Rundown of TornFest 2026, How did it go? Who attended? Read Inside to find out!

Hi Everyone,

This is a thread for those that attended TornFest 2026 to share their opinion of the event, along with any photos and videos that they took that they have the permission to those in said pictures to share.

I'll use photos and videos from this thread to write up the newspaper article and to gather quotes also.

From my perspective TornFest 2026 (Bristol) went swimmingly! Wake the tiger Friday had everyone showing up to gather their lanyards and head inside of a wacky mind bending mystery after hours walkthrough amazement park with surprisingly cheap drinks for Bristol! Then we all headed out and got a little more tipsy and met up with some of the group that didn't attend wake the tiger.

On the Saturday morning most of us awoke to head out to battle archery where luckily I brought along enough disposable (biodegradable) ponchos for everyone so they didn't get torrential rained upon or they were used to sit on afterwards in cars to not muddy seats XD. We also had 20 shots at some clays with 20 gauge shotguns where I sadly was trolled and received 2nd place (I'm sure nuninhuz has a video to share of that). Afterwards we all dashed a mad rush to the escape rooms where many of us were chased around through an abandoned building with chainsaws. We had enough time to catch our breath before sitting down (33 of us) for dinner at harbour house where we stuffed our faces on a lovely 3 course meal (or 7 course for certain fork lifters) before heading out across the busy road for some nice drinks at a hole in the wall where we all got to socialise and answer some quiz questions if you were lucky (ty tonycream). Or maybe you had a few balloon animals made for you by pandapop <3. Or you had some TornFest Tattoos applied via Caz and indycision thanks both for operating the application station :).

Waking up on the sunday some left back to their homes but some remained and invited me along for some spitfire BBQ meats (ty Ducks and co). The size of the sausage surprised me. lastly we all got together and had a couple of shots Courtesy of myself, LouCypher and Swallow at the very least (there were more bought but I have no idea who ordered them lol. before heading back to the airbnb to continue with some jackbox games and a few more ubereats'd bottles of rum, vodka and wine.

Finally setting off for breakfast on the Monday with Shiggy, Potoo, Plague, Swallow and shrimp before we all went our separate ways to flights across Europe or trains back up north in my case (midlands isn't really north I guess :P). 

Oh and thank you to potoo for cooking focaccia every morning for everyone at the AirBnB. Legend.

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"Did you actually go TornFest if you didn't throw up in a uber"

Going too hard on the first night... Classic rookie mistake by whoever did that >_>

What's Tornfest?

“That’s what someone from Bristol looks like”

Bristol, one of the cities of all time. 
Before getting there I was a little apprehensive about the whole thing. Torn players? Socialising? Gross.

But after the pig (pun intended) of a drive up from the arse end of nowhere, walking around Wake the Tiger scratching my head wondering just what on earth I'd signed up to and getting to know everyone there. I realised it was going to be a great weekend. Aside from the beer prices :P (don't know what Cheb was on about)
The activities on the Saturday were a good laugh, perhaps my ego got the better of me after clay pigeon shooting but that was swiftly handled by an arrow square to the nose courtesy of Nunin. It ain't Torn fest unless someone starts bleeding I guess.
Meal in the evening was super nice as well, even the air felt expensive. The real challenge of the evening for me was trying to buy GalaticShrimp a pint, 3 times I tried, 3 times someone else paid for mine and his, damn you lot for being so nice. I did manage to buy him one before the end of the weekend though so all is right.
Oh yea, the escape rooms they happened, after my poor decision to browse the airsoft shop at the activity centre me and Cheb were maybe a bit late to arrive. Cheb jumped out, my new mission: find a parking spot, next up: Run Pig Run. Can't say I want to do that bit again.
On Sunday, aquarium visit and lunch at Spitfire BBQ, ending the evening in Spoons and the semi-regular hysterical 2am Airbnb kitchen chats

Overall, my first Torncon/Tornfest was a real 10 out of good.
No complaints from me. Would take an arrow to the nose again. 

I missed out on Friday but everything I attended on Saturday was well organised. We went on a guided tour of Bristol, which seemed slightly silly to me since I'm local but it was actually fascinating and I fully recommend it. Most importantly I learned the origin of the phrase "daylight robbery" and will now never let our Dutch Torn players such as Potoo live it down. Bastards! 

