Golden Joystick Awards 2026: Every Nominee and Key Dates

Grand Theft Auto VI won two Golden Joysticks in 2025, Best Game Trailer and Most Wanted Game. In 2026 it is on none of the 21 shortlists Future published on September 25, and under the published rules it cannot make the 22nd either. Rockstar has GTA VI dated for November 19, 2026: eight days after the ceremony, and 20 days after the Ultimate Game of the Year vote closes.

That is the eligibility calendar at work, and it explains several things about the 44th Golden Joystick Awards ballot. Here is the whole of it, 168 nominations across 21 categories, plus the deadline in your time zone, who leads and by how many (the totals depend on who is counting), the three eligibility windows, and the games this site covers that made the cut.

The deadline, in your time zone

The main public vote has closed. goldenjoysticks.com forwards to the GamesRadar+ hub, where the Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist and ballot were published. Future, which publishes GamesRadar+ and runs the awards, gave this schedule:

Future's "midnight BST" is the midnight at the end of Friday, which is already Saturday morning in Asia and Australia:

The Ultimate Game of the Year vote closed on Friday, October 30 at 5:00 p.m. PT / 8:00 p.m. ET / midnight GMT, which is already Saturday, October 31 in Europe, Asia and Australia. Future's September schedule gave only the date; the closing time came with the October 26 announcement.

The voting calendar runs eight or nine days earlier than last year's. In 2025 the main vote closed on October 31, the Ultimate Game of the Year vote ran November 3 to 7, and the show streamed on Thursday, November 20.

Every nominee, all 21 categories

There are 168 nominations: six nominees in 14 categories, ten in four (Best Indie Game, Best Indie Game – Self-published, PC Game of the Year and Console Game of the Year), twelve in each of the two Still Playing lists, and twenty in Most Wanted Game. Names are as Future's September 25 press release prints them, except that two trailer and expansion titles that use a vertical bar are shown here with a dash.

The headline and craft categories

Indies, early access, expansions and remasters

Live games, multiplayer, trailers, hardware and screen adaptations

The nomination totals depend on who is counting

Count one nomination per category per game, crediting performer and trailer nominations to their game, and two games lead with five each. Seven more have three:

Seventeen more games have two each, counting World of Warcraft and its Midnight expansion as separate entries.

Future's own two announcements do not agree on those numbers. Its press release gives 007 First Light and Big Walk six nominations each and Resident Evil Requiem four. The GamesRadar+ news story published the same day says five, five and three. Both are right, and Studio of the Year is the difference: the studios behind all three games are nominated there. Steam lists IO Interactive as the developer of 007 First Light, House House for Big Walk and Capcom for Resident Evil Requiem. Add each studio's nomination to its game and you get the press release's six, six and four.

Capcom is on the ballot nine times. Resident Evil Requiem has three nominations, Onimusha: Way of the Sword and PRAGMATA have two each, Resident Evil Veronica is in Most Wanted, and Capcom itself is up for Studio of the Year. That is nine of the 168. It does not count the two adaptations of Capcom series in Best Game Adaptation, Resident Evil and Devil May Cry (Season 2). Capcom's June 8 investor release describes Resident Evil Veronica as a remake of 2000's Resident Evil Code: Veronica, due in 2027.

The two platform lists share no games. PC Game of the Year and Console Game of the Year hold ten nominees each, and no title is on both. That is a choice about which list a game sits on, not a statement about where it is sold: Resident Evil Requiem sells on Steam and sits in Console Game of the Year.

The 1990 Golden Joystick Awards, where Ocean's Chase HQ took Best 8-bit Coin-Op Conversion and the win came on a framed certificate. The Commons file names the three men as Paul Patterson of Ocean Software, Jaz Rignall and presenter Jonathan Ross. Photo: Jaz Rignall via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Three calendars decide what can win

Future's rules page sets different release windows for different awards:

Both the main window and the Ultimate Game of the Year window carry an exception: games that release early in the voting window are sometimes let in, where the judges may already have played them, for example from an embargoed review copy. For Ultimate Game of the Year, the rules give October 27 as the example date.

