Fundamentally Insomnia is a computer gaming festival for all ages, where gamers and industry leaders alike come together to celebrate games in all their forms.
The next event is i49 which runs from 23 Aug – 26 Aug 2013.
While this page explains what the Insomnia Gaming Festival is, an image speaks a thousand words! Head over to our Photography Section to view all the photos from the festival, both past & present.
The event has 2 main areas; the Gaming Halls and the Exhibition Hall
The Gaming Halls are where the Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) attendees set up their PC’s and game through the night and into the weekend, playing anything from Battlefield to TrackMania with their friends and clanmates!
The Exhibition Hall is the home of our our huge industry exhibition and live finals arena, with loads of activities, competitions, hands on action with the latest games and tournament finals taking place throughout the weekend.
For many gamers in the UK, and indeed Europe and beyond, the Insomnia LAN is now a British institution and staple part of the gaming calendar, with the event playing host to some of the biggest eSports tournaments in Europe.
Insomnia is held 3 times a year at The International Centre in Telford, and accommodates over 3000 gamers for 5 days; it’s certainly grown from it’s humble beginnings of no more than 50 all playing off one 10mb switch!
In the last 16 years we have ran over 150 LAN events, given away over £480,000 in prize money and welcomed over 90,000 gamers through our doors!
Back when the series was first launched, the emphasis was very much on the low latency aspect of gaming. Now of course, low latency is no longer the primary reason to attend a LAN, and the social and indeed competitive aspect of the events have become much more at the forefront of why people attend, evolving the LAN into a Festival that celebrates gaming in all its forms.
Insomnia LAN Guide
We here at Multiplay love LAN parties! We love them so much we have created a LAN Guide which talks through the very basics of what to expect at our very own insomnia events.
If you have never attended one of our events before, then this guide will be perfect for you, specifically tailored to our Insomnia Events, the LAN guide explains the process of LANs from ordering your tickets and pre event information to venue maps, camping and travel details.
The guide also includes a check list, which you can print out so you do not forget anything when packing for your weekend away!
World Class Tournaments
Tournaments are a huge part of the Insomnia Festival, with thousands of gamers taking part every event. Our tournaments range from COD, to SC2, to LoL, to CS, and are all run by our awesome tournament team.
Over the years we have given away hundreds of thousands of pounds of prize money for our tournaments, so why not compete with your clan and see if you can grab a share of the cash!
Make sure you check out our Tournaments Pages for each event, so you know what is going on.
You can also check out our Coverage Pages, to see some of our past finals!
Gaming is a spectator eSport!
As well as being able to spend the entire weekend gaming with your mates, you can also take time away from your desk to enjoy watching some of the best players in the world compete in loads of games, from CS:GO to Starcraft 2!
Our awesome finals arena plays host to loads of action throughout the weekend, as well as non gaming events such as the Opening Ceremony and the World Famouse Insomnia Pub Quiz.
We’ve had some amazing matches over the years, and who knows; if you and your team do well enough you might get to play one of the final matches in the arena in-front of thousands of gamers!
So who runs it?
The Insomnia Festival is run by us; Multiplay! Started by Craig ‘Wizzo’ Fletcher back in 1997 our events have grown over the last 16 years to become the biggest gaming events in the UK, holding the UK record for the largest LAN event ever held in the UK for our Insomnia46 event in 2012.
We don’t just run events however, we are also a leading games consultant and Gameserver Provider to the gaming industry, with over 11,000 servers throughout the world!
We are also a full events company, running contract events with companies all over the world. Check out MultiplayEvents.com for more information.
Located on the South Coast of England in the New Forest, Hampshire, we also run various other events both for ourselves and other industry leading companies such as Samsung, Mojang, Warner Bros & Trion Worlds.
Event Crew
The events are made possible by our awesome army of volunteer crew, who take time out of their lives 3 times a year to come and help us not only setup and pack-down the entire LAN, but also run the event for 5 days.
Many of our crew are part of our huge online community of over 407,000 gamers, who have supported the iSeries for many years, and continue to help make it bigger and better!
You can find out more about our awesome event crew on the Event Crew pages. You can get involved in the Multiplay community by heading over to our Community Forums and saying hello!
Event Information
If you are new to the Insomnia Festival, there is a lot of information you will want to know! Luckily, we’ve created a whole library of information on every aspect of the events so you can find out everything you need to know before you arrive.
The menu on the right hand side of this page contains links to loads of event information, plus you can check out our Frequently Asked Questions section for anything else you want know.
If for some reason you can’t find the information you need, get in touch!