The GDC Festival of Gaming has come to a close after uniting all facets of the international games industry for five days of learning, networking, inspiration, celebration, and headline-making news. In its mission to address the needs of the entire games industry ecosystem, the transformed and re-branded GDC Festival of Gaming hosted 700+ cross-disciplinary sessions from 1,100 speakers, thousands of networking meetings, more than 300 exhibitors and nightly celebrations in the Moscone Center and throughout the city of San Francisco. GDC will be returning to Moscone Center next year, Monday, March 1 to Friday, March 5, 2027. The call for submissions for the GDC Festival of Gaming will open in early July 2026.
Expanded Scope of Content, Appealing to More Trades Across the Ecosystem
This year’s Festival represented a boldly reinvented GDC, expanding the appeal of the event to welcome all attendees to access more than 700 sessions. Many sessions saw standing-room-only audiences, reflecting how the new Festival Pass structure opened access to GDC’s renowned programming, resulting in some of the most packed and energized sessions the conference has seen in decades. Evolving to meet the changing needs of the industry while simultaneously honoring four decades of GDC’s legacy, GDC Festival of Gaming welcomed 1,100 speakers who touched on every aspect of shipping a game, from QA and design to marketing and reporting, and all things in-between. GDC content continued to draw attention to the complex art of game making, with sessions expounding upon the creation of landmark titles Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Donkey Kong Bananza, Ghost of Yotei, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, Dispatch, Overwatch, Peak, Baby Steps, Despelote and more.
2026 marked the return of the GDC Keynote, with industry icon Rob Pardo outlining the start of his independent studio, Bonfire Studios, which aims to craft future classics by drawing inspiration from his work designing gaming’s most iconic RPGs as the former Chief Creative Officer of Blizzard Entertainment. The brand new Luminaries Speaker Series was hosted at the Blue Shield of California Theater at YBCA and presented the most impactful leadership offering that GDC has ever created, with programming designed for senior leaders, investors, marketers, studio heads, publishing executives, and influential decision-makers. This series featured talks by speakers from NVIDIA, Google DeepMind, Universal Music Group, SEGA, Mattel, Blizzard and others on emerging and integral topics including AI, investment, global expansion and cross-media opportunities, changing demographics and player needs, and more.
During GDC, there were several major announcements and reveals, including Microsoft’s reveal of the first official details around Project Helix. Project Helix is the next generation of the Xbox platform, confirming that future Xbox titles will be playable on both console and PC under a unified Xbox platform, with the console boasting more powerful ray-tracing and machine learning capabilities and the Xbox platform featuring “Play Anywhere” cross-progression functionality to provide a consistent experience across compatible devices. Google DeepMind engineers also drew massive crowds for the demonstration of the newest iteration of its generative AI technology Genie 3, which can create samples of navigable 3D worlds using text prompts. Game company Valve shared further details on their “Steam Machine Verified” program at GDC, which outlines which games will run well on Steam Machines upon their release. In addition, the News & Demo Stage, introduced for the first time this year, featured press briefings from Google Play, Razer, Limited Run Games and Snail Games, putting GDC Festival of Gaming on the map as a platform newly designed for breaking news for the games industry.
The Festival Hall (formerly the GDC Expo Floor) proved to be one of the busiest hubs of the event throughout the week, with attendees spending extended time exploring its stages, gameplay areas, international pavilions and exhibitor showcases. Lounge seating, food and beverage pop-ups, hands-on game areas and a constant schedule of sessions and interviews created a vibrant environment where attendees stayed, met, and discovered throughout the day. The Hall evolved into five distinct neighborhoods (Game Development, Future Tech, Indie & Education, International, Monetization & Player Engagement) with each neighborhood featuring its own stage for talks, spotlights and live interviews. 300+ exhibitors in the Festival Hall presented their emerging technologies and innovations on the Festival Hall floor, including industry leaders like Sony Interactive Entertainment, Microsoft Xbox, Tencent Games, Keywords Studios, Snail Games, Roblox, Snap Games, Discord, Reddit, Google Cloud, Meta, Servers.com, and NVIDIA. The Festival Hall also hosted many international pavilions representing countries including Brazil, Portugal, Costa Rica, Germany, Italy, Kyrgyzstan, Chile, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom and Wales.
