School Workshops
From November 12 to 15, 2025, our new venues at urbaneo – Junges Architektur Zentrum and New Work in Hafencity will be the site of a vibrant program of workshops, hands-on activities, lectures, and shows, as well as creative and innovative indie games that invite you to play together.
Workshops
Hey, don't miss out on our workshop program – space is limited! As part of the offer, you can visit the interactive exhibition and participate in a house visit. There, experts from the gaming industry will give you the scoop on what they do for a living. There's also a 3-hour workshop that'll teach you how to use digital games in creative ways. There are nine workshops over three days, and each one is for one school class or one course.
Here are some of the methods and content that are available this year:
Play the Street - Digital games as analog street games: Hafencity is now a designated playing field! Benches and trees become game objects, and people become avatars. Students discover game worlds in everyday life and use them to develop their own street games.
Pocket Platformer - Make your own 2D games: Students use a game editor that's easy to access to design their own platform game and learn the basics of game design.
Prompt Your Game - Game Development with AI: Students discover how artificial intelligence can be used to develop and design their own game ideas. They use text and image generators to design characters, worlds, and storylines, and they explore the opportunities and challenges of AI in game design.
Media educators lead the workshops.
Dates: 11/12. and 11/13. /14.11. Time: 9:00 a.m. - 2:30 p.m. each day
Registration: The desired offer can be booked via our booking tool starting September 15, 2025.
--> Booking tool (Pretix)
Costs: €125 per class
Special Offer for 2025: In-Service Training on Creative Gaming Methods
We'll combine the festival visit with practical training at your school. After going to a school workshop at PLAY25, our media educators will come to you and give interested teachers more training on creative gaming methods. You'll come up with some solid ideas on how to incorporate these into your lessons in a creative and subject-specific way. This in-depth course is made possible by funding from the Haerlin Foundation and covers topics related to media education in a practical and everyday way.
Dates: Starting in December 2025
Duration: Training (4 hours); lesson planning and implementation (approx. 8 double hours)
Registration: Together with booking a workshop/festival visit at PLAY25: anmeldung@playfestival.de
Technical exhibition realization. For profile classes.
Get ready to dive into the festival preparations!
We invite you to participate in the PLAY Festival as a profile course, a student company, or a project group focused on IT, computers, or technology. This allows you to engage in a very hands-on way, right in the middle of the action.
The task: The students install and test the games in the PLAY exhibition. We provide the necessary technology, including an introduction and support. They will learn how to prepare hardware, test games technically and in terms of content, and set them up for a public exhibition.
If the group wants to attend the festival from November 12-15, help the public operate the games, or share information about the background, that would be great! And if you enjoy it, you can also help install other games from the exhibition.
When students join the Young PLAY team, they automatically become members. This gives them the chance to meet other students and get free access to the whole festival. They can also use the team's food service.
Dates: Start at the beginning of the school year (25/26).
Duration: It depends on the schedule for the profile.
Registration: email anmeldung@playfestival.de