G-STAR 2026: Tickets, Exhibitors and What's Playable

G-STAR 2026 will not sell you a ticket at the door. The organiser's ticket page says so in one line: "There is no on-site sale of 2026 G-STAR BTC tickets." Every paid consumer ticket for the four days in Busan is an online booking for one named date, and the booking for any given day closes at midnight Korean time the night before. For anyone in the US that is 10 a.m. Eastern, 7 a.m. Pacific, on the day before you go.

The second thing to know is who is in the building. Krafton is back for a tenth straight year with a PUBG-led booth. A new hall of international publishers has CD PROJEKT RED showing Korean-dubbed footage of The Witcher 3's Songs of the Past, SEGA giving Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000 its first Korean demo, and KOEI TECMO and NetEase alongside them. And Nexon, NCSoft and Netmarble have no booth on either consumer floor plan.

Here is what G-STAR 2026 costs, when the shop closes wherever you are, who is in each hall and what you can actually play, the G-CON speaker list, the Overwatch finals in the Auditorium, and where the organiser's own pages disagree, all read on October 25.

The dates and the days

G-STAR 2026 is at BEXCO, 55 APEC-ro, Haeundae-gu, Busan. The organiser's overview page gives the event as Wednesday, November 18 to Sunday, November 22, but the Wednesday is not a show day. Here is what runs when, from that page, the BTB and G-CON pages, and the organiser's September 29 programme announcement:

Every time on this page is Korea Standard Time (KST, UTC+9). Korea has no daylight saving. By show week the US is back on standard time (it changes on November 1) and Europe already changed on October 25, so KST is 14 hours ahead of New York, 17 ahead of Los Angeles, 9 ahead of London and 8 ahead of Paris and Berlin.

The consumer halls' daily hours are only partly published. The ticket page gives three times: the hall opens at 11:00 on Thursday, November 19, ticket verification closes at 17:00, and last admission is 17:30. It gives no opening time for Friday to Sunday and no closing time for any day. The business halls, for comparison, list 10:00 to 18:00. Thursday is also the date of Korea's national college entrance exam, the CSAT; the government has asked public offices and businesses to start work at 10 a.m. or later that day. The ticket page does not give a reason for its 11:00 opening.

What a ticket costs

The consumer ticket is called the BTC ticket, and there are two prices. Both are from the official ticket page:

The rules that come with it:

• Online only, and booked by date. Sales opened September 29 at 15:00 and close November 21 at 23:59. Each ticket is valid only on its booked visit date, and you cannot buy for a day after midnight the night before. Sales run through the official site and app, with Ticketlink handling the booking.
• Two tickets per person per day. A group of three needs two buyers.
• There is no multi-day consumer ticket. All four days as an adult is four bookings and 72,000 won; a youth pays 32,000 won. The pass guide lists four products in all, and the three that cover more than one day are business and conference passes costing 200,000 won and up at the regular rate, below.
• Youth tickets need proof on the day. Staff may ask for a student ID, youth ID, passport or family register; without it the page says the discount and entry can be refused.
• Free entry still needs a ticket. You collect it at the Information Center, which opens an hour before the exhibition.
• Cancellation costs more as the day gets closer. Cancelling within seven days of booking costs nothing, and cancelling before midnight on the day you booked also refunds the booking fee. After that the fee is set by how close you are to your visit, and the page says the visit date takes precedence over the booking date:

The Korean version of the ticket page also has a button for a KREAM Special Pass, sold on the KREAM marketplace. Inven Global's reports describe it as a special pass with official limited-edition merchandise by Lee Dong-geon, the creator of the webtoon Yumi's Cells, who worked with the organiser on this year's key visual. Neither report spells out whether a BTC ticket is part of it. The English ticket page does not mention it, and we could not load the KREAM listing to read a price.

The bigger passes. These all include the consumer halls, which is the only reason they matter to a player:

The G-CON "student" price is narrower than it sounds: the conference page says student passes are only for youths born on or after January 1, 2008, so a university student over 18 pays the regular rate. Conference refunds are by email and only inside the sales stage you bought in, and on-site passes cannot be refunded.

When the shop closes, in your time zone

Because the booking for each day closes at midnight KST the night before, the real deadline for an overseas buyer lands on the morning, or afternoon, of the day before:

In every time zone in that table the cutoff falls on the calendar day before your visit. Book before you fly.

The organiser's floor plan for Exhibition Center 1. A01 to A04, A06 and D05 are the six 100-plus-booth spaces. Plan: G-STAR Organizing Committee.

Hall 1: Krafton, HoYoverse, Webzen and a missing trio

Exhibition Center 1 is the main hall, and the organiser has carved it into six spaces of more than 100 booths each. Read straight off the official floor plan:

Among the smaller booths: Bandai Namco Entertainment at B05, Century Games at D04, Monster Energy at C13 (an influencer lounge, per Inven Global's August 12 report), Joker Studio at C28, a Tokyo Game Show stand at C11 and the official G-SHOP at C38. Many of the rest are universities, games high schools and regional agencies.