Hands-on with New Games and Interactive Experiences
The IGF Pavilion’s award-nominated indie game showcase found its home on the Festival Hall, along with alt.ctrl.GDC’s experimental playground of imaginative controllers and maker-driven alternate control methods, and more. GDC Play was also on the Festival Hall floor, and provided an interactive, dynamic platform for indie developers to showcase their innovative games and creative projects, connect with industry professionals, and gain visibility and recognition from peers. The adjacent GDC Commons offered drop-in indie game sessions and live interviews with podcast recordings in a comfy seated area. All four provided space to celebrate the diverse and imaginative vision that indie developers bring to the game community.
GDC is the Week Where It Happened
The new Festival of Gaming format incorporated an expanded focus on networking, with multiple lounges that hosted thousands of 1:1 meetings; the GDC app that allows everyone to discover attendees and schedule meetups; and the GamePlan networking platform included with the premium Game Changer pass that matched developers, publishers and funding sources to spark partnerships and deals. Networking opportunities also included GDC’s version of Speed Networking, GDC Encounters; GDC Base Camp, a dedicated lounge in the Festival Hall offering space for both casual mingling and pre-arranged meetings scheduled through the event app; the Summit Connect Lounge, each of the five neighborhood’s lounges on the Festival Hall Floor, and more. Moreover, the week drew industry members from every part of the industry to meet, make deals, find jobs, start new initiatives, and reunite with old friends all around the Moscone Convention Center and surrounding areas.
Celebrating Games Every Night, Throughout the City
The expanded GDC Festival of Gaming format brought with it celebratory activities in and around San Francisco for all attendees. Opening Night at the Ballpark kicked off the week by taking over the San Francisco Giants’ home, Oracle Park, to celebrate all those who bring games to life with a night of tabletop games, community activities, tasty ballpark concessions and a community-voted screening of Edgar Wright’s beloved gaming-inspired film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Tuesday night saw 2026 Grammy Award-winning composer Austin Wintory and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music return to GDC with the 3rd Annual Developer’s Concert performance, giving masterful performances of music from classic and newly iconic game soundtracks for a standing room only audience in GDC’s biggest forum, the Main Stage. The 28th annual Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards Wednesday night recognized the year’s most influential, innovative and acclaimed indie game devs around the world, awarding developer AP Thomson’s surreal strategy game, Titanium Court, with the Seumas McNally Grand Prize for Best Independent Game. That was followed Thursday night by the 26th annual Game Developers Choice Awards (GDCA). The GDCAs honored the dedicated artistry and craft behind the year’s best titles, awarding Sandfall Interactive and Kepler Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 with Game of the Year along with four additional wins, further cementing that title’s legacy as one of the best and most acclaimed RPGs of all time. In addition, more than 30 GDC-affiliated events took place across San Francisco throughout the week as part of the GDC Affiliate Program, ranging from morning runs to a night of game-inspired improv comedy to many happy hours, mixers and community gatherings.
“This was the first year of a bold new concept for GDC,” said Nina Brown, President of GDC. “We are thrilled that 20,000 unique attendees representing our global community showed up from over 85 countries and trusted us with this evolution. The energy across the Festival, from packed sessions to a vibrant show floor and thousands of meetings happening throughout the week, demonstrates how powerful it is when our industry comes together to learn from one another, build partnerships and shape what comes next for games. This transformation was built directly from community feedback, and we’re excited to continue listening, learning, and evolving the GDC Festival of Gaming as we look ahead to 2027.”
“We have heard loud and clear from our community this week that the redesigned GDC Festival of Gaming is starting to truly respond to their needs – from industry stalwarts who come to the show year after year to smaller indies seeking inspiration for their bold debut, to every branch of the industry that can now call GDC home.” said Mark DeLoura, Executive Director, Innovation & Growth at GDC. “We are so excited to bring the global industry together for the conversations around the big themes of the moment– currently the ethical and productive use of AI, emerging platforms like the next generation Xbox, and how to navigate career paths in a turbulent industry–and to continue to evolve what our event can offer as the pressing themes change next year and beyond.”
GDC will be returning to San Francisco and the Moscone Center next year, Monday, March 1 to Friday, March 5, 2027.
About GDC Festival of Gaming
GDC Festival of Gaming is the world’s largest professional game industry event with market-defining content for programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals, business decision makers and others involved in the development of interactive games and immersive experiences. GDC brings together the global game industry community year-round through events and digital media, including GDC Vault, GameDeveloper.com, Independent Games Festival, and the Game Developers Choice Awards.
GDC is organized by Informa PLC, a leading B2B information services group and one of the leading B2B Events organizers in the world. To learn more and for the latest news and information visit www.informa.com.