Murder Mystery Guide has been named a 2026 African Excellence double winner — Best African Entertainment Brand and Murder Mystery Dinner Experience of the Year.
It’s official — Murder Mystery Guide is now an award-winning murder mystery dinner. Two of them, in fact, and I’ve read the certificate about four times to make sure it’s real.
We won. Twice: Best African Entertainment Brand 2026 and Murder Mystery Dinner Experience of the Year 2026 at the MEA Markets African Excellence Awards. So I’m going to allow myself a moment of pure, undignified glee — and then tell you who really won.
These awards are judged on merit, not votes
I’ll be honest, because I’d want the honesty if I were reading this. Plenty of “awards” online can more or less be bought, or won by rallying the most friends to click a button. These aren’t those.
The African Excellence Awards are run by MEA Markets, a UK-based business publication that has covered the Middle East and Africa region since 2015. Winners aren’t chosen by public vote. They’re assessed by a research panel on merit — business performance, longevity, growth, innovation, and feedback from the people who’ve actually experienced the thing. In the organiser’s own words, the “ability to succeed is not linked to the number of votes received,” and winners are “not determined by the size of their business or by how well-known they are.”
That’s the part that got me. Somebody looked closely at what actually happens in these rooms — and decided it was the best of its kind in Africa.
What an award-winning improvised murder mystery dinner actually is
Here’s what makes ours different, and it started with a box set.
Years ago my aunt, who’d married a Brit and visited us in the Eastern Cape for a season, brought out a British murder mystery game for the family one evening. We loved it — not because of the murder, but because it broke us out of having the exact same dinner-table conversation we’d had night after night, year after year.
The next year, she forgot to bring one. So my mum and I made our own. And ours changed one important thing: instead of everyone reading from a script, each guest got a character, a secret to keep, a secret to reveal — and improvised the rest. Nobody performs a play. Everybody is in one.
That’s the whole idea behind an improvised murder mystery dinner — designed in Cape Town, hosted everywhere. No scripts to memorise, no acting experience required. You just have to say yes.
The people who actually won this
I don’t win “Experience of the Year.” My guests do.
Every ounce of that award was earned in the rooms — by the guest who arrived swearing they “can’t act” and left having stolen the whole evening with an accent nobody knew they had in them. By the colleagues who walked in as near-strangers and were accusing each other of murder over the main course like old friends. By the host who booked the whole thing and then got to do the rarest thing of all: actually enjoy their own party.
I just write the mystery. You become the story. That’s always been the deal, and it’s the only reason any of this exists.
Come play
If you’ve ever been curious about hosting one — a milestone birthday, a year-end function nobody invents an excuse to skip, or a “we’re bored of the usual and want to actually remember an evening” kind of night — I’d love to hear from you.
You can book an evening with me, or if you’d rather host it yourself this weekend, browse the Print & Play mystery kits — many began life as private commissions.
At every other party, you’re a guest. At this one, you’re a suspect.
And to everyone who’s trusted me with an evening of their lives so far: thank you. Truly. This one’s yours.
— Lisa Aspeling Murder Mystery Guide
See the official announcements: Murder Mystery Guide — MEA Markets winners page · About the African Excellence Awards