Best Selling Board Games of All Time

The best selling board game of all time

Monopoly is the best selling board game with a known sales total. Hasbro’s Parker Brothers first published it in 1935, and by 2015 an estimated 275 million copies had been sold worldwide, in more than 46 languages and 113 countries [2]. Guinness World Records also lists it as the most popular board game, played by 500 million people worldwide as of 1999 [12].

Some lists, including the FUN.com ranking shown in the infographic on this page, put chess and checkers above Monopoly. That is a fair point about how widely they are played, but there is no real sales figure for either. Chess sets are made by thousands of companies and have been for centuries, and nobody has counted them. FUN.com’s figure of “50 billion+” checkers sets has no source and is not believable: it would be more than six sets for every person alive today. So for a ranking based on actual sales, Monopoly comes first.

Best selling board games with known sales figures

These are the games where a sales total has been published by the maker or reported reliably. The figures come with the date they were reported, so the real totals today are higher for games still on sale.

Game	First published	Copies sold	As of
Monopoly	1935	About 275 million	2015 [2]
Scrabble	1948	About 150 million	2008 [3]
Trivial Pursuit	1981	More than 100 million	2014 [11]
Candy Land	1949	More than 50 million	[13]
Rummikub	1950s	More than 50 million	[15]
Cranium and its sister games	1998	44 million	2008 [10]
Othello	1971	More than 40 million	[5]
Catan	1995	More than 32 million	2020 [4]
Ticket to Ride	2004	More than 20 million	2026 [16]

The FUN.com graphic also gives Clue (Cluedo in the UK) and Scrabble 150 million each, Battleship 100 million, backgammon 88 million for the modern game, The Game of Life 50 million, Pictionary 38 million, Risk 25 million and Stratego 20 million [1]. We could not find a published sales total to confirm those, so treat them as rough estimates. Its Cranium figure of 1 million+ is far too low: that was one year’s sales in 2001, and Cranium and its related games had sold 44 million copies by the time Hasbro bought the company in 2008 [10].

Why the classic games still outsell everything else

Nearly every game in the list above is decades old. Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue and Candy Land all date from the 1930s and 1940s, and have had 70 years or more to build up sales. They also have a few things in common:

• They are easy to learn. A new player can pick up Candy Land, Connect 4 or Scrabble in a few minutes, which makes them easy to bring out with family or friends who don’t play games much.
• They sell in endless editions. Monopoly alone has been licensed in more than 113 countries and sold in many themed versions, from city editions to film tie-ins [2].
• They are passed down. Many households have a copy that has been around for years, and adults buy the same games for their children that they played themselves.
• They sit in the mainstream shops. Big brands from Hasbro and Mattel get space in supermarkets and toy shops, not just specialist game shops.

Catan, first published in Germany in 1995, is the exception. It is the best known of the modern “hobby” games and was one of the first to sell in the tens of millions, with more than 32 million boxed sets in 40 languages by 2020 [4]. Ticket to Ride, from 2004, has followed it past 20 million [16].

Most popular board games of all time

“Most popular” can mean two different things. By the number of people who own and play them, the classic family games above win easily: Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, Trivial Pursuit, Candy Land and The Game of Life, plus the traditional games chess, checkers (draughts), backgammon and mancala, which are played all over the world without anyone buying a branded box.

By how much keen players rate them, the list looks completely different. On BoardGameGeek, the largest board game community, the highest ranked games in November 2026 were Brass: Birmingham, Ark Nova, Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, Gloomhaven and Dune: Imperium Uprising [17]. These are longer, more complex games that sell in the hundreds of thousands or low millions rather than the tens of millions, but they are what most hobby players mean when they talk about the best board games.

If you want classic games that most people already know, start with Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue and chess. If you want something newer that is still easy to teach, Catan and Ticket to Ride are the usual first steps into modern board games.

The oldest board games still played

Several games on the infographic are far older than any company that sells them. Backgammon belongs to a family of race games going back nearly 5,000 years [18], and checkers has been played in some form for thousands of years [14]. Mancala is a family of sowing games played across Africa and the Middle East for centuries. Chess came from the Indian game chaturanga, about 1,500 years ago, and took its modern form in Europe around 1475 [6]. The graphic’s date of 1200 for chess falls in between and does not match either.

A few dates on the graphic are for an earlier version of the game. Othello, as sold today, was patented in 1971, while 1883 is when its forerunner Reversi appeared [5]. Battleship was a pencil and paper game from 1931 and became a plastic board game in 1967 [7]. Scrabble’s forerunner dates from 1938, but the game was named Scrabble in 1948 [3].

Questions about best selling board games

What is the number one selling board game?

Monopoly, with an estimated 275 million copies sold worldwide by 2015 [2]. Chess and checkers are played more widely, but no sales total exists for them.

What are the top 10 best selling board games of all time?

Going by published sales figures: Monopoly, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Candy Land, Rummikub, Cranium, Othello, Catan and Ticket to Ride, with Clue and Battleship also commonly placed in the top ten on estimated sales [1][2][3][4].

What is the most popular board game in the world?

Guinness World Records names Monopoly the most popular board game, played by 500 million people as of 1999 [12]. If you count traditional games, chess is played by far more.

What is the best selling modern board game?

Catan, with more than 32 million copies sold by 2020 [4]. Ticket to Ride is next among modern hobby games, with more than 20 million [16].

What are some classic board games every home should have?

Most people would start with chess or checkers, Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue and a simple game for younger children such as Candy Land or Connect 4. They are cheap, widely known and easy to teach.

Sources

1. FUN.com, The Best-Selling Board Games of All Time, Ranked, the original post for the infographic.
2. Wikipedia, Monopoly (game).
3. Wikipedia, Scrabble.
4. Wikipedia, Catan.
5. Wikipedia, Reversi.
6. Wikipedia, Chess.
7. Wikipedia, Battleship (game).
8. Wikipedia, The Game of Life.
9. Wikipedia, Cluedo.
10. Wikipedia, Cranium (board game).
11. Wikipedia, Trivial Pursuit.
12. Guinness World Records, Most popular board game.
13. Wikipedia, Candy Land.
14. Wikipedia, Checkers.
15. Wikipedia, Rummikub.
16. Wikipedia, Ticket to Ride (board game).
17. BoardGameGeek, Board game rank, checked 7 November 2026.
18. Wikipedia, Backgammon.

Last reviewed 7 November 2026