I host LAN parties about twice a year (now that I have space for it). I've been hosting LANs since 2012 and even back then LAN parties were already dying. The hardest part of hosting a LAN these days is convincing your guests to get off their couch. I think in person connection is worth the effort of dragging your PC across town, but it's a hard sell. Online gaming has matured to a point where, from a technical perspective, you don't gain much from playing on LAN at all. In fact many modern games require Internet play, even for private matches!

Anyway I wrote up some more of my thoughts about modern LAN parties here: https://justinbecker.dev/blog/2026/08/05/how-to-host-a-lanpa...