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Casual Games Report H1 2026: Growth Beneath the Still Surface

The casual gaming market maintained a stable valuation of $11 billion during the first half of 2026, characterized by a strategic shift from high-volume experimentation toward the refinement of established gameplay loops.

• The casual games market remained stagnant in H1 2026 with $11B in revenue, mirroring H1 2025 performance despite significant shifts in genre-specific growth.
• Merge-2 is the fastest-growing casual genre, nearly doubling its revenue to $1.2B in H1 2026 with a 20% year-over-year increase in downloads.
• Match-3 remains the largest puzzle subgenre at $2.4B, with Dream Games' 'Royal Kingdom' reaching the #3 market spot through a strategy of scaling limited titles and integrating diverse mini-game events.