E3 to return in 2023 with in-person event, with help from the company that runs PAX

E3 will return to Los Angeles next June for show’s first in-person event since 2019, organizers for annual gaming convention announced Thursday. Organizers at the Entertainment Software Association say they’re getting help from the company that produces PAX, Star Wars Celebration, and other fan-forward events to make E3 2023 happen.

E3 2023 will take place during the second week of June at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and will be produced by ReedPop, the company that runs international video game events like PAX and EGX, and comic book and pop culture events like New York Comic Con, C2E2, and Star Wars Celebration. The ESA and ReedPop say next year’s E3 will welcome publishers, developers, media, and buyers to the show, and will present digital showcases and “in-person consumer components.” Organizers are setting their expectations high for E3 2023, promising “titanic AAA reveals, earth-shaking world premieres, and exclusive access to the future of video games.”

Kyle Marsden-Kish, global VP of gaming at ReedPop, said in a statement that “E3 2023 will be recognizably epic — a return to form that honors what’s always worked — while reshaping what didn’t.”

E3 2023 will be the first in-person event held by the ESA since E3 2019. A 2020 event was planned to “shake things up” amid flagging attendance and industry interest in the show, but was canceled over health concerns related to the spread of COVID-19. Companies who would normally attend E3 held smaller, self-contained digital events of their own, and one-time E3 collaborator Geoff Keighley started his own digital event, Summer Game Fest, to fill the void left by the ESA.

E3 returned in 2021, but was re-imagined as an all-virtual online event, featuring participation from publishers like Nintendo, Xbox, Bethesda, Square Enix, Sega, Bandai Namco, Ubisoft, and Capcom. Organizers planned a similar event for E3 2022, but the ESA ultimately canceled last year’s show.

The ESA and ReedPop have not announced which exhibitors will attend, but say more details will be shared in the coming months. A “streamlined and secure media registration” for E3 2023 will begin in late 2022, organizers said in a news release.

E3 2023 will directly compete with Keighley’s Summer Game Fest next year. The host of The Game Awards said last month that Summer Game Fest will return in June 2023 as both a digital and (for the first time) in-person event.