Was nice to put some faces and personalities to usernames. I drank alcoholic chicken soup which scared everyone. I then scared everyone further with my meal choices (except for Plague, real recognise real). I was then in turn scared (and impressed) by the amount BrotherLiftFork BrotherForkLift could consume, and of the size of the sausage on offer in my favourite city of Bristol. It was also fantastic to realise my Torn trivia knowledge is only "bad" and not the "abysmal" I assumed, and to mutually laugh at the same idiots getting punted from faction after faction of those that were in attendance. 

On Sunday I stared directly into the butthole of a fish, witnessed some sexy shrimp (thanks for inviting your sister GalacticShrimp) and won two races (TornFest official race and TornFest unofficial Bristol aquarium speedrun).  

I was mostly just going along because we were already planning a DuckCon at roughly the same time and location, and was a little bit intimidated by the idea of meeting so many new people at once, but you were all an absolute delight. 10/10 would abandon ducks for strangers and that is how any faction's leadership should be, right? 

Thank you CousinShiggy, NinjaPanda, BrotherForklift, Potoo and countless others for your organisation skills, generosity and friendliness throughout. Oh and can confirm Potoo's focaccia is bangin',

Crazy how far this game has come since I started playing it.  Was just reminiscing about the old days with a friend last night about how you used to be rich if you owned a mansion, some asshole named The_Legend aka King_Ace was the top dog, there were no level 100s and how Clansy, Leuky and MattyB were bogie back then.

If you would have told me how much this game would grow over the 18 years since I signed up and started playing, I wouldn't have believed you. I probably would've made fun of you for thinking a text based game could grow into what torn has tbh lol

I've never made it to a torn meetup but I do enjoy living vicariously through y'alls accounts of them and it's cool to put faces to names that I've been seeing for years and years.

Thanks Cheb for a lovely event!

Had a great weekend meeting old friends and new. Very much looking forward to the next one in York next august bank holiday weekend. Big shout out to everyone who attended for being so lovely. A message I saw again and again was people being glad they came despite being nervous and how welcoming everybody was.

10/10 would do it all again even if I still have to get lost in London again because the underground is closed.

Sausage party

As a long time TornCon/Fest(UK) enjoyer I'd have to rank this as one of the best meet ups I've ever been to. I won't go into the activities, as that has been covered, although I will reiterate that they were incredibly well thought out and organised. Ty Cheb and management team!

What made this personally stand out for me was how easily the more/less seasoned meetup peeps gelled with each other. In the UK, we've been doing big/mini meetups for years, so we've established a core group of people who will attend if they can. I think the success of TornCon Amsterdam really put a spotlight on how fun these can be for people who weren't clued in before, so a lot of people made the leap to give it a go.

What a rousing success this was. No drama (other than that poor Uber driver). Lots of laughs and drinks and just.. getting to know each other. At the end of the day, what keeps us logging on everyday is less watching numbers go brrrrrr and more the personal connections we make. What better way to do that then to have a laugh and a drink and group attack someone with pillows.

Personal standouts:

BrotherForklift: His heart is as big as his stomach capacity
Potoo: The wisest fool I've ever met. Also who bakes bread every morning for strangers? This guy
CousinShiggy: One of the funniest people I've ever met (let's get that book going!)
GalacticShrimp: Twinsie sense of humour iykyk
Arithond: Best hair and energy ever
Pigloverplanet: Took a punt on coming down and is now part of the fam
Bumbi: Still surprisingly normal irl
And the most obvious one is Cheb. What a fucking guy. He puts all this time and effort year after year making these happen off his own back. He the realist one.

The Ratz and Ducks of Quacken reign supreme with attendance. Come to York next year and join the fun!

I had a lovely time

Even if (especially because?) it was swarmed by both Ratz and Quackz who are all infuriatingly good fun people 

The discord banter alone was diamond tier

Watch this space for a Sheffield mini meet

Possibly with fewer people being kicked out of Wetherspoons than this meet 

Possibly.

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Awwww, Caz and I would have loved to attend, but it just isn't possible to guarantee she wouldn't get us kicked out again :)

had so much fun 

im not about all them words, so here is a photo dump Tornfest 2026

big thank you to Cheb for orgazning and everyone that helped organizing <3

Love the pics of the 3 am club

so much banter in that Kitchen!

Was awesome! Thank you Cheb for organizing all of it!

All the activites were excellent, and all the drinks and talks we had at the AirBnB kitchen were exceptionnal !