Paolo Mori wins remarkable 2nd designer award in 5 months

Paolo Mori has done something rare in tabletop design: he’s won two major designer of the year honors in the span of five months. The Italian designer claimed the Lucca Comics & Games designer of the year award, adding to accolades that underscore why his 20-year career has made him one of the industry’s most decorated names.

Paolo Mori beat out a strong field that included Bruno Cathala, Johannes Goupy, Tomáš Holek and Reiner Knizia, BoardGameWire reported on Sept. 29. The award, established in 2024 by the festival and Italian designers association SAZ Italia, honors a designer’s body of work rather than a single title.

The jury, which this year included Spiel des Jahres president Harald Schrapers, Fabio Cambiaghi, former Gioco dell’Anno president Paolo Cupola, SAZ Italia representative and designer Stefania Niccolini and last year’s winner, Grégory Grard, praised how easily Paolo Mori moved between genres from 2024 to 2026 and recognized him as “an author who exemplifies the maturity achieved by Italian game design on the international scene.”

Paolo Mori’s portfolio spans genres

Paolo Mori’s consistency spans multiple design approaches. His résumé includes the historical wargames “Battalion: War of the Ancients” and “Battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars,” along with family-friendly titles and a move into narrative puzzles. He also designed “Ethnos,” “Libertalia” and the “Pandemic” spinoff “Fall of Rome,” a range that defies easy categorization.

The award arrives as “Toy Battle,” which Mori co-designed with Alessandro Zucchini, continues a remarkable run. The game won France’s As d’Or, claimed a Golden Geek for best two-player board game and earned a “recommended” nod from the jury of the Spiel des Jahres competition, Germany’s most prestigious board game award.

Mori’s “Captain Flip” was also a Spiel des Jahres nominee, keeping him visible at the highest tier of recognition.

Building on prior recognition

This isn’t Mori’s first time in the running at Lucca. He was a finalist for the award last year, when Grard, designer of “Castle Combo” and “Zenith,” took the prize. Simone Luciani won the inaugural Lucca designer award in 2024.

The Lucca win comes a few months after Paolo Mori was named game designer of the year at Italy’s ioGioco Awards, where “Toy Battle” also took best two-player game. Like ioGioco, the Lucca prize looks at a designer’s full output during the eligibility window. Its judges weigh originality and innovation, awareness of what players and the market want, how prolific a designer is and how well they work across styles.

Mori’s earlier peak came in 2013, when he won the first Gioco dell’Anno award in its current form with “Rise of Augustus.”

The Gioco dell’Anno race

Lucca’s separate Gioco dell’Anno prize, the successor to a Best of Show award that dates to 1993, has also named this year’s finalists, narrowed from 50 eligible games. The winner will be announced on stage at the festival, which runs Oct. 28 to Nov. 1 in Lucca, Italy.

The final five are “Bomb Busters” (designed by Hisashi Hayashi, winner of this year’s Spiel des Jahres), “Art Society” (Mitch Wallace), “Echoes of Time” (Simone Luciani and Roberto Pellei), “Rebirth” (Reiner Knizia) and “Thunder Road: Vendetta” (Brett Myers and Dave Chalker). Recent winners include “Botanicus” in 2025, “Planet Unknown” in 2024 and “Challengers” in 2023.

Paolo Mori isn’t among the Gioco dell’Anno finalists this year, but his run across other major awards suggests Italian game design has come of age on the world stage, with Mori as one of its most visible ambassadors. Fans looking for more modern board games have plenty of his work to explore.

Source: BoardGameWire

Featured image: Photo: Niccolò Caranti / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)