GDCA 2026: Every Game of the Year Nominee and What to Expect
The Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony happens Thursday March 12 at GDC 2026. Six GOTY nominees including Expedition 33, Silksong, and Split Fiction compete for gaming's developer-voted honor.
Indie game enthusiast and pixel art admirer. I play everything so you don't have to — but you'll want to after reading my picks.
Six games. One trophy. Thursday night at GDC 2026, the Game Developers Choice Awards will crown this year's Game of the Year as voted by the people who actually make games. The ceremony runs March 12 at 6:30 PM PT, and the lineup of nominees reflects a year where independent studios and AAA powerhouses competed on surprisingly equal footing.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 leads the field with eight nominations across nearly every category. Hollow Knight: Silksong follows with seven. Both games represent years of anticipation finally paying off, though in very different ways. The full GOTY slate includes Blue Prince, Donkey Kong Bananza, Ghost of Yōtei, and Split Fiction.
The Nominees
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Sandfall Interactive's turn-based RPG already swept the French Pégases awards with four wins including Game of the Year. Set in a Belle Époque-inspired fantasy world, Expedition 33 blends real-time mechanics into its turn-based combat in ways that feel genuinely innovative rather than gimmicky. The game moved over five million copies within its first year and built the kind of passionate fanbase that shows up to vote. Eight nominations suggests widespread appreciation across disciplines: audio, visuals, narrative, design.
Hollow Knight: Silksong
After six years of development, Team Cherry finally released the sequel that defined "vaporware anxiety" for an entire generation of indie fans. Was it worth the wait? A 91 on OpenCritic and seven GDCA nominations suggest yes. Silksong expands on everything that made the original special while giving protagonist Hornet her own identity separate from the Knight. The movement alone justifies a nomination. That it competes in nearly every category speaks to Team Cherry's ambition paying off.
Split Fiction
Hazelight Studios follows up It Takes Two with another cooperative narrative experiment. Split Fiction puts two writers into their own stories, jumping between genres as they try to escape a publishing company's brain-scanning technology. Director Josef Fares continues his crusade against single-player gaming, and the results remain compelling. Co-op design as an art form, not a feature checkbox.
Donkey Kong Bananza
Nintendo EPD Production Group No. 8 delivered what might be the most joyful game of 2025. Bananza reimagines Donkey Kong's world with the same energy that Mario Wonder brought to 2D platforming. A 92 on IGDB makes it the highest-rated nominee in the field. When Nintendo gets experimental, the results tend to resonate with developers who understand the craft behind apparent simplicity.
Ghost of Yōtei
Sucker Punch Productions moved the Ghost series to 1603 Hokkaido with a new protagonist, Atsu. The studio's open-world formula evolved rather than repeated, with traversal and combat systems that learned from criticism of the original. Ghost of Yōtei represents AAA development at its most polished, and the samurai action genre has rarely felt this refined.
Blue Prince
The wildcard nominee. Dogubomb's room-based puzzle adventure flew under most radars until word of mouth transformed it into a phenomenon. Blue Prince earned a 90 on OpenCritic and passionate advocacy from developers who found themselves losing entire weekends to its mansion. Sometimes the GDCA nominates a game specifically because creators want their peers to experience it.
Special Awards
This year's Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Don Daglow, whose career spans the entire history of video games. Daglow created Dungeon in 1975, led development on Neverwinter Nights (the original), and has mentored generations of developers through his consulting work. The award recognizes a designer whose influence extends far beyond any single title.
Rebecca Ann Heineman receives the Ambassador Award posthumously. Heineman co-founded Interplay Productions, programmed games across every platform imaginable, and advocated openly for transgender visibility in gaming before such advocacy was common. The award honors both her technical contributions and her courage.
Why GDCA Matters
Most gaming awards are decided by journalists, critics, or public voting. The GDCA is different. Only working game developers vote. That distinction affects what gets nominated and what wins. Technical achievements matter more. Design innovations that might not translate to mainstream audiences still get recognition. The ceremony functions as the industry acknowledging its own, and the results often surprise people who follow gaming through traditional media channels.
The 2026 ceremony streams live from San Francisco's Moscone Center. Whatever wins, this year's nominees represent a strong argument that 2025 delivered exactly what gaming needed: ambition across every scale, from two-person teams to 400-person studios, all competing on the same stage.