Webzen's game is a tactical command RPG built on Naver Webtoon's "I Became the Tyrant of a Defense Game", developed by its subsidiary Webzen Crevix in Unreal Engine 5 with hand-drawn diorama pixel-art characters. Inven Global's September 21 report says the G-STAR demo is the first public showing, a tutorial of roughly 15 minutes covering exploration, defence battles and domain management, and that the game is aimed at a 2027 launch.

HoYoverse has one of the six big spaces and no line-up in the organiser's material. If you are hoping for Genshin Impact news in Busan, we found nothing confirmed for this booth as of October 25.

The trio that is not here. Nexon, NCSoft and Netmarble do not appear on either consumer floor plan, Hall 1 or Hall 2. Korean outlets such as CEO Score Daily have reported their absence, and the plans themselves confirm it. Nexon is not entirely absent from the week: Kim Yongha, who heads Nexon Games' IO division, is on the G-CON speaker list. Pearl Abyss has no booth of its own either, though it appears in two other places, below.

What Krafton is bringing

Krafton's October 20 press release names five titles for booth A03, under a booth concept it calls KRAFTON NOW, and marks this as its tenth consecutive G-STAR:

Note what the PUBG line does not say. Krafton names the IP, "PUBG", not a specific game, and describes an experience space with a photo zone, participatory content and stage programmes without saying whether any PUBG game is playable. PUBG: DED.NET, the new PUBG Studios shooter Krafton debuted at gamescom and put into a US console closed beta on October 9 to 12, is not named in the G-STAR release. Krafton says booth and programme details will come later. For PUBG itself, our PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS section has the game's current state.

Hall 2: the new global showcase

The ground floor of Exhibition Center 2 is new this year: the G-STAR Global Game Showcase, which Inven Global's report labels "Powered By Intel", with the indie area, a government culture festival, Hyundai and the main event stage beside it. From the official floor plan and the organiser's September 29 announcement, as reported by Electronic Times, OSEN and Inven Global:

CD PROJEKT RED is the booth to watch for this site's readers. The Songs of the Past item is footage, not a demo, and in Korean; the announcement, as Electronic Times and OSEN printed it, transliterates the expansion as "송즈 오브 더 패스트". Our Songs of the Past explainer covers what CDPR has confirmed about the expansion, and if your question is the free upgrade, here is who gets Remastered for nothing.

The indie area is 250 booths and 106 studios: 37 picked by G-STAR, 23 with Devolver Digital, 16 through the European Games Developer Federation and the Polish embassy, and 30 in a Unity demo zone. Steam Deck and Discord are its official sponsors, and Unity runs a first "Unity AI Game Jam".

The organiser's plan for the consumer floor of Exhibition Center 2. E04 is still a question mark. Plan: G-STAR Organizing Committee.

G-CON: 39 speakers over two days

G-CON, the conference, runs Thursday and Friday, November 19 and 20, in BEXCO's Convention Hall, under the theme "Narrative". Inven Global's August 12 report gives the room as the Grand Ballroom with 1,500 seats. The official speaker page listed 39 speakers on October 25. The ones closest to what this site covers:

The Pearl Abyss pair is the Crimson Desert angle of the week; Pearl Abyss also turns up in the Hall 2 culture festival. Inven Global's August report pairs Kim Hyung Tae and Mikami in a special talk, and Kitase and Hamaguchi on reimagining Final Fantasy VII.

There is no session timetable yet. The speaker page ends "Additional Sessions to be Announced". After the talks, Salon de G runs small roundtables of about 20 people a table from 18:30 to 20:00 on November 19 and 20, per Inven Global. Remember that a G-CON pass only lets you into the consumer halls from noon.

Overwatch finals in the Auditorium

The OWCS Asia Stage 3 Grand Finals 2026, Blizzard's Asian regional Overwatch Champions Series event, run Friday, November 20 to Sunday, November 22 in the BEXCO Auditorium, with eight teams from the Korea, Japan and Pacific qualifiers. The organiser calls it the first large esports event in the Auditorium in three years, and the final of the G-STAR Cup student tournament shares the venue.

Two practical points. An OWCS ticket for a given day gets you into the consumer halls that same day, per the organiser's announcement as reported by OSEN and Inven Global. And OWCS tickets are not on sale yet as far as we could find; Inven Global's September 28 report says they will be released later through G-STAR's site and social channels. Blizzard's own OWCS 2026 details page has not added the Asia Stage 3 dates; it says Stage 2 and Stage 3 details for Asia come later, and gives the OWCS World Finals as December 2 to 6.

For the rest of Blizzard's year, our BlizzCon 2026 recap has the Overwatch World Cup result and Overwatch's BlizzCon announcements.

