GW FY25/26 annual report

[W.A.Rorie]

=][= WAY TO MUCH OFF TOPIC POSTS =][=

Topic is about the Annual Report

Not About Youtubers

or

Limiting armies options. 

=][= Stay on Topic =][=

 

[phandaal]

2 hours ago, Ahzek451 said:

I might be missing a work around, but Is there a way to read this without a subscription?

 

You can get around those subscription walls by enabling script blocking in your browser or ad blocker (or subscribe... to the news... in 2026?), but you are not missing out on much.

 

GW's stock dipped temporarily while the overall FTSE had a slight increase for the day.

 

What the article does not mention is that GW's stock recovered by the end of the day and finished only slightly below the broader FTSE index, and that is where it was today as well. So yes, there was a little blip, but probably just caused by day traders doing short term moves based on algorithms and other day traders' buy/sell signals.

[Joe]

They do tend to go through the little blips around these reports; I think it was 23/24 or 24/25 where they trended down briefly as they'd pointed out that licensing revenue would be down compared to the previous year (no comparable release to Space Marine II) and that they were anticipating supply chain disruption and some concerning operational cost increases.

[Arkangilos]

On 7/28/2026 at 4:47 AM, Lord Marshal said:

Another record year? But... the youtubers told me they were on the brink of total collapse!

 

Next quarter for sure.

Of course it’s a record, everyone had to buy new armies and Rulebook an again. 

[N1SB]

On 7/28/2026 at 8:02 PM, Flaherty said:

The company is doing great. One stat jumped out:

 

They're spending more on IT (£24.1 m) than the entire creative studio (£21.9m)

 

They're spending more on the IT crowd (£7.9m) than on manufacturing tooling (£7.6m).

Citations from the report:

"In 2025/26 we invested £21.9 million in the Warhammer studio with a further £7.6 million spent on tooling"

"Total IT costs have increased by £2.0 million to £24.1 million including increases in staff costs of £1.0 million (from £6.9 million to £7.9 million) and increases in software and related costs of £1.9 million (from £6.9 million to £8.8 million), including software purchased on multi-year contracts, offset by a reduction in consultancy costs of £0.9 million (from £4.0 million to £3.1 million)." 

 

Spot on, exactly the glitches in the Matrix that I, too, look for.  It's very counter-intuitive, isn't it?

 

Turns out there's a completely logical reason, and it's not like the high cost of IT in general.  Here is a classic chart...because they don't share details on this anymore:

 

 

It's from 2021.  2022 and onwards, they stopped having a full breakdown, so I literally can't make this again.  What I want to illustrate is the bit that includes all the miniatures, from design to manufacture, is called Design to Manufacture (literal name they used back then).  It's only 2% of GW's operating expenses or, simply put, running costs.

 

To compare, Trade, Retail and Online, or FLGS telesales, Warhammer Stores and warhammer.com, is 9% + 47% + 7%...more than 60%, way more than half...is basically like their selling costs, ya?  We veterans' action is: buy models.  GW's action is: sell, not models, but the whole Hobby.  THAT's actually their main job.

 

Lots of talk about Warhammer on Amazon, etc., if we were to think of GW as an actor, he'd not be a great actor, his acting'd be very basic, he's got like 2 emotions: grim & dark, but he'd be great at selling a movie, he'd be an action star that people would just to pay to see or something, looks great in power armour or whatever.

 

Brother Flaherty, £20+ mil of IT costs, I can tell you just under £10- mil of that is for Online/warhammmer.com, one of GW's sales channels, and I bet a lot of the rest of the IT costs is for online systems for Trade/FLGSs and Retail/Warhammer Stores.  Now, if GW was spending that much on Microsoft Copilot for Office 365, that'd be a waste.

 

But if I were to tell you they spent more on Warhammer Stores worldwide than Warhammer Studios, I'm guessing you...wouldn't really like it, but it'd make sense to you.  Instead of Warhammer Stores, I'm telling you it's for the whole world wide web for FLGS and online customers, too, you STILL may not like, but it'd totally make sense.

 

And telling people what they don't really like but makes total sense is actually pretty much my job.  But very well done spotting this weird quirk.

 

(Their Group Finance Director, the CFO, actually said "I don't know much about AI."  Good, because clearly no one does.)

[Armchair Warlord]

On 7/29/2026 at 2:03 PM, Ahzek451 said:

I might be missing a work around, but Is there a way to read this without a subscription?

