Miniatures Market Posts Solid 2025 Growth, Games Workshop Leads the Way

If your local game store has been looking noticeably more stocked with GW product over the past year, there is a hard number behind that feeling: Games Workshop's North American sales rose around 18% in 2025, according to their financial reports. That kind of growth does not happen quietly; it reshapes shelf space, reorder cycles, and the depth of stock your retailer is willing to carry.

The growth was not evenly distributed across GW's own channels. Sales to independent retailers outperformed sales in company-owned Games Workshop stores, continuing a pattern that carries real implications for where the hobby actually lives. When GW grows through the independent channel, that 18% flows into the same shops where you buy your paints, your brushes, and your secondhand armies. Retailers stocking GW lines are seeing returns that justify deeper inventory, which translates to more product on shelves and faster restocking when a new kit drops.

The miniatures category as a whole posted solid growth for 2025, with GW leading the way. But the broader picture is more complicated than a single headline number. The most significant headwind came from RPG-related miniatures, where growth flattened after a surge tied to the new Dungeons and Dragons edition that launched in 2024. New player numbers for D&D were down in 2025, and the ripple effect hit the adjacent miniatures ecosystem. For the pure wargaming end of the market, covering 40k, BattleTech, and their kin, that pullback in RPG spending means the category stayed healthy without the D&D tide lifting all boats.

BattleTech is the story that deserves more attention than the headline gives it. The game absorbed $240,000 in surprise tariffs on product already on the water en route to the U.S. when the new taxes were announced in April. That is not a rounding error for a publisher in the hobby space. Despite the shock, BattleTech finished the year strong, a testament to the line's durability and its dedicated player base.

Elsewhere, Steamforged Games' Warmachine completed its first full year of sales under new ownership and showed continued growth, quickly becoming the flagship of the Steamforged lines. Renegade Games' HeroScape and Mantic Games' Halo: Flashpoint both held their momentum in their second years after launch. Atomic Mass Games, meanwhile, is winding down Star Wars: Shatterpoint while keeping Star Wars: Legion and Marvel Crisis Protocol in the catalog.

For the Warhammer 40k side specifically, one data point illustrates how tightly GW's release cadence drives consumer behavior. Search interest for "warhammer 40k tyranid models" spiked to a normalized peak of 100 in May 2025, with essentially no measurable search activity in the surrounding months. That vertical spike maps directly onto a single release window, and it is the pattern GW has built its independent retail strategy around: concentrated demand at launch, deep enough to justify retailers front-loading stock on new kits.

With the independent retail channel delivering an 18% growth year in North America, the floor is being set for what the next major product cycle needs to deliver. The shelves at your LGS are not just fuller; they reflect a distribution model that is actively rewarding stores willing to bet deep on the Warhammer ecosystem.