent experiments around player-owned assets. For the directory, CCP illustrates how a small European capital can sustain a live-operations games business at a scale usually associated with Tokyo, Los Angeles, or Helsinki.
Warsaw, Poland · Startup CD Projekt is a Warsaw-based video-game holding founded in 1994 by Michał Kiciński and Marcin Iwiński. Its CD Projekt RED studio produced The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 franchises, while GOG.com operates a DRM-free PC games store. The company went public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 2011 and at peak was Poland's most valuable listed company. Co-founder Michał Kiciński later left day-to-day operations to focus on impact-oriented investing and wellness projects.
Edinburgh, United Kingdom · Event The world's largest arts festival includes a significant digital-arts and creative-technology strand, with immersive installations, AI-generated art exhibitions, and creative-tech showcases. Edinburgh during August is also a magnet for informal tech-community meetups and founder dinners organized by the Scottish startup ecosystem. While not a pure tech event, it's a key cultural moment for creative-tech, content-tech, and entertainment startups looking to connect with media buyers and cultural institutions.
Madrid, Spain · Startup Fever is a Madrid-born entertainment discovery platform that curates and produces immersive experiences, from candlelight concerts to secret cinema events, in over 100 cities worldwide. The company uses data-driven demand testing to decide which experiences to produce, reducing risk for venues and creators while surfacing high-quality cultural events for consumers. Fever has become one of Europe's most prominent consumer marketplace unicorns, blending tech-driven curation with live entertainment at scale.
Valletta, Malta · Startup FRVR is a browser-based casual games publisher founded in 2014 and headquartered at 61 Saint Paul Street, Valletta. The company develops and distributes instant-play HTML5 games across web, social, and messaging platforms without requiring app-store downloads. FRVR has raised over $94 million in total funding from investors including Accel, Hiro Capital, and Makers Fund.
Reykjavik, Iceland · Person Halldór Snær Kristjánsson is the CEO, Game Director, and co-founder of Myrkur Games, an Icelandic game development studio. He also serves as Chairman of the Icelandic Game Industry (IGI), making him a central figure in Iceland's game development ecosystem. He is a confirmed speaker at the Reykjavík Game Summit 2026, organized by Game Makers Iceland.
Madrid, Spain · Person Co-founder and CEO of Fever, the Madrid-founded live-entertainment discovery platform that scaled globally with backing from Goldman Sachs and Accel. He co-founded Fever in 2014 to help people discover local experiences and events.
Salamanca, Spain · Person Jere Erkko is a Finnish games and entertainment entrepreneur associated with the early Angry Birds / Rovio lineage, working on mobile gaming, brand-building and entertainment ventures. He speaks on gaming, product virality and scaling consumer hits internationally.
Limassol, Cyprus · Startup Nexters is a Limassol-headquartered mid-core mobile games publisher best known for Hero Wars, a long-running RPG that at its peak was one of the highest-grossing role-playing games on iOS and Android worldwide and popularized the now-ubiquitous 'puzzle in the ad, different game inside' marketing pattern. The company runs a portfolio of live-ops titles, relies on heavy user-acquisition and A/B testing in-house, and operates from Cyprus as a talent and operational hub following the 2020-2022 wave of games-industry migration into Limassol. In 2021 Nexters went public on Nasdaq via a SPAC combination at a valuation north of USD 1.5 billion, making it one of the very few Cyprus-listed consumer-tech exits on a major US exchange. For the directory it represents the scale of the Limassol mobile-gaming cluster that grew up around Wargaming and has since attracted dozens of studios and publishers.
Ljubljana, Slovenia · Startup Outfit7 is the Slovenian-born mobile entertainment studio behind the Talking Tom and Friends franchise, which has become one of the most downloaded mobile IPs in the world and a textbook example of a European consumer software company achieving escape velocity into the US and Asian markets without relocating its engineering base out of Ljubljana. Founded in 2009 by Samo and Iza Login, the studio combined a viral AR-era animal avatar concept with disciplined live-ops, mobile advertising, and cross-promotion to drive billions of downloads, and in 2017 sold to China's Zhejiang Jinke Entertainment in one of the largest cash exits ever achieved by a Slovenian tech company. Today Outfit7 remains the anchor of Slovenia's consumer gaming cluster, running the Talking Tom & Friends universe across games, TV series, and licensed merchandise, and continuing to ship new free-to-play titles from its Ljubljana, Limassol, and London offices.
Vienna, Austria · Event Organisator ProSiebenSat.1 PULS 4 is Austria's leading commercial broadcaster and digital entertainment group, operating channels including PULS 4, PULS 24, and ATV. The company founded the 4GAMECHANGERS Festival in 2016 as its flagship social responsibility initiative, bringing together entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and innovators at Vienna's Marx Halle. ORF joined as co-organizer in 2022. In 2026, ProSiebenSat.1 PULS 4 organized the 4GAMECHANGERS AI-Day focused on practical AI adoption in media production.
Copenhagen, Denmark · Startup Tactile Games is a Copenhagen-based mobile gaming studio founded in 2008, known for hit casual puzzle titles including Lily’s Garden and Cookie Cats. The company has achieved hundreds of millions of downloads and generates strong recurring revenue through free-to-play mechanics and live ops. With over 360 employees, Tactile is one of the largest independent game studios in the Nordics and a key player in Denmark’s thriving gaming ecosystem alongside SYBO and Hugo Games. The company builds its games in-house and focuses on narrative-driven casual experiences that retain players over months.