Connections UK 2025

Today is the first day of Connections UK, the 'premier professional wargaming conference in the UK’. This is a three-day-long conference, and having attended it, I can attest to its importance to the development of professional wargaming in the UK.

To quote from the Connections UK website:

The aim of Connections UK CIC is 'To advance and preserve the art, science and application of wargaming'.

We do this by:

Holding a Conference at least once a year. 

• Maintaining a curated repository of previous conference proceedings, useful links and documents.

• The main effort is our annual conference, Connections UK, which brings together a mix of practitioners, designers, analysts, academics, educators, and government personnel - in fact anyone with an interest in professional wargaming or serious games.

The Conference helps bring together:

• Experienced designers and practitioners who can share their knowledge, activities, experience within the community of practice.

• Those wishing to explore and develop their knowledge and skills in serious gaming.

I attended until the COVID pandemic and my subsequent bouts of ill-health made attending the conference at its new locations (Bristol, RMA Sandhurst [Old College], and Brunel University [Uxbridge]) difficult. I hope to be well enough to go the Connections UK again in the future … but how long into the future is difficult to predict.

The outline conference programme for this year is as follows:

• DAY ONE
• Barriers into Wargaming
• Wargaming 101 (Introduction to Wargaming)
• Megagame: A Green and Pleasant Land
• The Value of Wargames by Dr David Banks
• Networking & Social Gaming
• DAY TWO
• Exemplars of Defence
• Wargame Delivery
• Insights from Historical Wargames
• Postgraduate Research into Wargaming
• Game Jam Part 1
• Getting under the hood of Analytical Wargaming
• Best Practice in PME Wargaming Courses
• Games Fair
• Networking & Social Gaming
• DAY THREE
• Brunel Security & Wargaming MA Update
• AI in Wargaming (Recent Developments, Examples and Concerns)
• How our Adversaries Wargame
• Innovation and Best Practice in Commercial Wargames
• Supporting the Next Generation of Wargamers
• Peter Perla Commemorative Talk: Mark Herman
• Wargaming Good Reads
• New Members - Way Forward
• Game Jam Part 2
• Insights from 
• Resilience Gaming
• Games Fair

I am sorry to have missed the Megagame and the Games Fair, especially as the last time this Megagame was staged at King’s College London in 2018, my role was Prime Minister of the UK! (A blog post about my experience in that role can be found here.)

'A Green and Pleasant Land' at King's College London in 2018.

Me as the UK's Prime Minster, chairing a meeting of the Cabinet.

My voice was even featured in a BBC Radio4 broadcast about the game. Right at the end - and as the UK and Russia are in the midst of a nuclear stand-off - I can be heard to say 'Vladimir, can I ask you a question?'