I got a sneak peek inside Leeds' giant Trivial Pursuit trail before launch – here's what to expect

Did you know the world's first commercially viable steam locomotive was built in Leeds? Salamanca, which carried coal from Middleton Colliery to the city some 214 years ago, helped put Leeds on the map and kickstart the global Industrial Revolution.

It's one of the many facts visitors will discover this summer as Trivial Pursuit arrives in Leeds to celebrate 400 years since the city received its royal charter in 1626.

Ahead of Saturday’s launch, the Yorkshire Evening Post was invited for an exclusive preview while organisers were putting the finishing touches to the city centre-wide trail, which runs to August 30.

Like the classic Hasbro board game, the aim is to collect all six cheeses by correctly answering questions from six different categories. But instead of moving around a board with a dice, players travel between landmarks across Leeds city centre.

Giant cheese wheels have appeared at locations across the city, each representing one of the game's six categories: Geography (Blue), Entertainment (Pink), History (Yellow), Art & Literature (Brown), Science & Nature (Green) and Sports & Leisure (Orange).

The trail takes players to Trinity Leeds, Merrion Centre, Victoria Gate, Royal Armouries, the Corn Exchange and Wellington Place. Collect all six cheeses before returning to the centre of the board - in this case, a giant Trivial Pursuit board inside Leeds City Museum - for one final question and a chance to bag some impressive prizes.

Each stop is staffed by two hosts - complete with pun-filled names such as Trivia Newton-John and Quiz-Pine - who present the questions on interactive screens and hand out cheese wedges to successful players.

Walking around the trail before it opens, it quickly becomes clear that organisers have gone well beyond simply placing question boards around the city. Alongside the quiz stations are displays featuring props, artefacts and lesser-known facts about Leeds, while familiar faces from across the city also make appearances throughout the experience.

The reason for spreading the stations across the city centre, Martin Dickson of LeedsBID tells me, is to encourage people to discover places they might otherwise walk past.

He said: "Every year we find a location that many people tell us they've never been to before. They still come into the city centre often, but they've never found the Corn Exchange, or they've never found the Lifting Tower at Wellington Place.

"So hopefully that part of the game teaches people new things about the city centre that they thought they knew and maybe places they'll then go back to again."

Trivial Pursuit Leeds has been designed with accessibility in mind. Every category includes both a classic and junior question, and players get two attempts to answer correctly before missing out on a cheese.

"We want to give people who are juggling children through the school holidays something to do so that parents can bring them one day, maybe grandparents the week after," Martin added.

Trivial Pursuit is not the first board game to take over Leeds. In 2024, Hasbro and LeedsBID transformed the city into a giant game of Monopoly, and that partnership helped shape this latest experience, according to Hasbro's Hannah Sweeney.

"The ultimate goal of ours is just societal reasons to get people together and play and to do that in such a large capacity is incredibly special and to see that in real life come out is amazing," she said.

"At the heart of everything we do is bringing together that multi-generational family and friends and that's really what's connecting people. So we really wanted to make it an experience that you could come to as a grandchild, as a parent, as a grandparent, a cross-friend group."

The trail ends in Brodrick Hall at Leeds City Museum, where one of several well-known Loiners - including presenter Alex Zane, actor Angela Griffin and campaigner Lindsay Burrow - presents players with their final challenge.

For me, this is where the experience really comes together. Brodrick Hall has been transformed into the final stage of the game, with six giant screens representing different centuries in Leeds' history - from 1626 to 2126 - surrounding a central platform where players answer one last question in the hope of completing their Trivial Pursuit board.

Although I didn't get to tackle the full trail myself before launch, the scale of the experience was clear from the preview alone. From giant cheese wheels dotted across the city centre to an ambitious finale inside Leeds City Museum, it looks set to offer families a different way to explore Leeds over the summer holidays while picking up a few surprising facts along the way.