The Game Awards 2026: Confirmed date and what to expect

2026 has been another incredible year for gaming, and plenty of titles are vying for the title of Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2026.

Last year, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 blew everyone away, taking home a record-breaking nine awards.

The likes of Resident Evil Requiem, Saros and 007 First Light will all be looking to replicate that success this year, but the competition is tighter than ever.

So, when is The Game Awards 2026? What can we expect from this year's show? Let's take a look.

When will The Game Awards 2026 take place?

The Game Awards 2026 will take place on Thursday, 10 December 2026 – or 11 December, if you're in the eastern hemisphere.

We don't have an exact start time just yet, but last year's show started at 12:30am GMT, so we'll use that as our placeholder for this year, which means 4:30pm PT and 7:30pm ET for those of you in the US.

Limited public tickets are set to go on sale on 29 October, but for the rest of us mere mortals, we'll be able to watch the whole thing online via YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook Live and Steam.

When are the nominees announced for The Game Awards 2026?

Nominations for The Game Awards 2026 are set to be revealed in mid-November.

So, we've got plenty of time to go until we find out who Geoff and co have their eyes on, but that doesn't mean we can't speculate, right?

At the time of writing, a few of the potential frontrunners include Resident Evil Requiem, Saros, 007 First Light, Pokémon Pokopia, Big Walk and Pragmata.

There are lots of games still to come, though, and we wouldn't be surprised to see The Blood of Dawnwalker, Onimusha: Way of the Sword and Control Resonant challenging for the big prize too.

Lastly, as it's releasing in November, we aren't sure if GTA 6 will make the cutoff for nominations, so we could see that end up being nominated at The Game Awards 2027 instead.

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What to expect from The Game Awards 2026

Beyond handing out the coveted awards to developers, The Game Awards always shows off dozens of trailers for the biggest upcoming games.

We'll no doubt see plenty of trailers for already-announced games like Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, God of War: Laufey, Fable and more.

But beyond that, the show always plays host to plenty of world premieres, so there's sure to be something big that we don't know about yet – Highguard 2, anyone?

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