BEXCO Auditorium during G-STAR 2013, when its poster advertised League of Legends matches on November 15 and 16. This year it hosts the OWCS Asia Stage 3 Grand Finals. Photo: Chris Yunker via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Watching from home

The overview page lists the venue as BEXCO offline and G-STAR TV online, and the official site links the show's YouTube channel. Three things are scheduled for people not in Busan:

• G-STAR Premiere, an online showcase of exhibitors' new games, broadcast on Wednesday, November 18, the day before the doors open. No start time is published.
• The Korea Game Awards on the same Wednesday in Busan, hosted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and organised by the Korea Association of Game Industry, which also runs G-STAR. Inven Global counts 13 award categories. No ceremony time or stream is published.
• A G-STAR page on Steam with sales and exhibitors' new games, per the organiser's announcement. No dates are given.

Anything that does air live from Busan will land in the evening and overnight in the Americas: 11:00 KST on the Thursday is 9 p.m. Eastern and 6 p.m. Pacific on the Wednesday.

Getting in and getting there

At the gate:

• A BTC ticket admits you to the BTC halls only. The business hall needs a BTB pass or a G-CON V PASS.
• Ticket checks stop at 17:00 and entry at 17:30. Turning up late in the afternoon with a valid ticket is not enough.
• Wristbands. The ticket page's notes say admission is granted after you collect a wristband at an on-site exchange desk. The line sits directly under the group-visit details, so whether every individual ticket holder swaps too is not spelled out. Allow the time either way.
• Safety rules. Entry can be refused under the G-STAR 2026 safety rules, the page says, giving dangerous items and costumes that break public regulations as examples. The full rules are not linked from the ticket page.
• Groups. Group visits are for educational institutions bringing 30 or more people, on Thursday or Friday from 12:00.

Getting there, from BEXCO's own directions pages:

From Busan Station, where the KTX from Seoul arrives, BEXCO's page gives about 40 minutes and 1,500 won by subway (Line 1, change to Line 2 at Seomyeon, off at Centum City), about 42 minutes and 1,700 won on express bus 1001, or about 40 minutes and roughly 19,000 won by taxi. The Auditorium sits beside Exhibition Center 2.

Where the official pages disagree

Read on October 25, the organiser's English and Korean pages, and the organiser's own announcement, contradict each other in these places.

• The free-entry age for preschoolers. The English ticket page says preschool children "born 2019 or later" get in free. The Korean page says "2020년생 이하", which moves the line to 2020 births. A child born in 2019 qualifies on one page and not on the other; check with ticket@gstar.or.kr.
• The group-visit deadline. The English page says applications run October 21 to November 13 at 16:00. The Korean page says until November 6 at 16:00.
• The Ticketlink helpline. The English page gives +82-1644-3850; the Korean page gives 1588-7890.
• The KREAM Special Pass has a buy button on the Korean ticket page and no mention on the English one.
• The show dates. The overview page runs G-STAR from November 18, the awards and online-showcase day, while the ticket page opens the halls on November 19. If you see "November 18 to 22" elsewhere, the Wednesday is not a show-floor day.
• Sea of Remnants. The organiser's announcement puts NetEase's Sea of Remnants in Hall 1, but no NetEase booth appears on the Hall 1 floor plan; NetEase's only labelled booth is E05 in Hall 2.
• "Four days" of Overwatch. The announcement, as OSEN printed it, says the OWCS finals run for four days ("나흘간") from November 20 to 22. That is three days.

What is not published yet

• Consumer hall hours for Friday to Sunday, and a closing time for any day.
• HoYoverse's line-up, and anything for the Team42, Google Play, Crack or Century Games booths.
• Who is in booth E04.
• The G-CON timetable. Speakers are listed; sessions are not.
• OWCS Asia tickets and the match schedule.
• Start times for G-STAR Premiere and the Korea Game Awards.
• Krafton's stage programme, which it says comes later, and whether any PUBG demo is playable rather than an experience space.
• The KREAM Special Pass price, which we could not load.

Quick Action Checklist

• Book online, before you fly. There is no ticket sale at BEXCO. Each day's booking closes at midnight KST the night before: 10 a.m. Eastern, 7 a.m. Pacific, 3 p.m. London.
• Budget 18,000 won a day per adult, 8,000 won for anyone born in 2008 or later. Four adult days are 72,000 won; there is no multi-day consumer ticket.
• Buying for three or more? Two tickets per person per day, so split the order.
• Youth tickets need ID on the day.
• Get there before 17:00. Ticket checks stop then, and entry at 17:30. On Thursday the hall does not open until 11:00.
• PUBG fans: Krafton is at A03 in Hall 1, with a PUBG space plus playable TARAE, Age Twisters, Waltz and Jam and Overgeared Hero.
• Witcher fans: CD PROJEKT RED is at E06 in Hall 2, and its story leads Marcin Blacha and Philipp Weber are at G-CON.
• Want G-CON? The advance pass is 200,000 won until November 15, then 300,000 won at the door, and it only covers the consumer halls from noon.
• Overwatch: watch G-STAR's site and socials for OWCS Asia tickets; a ticket gets you into the halls that day.
• Planning a November run? TwitchCon San Diego and MagicCon Atlanta both land the weekend before G-STAR, and our Tokyo Game Show ticket guide covers September's big show in Japan. More in the Gaming Events archive and across the Mythras blog.