 Regarding the article on Reuters - They are most certainly subscription only.

 

Regarding the actual report, Fill your boots !

 

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://assets.ctfassets.net/ost7hseic9hc/1C4g3JYVr04ZCkPb39ygIA/8cc29aed02e772ad1f77aa2bd44e24f4/Accounts_2025-26_FINAL.pdf

[Dudley Nightshade]

30 minutes ago, Armchair Warlord said:

 Regarding the article on Reuters - They are most certainly subscription only.

 

Regarding the actual report, Fill your boots !

 

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://assets.ctfassets.net/ost7hseic9hc/1C4g3JYVr04ZCkPb39ygIA/8cc29aed02e772ad1f77aa2bd44e24f4/Accounts_2025-26_FINAL.pdf

This can be viewed natively in your browser without the Adobe extension too: 

https://assets.ctfassets.net/ost7hseic9hc/1C4g3JYVr04ZCkPb39ygIA/8cc29aed02e772ad1f77aa2bd44e24f4/Accounts_2025-26_FINAL.pdf

[Flaherty]

On 7/31/2026 at 9:03 AM, N1SB said:

 

Spot on, exactly the glitches in the Matrix that I, too, look for.  It's very counter-intuitive, isn't it?

 

Turns out there's a completely logical reason, and it's not like the high cost of IT in general.  Here is a classic chart...because they don't share details on this anymore:

 

 

It's from 2021.  2022 and onwards, they stopped having a full breakdown, so I literally can't make this again.  What I want to illustrate is the bit that includes all the miniatures, from design to manufacture, is called Design to Manufacture (literal name they used back then).  It's only 2% of GW's operating expenses or, simply put, running costs.

 

To compare, Trade, Retail and Online, or FLGS telesales, Warhammer Stores and warhammer.com, is 9% + 47% + 7%...more than 60%, way more than half...is basically like their selling costs, ya?  We veterans' action is: buy models.  GW's action is: sell, not models, but the whole Hobby.  THAT's actually their main job.

 

Lots of talk about Warhammer on Amazon, etc., if we were to think of GW as an actor, he'd not be a great actor, his acting'd be very basic, he's got like 2 emotions: grim & dark, but he'd be great at selling a movie, he'd be an action star that people would just to pay to see or something, looks great in power armour or whatever.

 

Brother Flaherty, £20+ mil of IT costs, I can tell you just under £10- mil of that is for Online/warhammmer.com, one of GW's sales channels, and I bet a lot of the rest of the IT costs is for online systems for Trade/FLGSs and Retail/Warhammer Stores.  Now, if GW was spending that much on Microsoft Copilot for Office 365, that'd be a waste.

 

But if I were to tell you they spent more on Warhammer Stores worldwide than Warhammer Studios, I'm guessing you...wouldn't really like it, but it'd make sense to you.  Instead of Warhammer Stores, I'm telling you it's for the whole world wide web for FLGS and online customers, too, you STILL may not like, but it'd totally make sense.

 

And telling people what they don't really like but makes total sense is actually pretty much my job.  But very well done spotting this weird quirk.

 

(Their Group Finance Director, the CFO, actually said "I don't know much about AI."  Good, because clearly no one does.)

I concur, Frater N1SB! The IT number wasn't a criticism. As you say, they're paying a lot, but it's also a major revenue driver as this covers their ecommerce/store setup,. They're also no doubt spending more than they'd like on Warhammer+ infrastructure. Tech costs are sneakily high for firms where it isn't a core competency and you end up paying for a layer of consulting services tech native firms bake into their standard OpEx. 

And as you say, Games Workshop is in the business of selling a hobby, not plastic soldiers, and the cost profile differs from a pure manufacturing concern. In fact, in the first line of the report, they explicitly frame themselves as an IP company, not a game company and certainly not a miniatures company.

The manufacturing point I was trying to make was that many enthusiasts are operating with an outdated model in mind – Mold-making is no longer a major cost center relative to the business, despite a massive ramp-up in the total of number of new product launches per year. They're almost certainly more constrained by the challenge of managing the global logistics of a launch than cutting a new steel mold.

[kabaakaba]

CAD and modern CNC machines (which have become incredibly cheap over the last 10 years) allow the Games Workshop to create new mods quite easily and inexpensively.At least for a company of this size. But IT infrastructure isn't getting much cheaper.