The Game Awards 2026: date, start times by region, how to watch and our predictions

Gaming’s biggest awards night is back. Here’s what’s actually confirmed about The Game Awards 2026, when it starts where you are, how to watch, and who we think is in the running. We’ll update this post when the nominees are announced.

What’s confirmed

• Date: Thursday 10 December 2026, live from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. This is officially confirmed by The Game Awards.
• Start time: The Game Awards’ own FAQ says the show streams on 10 December “with the opening act starting at 7:30p ET / 4:30p PT”.
• Price to watch: free. The FAQ says it streams free across all major streaming services.
• Eligibility cutoff: games must be commercially available on or before Friday 20 November 2026 at 9pm PT (Saturday 21 November, 5am UK time). For the Players’ Voice category, the cutoff is 30 November.
• Tickets: a limited number of public tickets to attend in person go on sale on 29 October through AXS, according to the official site.

What isn’t confirmed yet

• Nominee announcement date: not officially confirmed. When we checked on 26 October, The Game Awards hadn’t announced a date for revealing the 2026 nominees. Coverage from outlets including Radio Times and GamingBible expects “mid-November”, in line with previous years, but that’s an expectation, not an announcement.
• Presenters, performers and world premieres: nothing announced yet.
• The full list of streaming platforms for 2026: the official FAQ says “all major streaming services” without listing them. Radio Times reports YouTube, Twitch, X, Facebook Live and Steam. Those are where it has streamed before, but check the official site on the day.

Start times by region

The show starts on Thursday 10 December in the Americas, which means the early hours of Friday 11 December in Europe and daytime on Friday in Asia and Australia. By then the US clocks will have gone back (on 1 November), so the times below use winter time in the northern hemisphere and summer time in Australia.

Region	Start time
Los Angeles (PT)	Thu 10 Dec, 4:30pm
New York (ET)	Thu 10 Dec, 7:30pm
UK and Ireland (GMT)	Fri 11 Dec, 12:30am
Central Europe (CET)	Fri 11 Dec, 1:30am
India (IST)	Fri 11 Dec, 6:00am
Japan (JST)	Fri 11 Dec, 9:30am
Sydney (AEDT)	Fri 11 Dec, 11:30am

Times are converted from the official 7:30pm ET start. If a pre-show is added, it’ll start earlier; we’ll add it here once it’s announced.

How to watch

The Game Awards streams free and live online, so you don’t need a TV subscription. Check thegameawards.com on the night for the official list of platforms in your country, and stick to the official channels rather than unofficial re-streams. In Europe, the show runs well past 3am, so if you’d rather sleep, the official channels usually post the full show and individual trailers afterwards, so you can catch up over breakfast. Availability of some platforms varies by country.

How the winners are picked

According to the official FAQ, nominees in most categories are chosen by an international jury of more than 100 media and influencer outlets. Each outlet submits its top five per category, and the five games on the most ballots become the nominees. Winners are decided by a mix of the jury vote and a public fan vote. Reporting from previous years puts that split at 90% jury and 10% fans, but we couldn’t find the 2026 weighting on the official site, so treat that figure as unconfirmed.

Our predictions (and they are only predictions)

No nominees have been announced, so none of this is official. These are our guesses based on 2026’s biggest releases that we’ve covered on the Bulletin, and the outlets we’ve read have suggested similar contenders.

• Game of the Year contenders: Resident Evil Requiem (released 27 February) feels like the safest bet for a nomination: it was one of the year’s biggest launches. Pokémon Pokopia (5 March, Switch 2) is our outside pick, because a cosy Pokémon life sim won over a lot of people who didn’t expect it to.
• The GTA VI question: Grand Theft Auto VI is due on 19 November 2026, the day before the eligibility cutoff, so on the official rules it could qualify. Whether a jury that’s had the game for days rather than months will nominate it is another matter. We think it’s more likely to feature heavily at next year’s show, but genuinely nobody knows yet.
• Other names being talked about: outlets have floated games including Saros, 007 First Light, Pragmata and Control Resonant. We haven’t confirmed release dates for all of these ourselves, so we’re not making calls on them.

For a recap of the year so far, see our biggest gaming moments of 2026, and for what’s still coming before the cutoff, our November 2026 release calendar.