Three things that table explains.

The Witcher 3 Remastered is on the ballot after the cut-off. CD PROJEKT RED released The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered on September 29, four days after the September 25 cut-off, and it is one of six Best Remake / Remaster nominees. The only provision in the rules that fits that date is the exception for games released early in the voting window. If the upgrade is the question you actually have, we covered who gets it free.

GTA VI qualified for Most Wanted on dates, and is not on it. November 19 is after the November 11 cut-off. The rules page stops there; GamesRadar+'s voting hub adds that this year's Most Wanted "focuses on titles due in 2027 or with visible release windows", which it says excludes some notable games with distant dates or none. GTA VI is due in 2026 rather than 2027, but it has a visible release date, so that wording does not clearly rule it in or out. The 20 names do not include it, and neither of Future's announcements says why. The press release does mention the game: Daniel Dawkins, the awards' content director, calls GTA 6 "set to launch a week after our live show".

Ultimate Game of the Year is drawn from a different field. Its window runs a month past the 21 categories' cut-off, to October 25, which Future's categories page says allows "time to play more of 2026's big winter releases". The consequence: a game released between September 26 and October 25 can be shortlisted for the top prize while falling outside the core window for PC or Console Game of the Year. The window also starts a week later, on November 8, 2025, so on the rules as written a game released between November 1 and 7, 2025 can win a category but not Ultimate Game of the Year.

Our read: for a November show, the split is sensible, because it stops the year's biggest October launches from being shut out entirely. It also means a game's haul in the 21 categories is an incomplete forecast for the top prize, because the two votes are not drawn from exactly the same pool of games.

The games we cover on the ballot

Cookie Run: Kingdom, PUBG: Battlegrounds and Counter-Strike 2, all live games with their own sections on this site, are on neither Still Playing list.

Three of the Most Wanted nominees are also playable at PAX Aus in Melbourne, October 9 to 11. PAX's September 17 exhibitor announcement has SEGA bringing Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000, Alien: Isolation 2 and STRANGER THAN HEAVEN to its PAX Aus stand, alongside Persona 4 Revival, and Square Enix running a FINAL FANTASY VII REVELATION showcase ahead of that game's April 8, 2027 release. Our PAX Aus 2026 guide has the badges and hours.

Twelve games are on both the gamescom and Golden Joystick lists

gamescom handed out its own awards on August 28, and we broke down every winner. Set gamescom's twelve game categories beside the Golden Joystick shortlists and twelve titles appear on both:

Four of gamescom's eleven game-category winners are, by the Golden Joysticks' own rules, not out yet. METRO 2039, Alien: Isolation 2, Total War: WARHAMMER 40,000 and Tides of Annihilation are all in Most Wanted, which means a release set for after November 11, 2026. That is not a contradiction. gamescom's game awards require a game to be playable on the show floor, released or not, while the Golden Joysticks file unreleased games under Most Wanted rather than in their Game of the Year and craft categories. It is a reminder of what each trophy measures.

The Witcher 3 is not in the twelve because its gamescom trophies were for a booth, merch and a trailer, outside gamescom's game categories. Its Best Trailer / Announcement win was for the trailer for Remastered and the Songs of the Past DLC, and Remastered is now out and nominated here.

Who picks the shortlist, and what your vote decides

The "people's awards" label covers half the process. The people pick the winners; Future's judges picked who can win.

• Industry nominations came first. Publishers and studios put forward their own games, people and studios through a form between August 6 and August 28.
• A judging panel chose the shortlists "with reference to" those nominations. Future's hub says the judges are editors and contributors from its own brands, naming PC Gamer, Future Games Show, Edge, Retro Gamer and GamesRadar+, plus industry experts, and it says it cannot guarantee that every nominated game makes the shortlist.
• The public vote decides the 21 categories and Ultimate Game of the Year. The critics' awards are chosen by a panel and revealed on the night.
• Voters could claim a free ebook worth up to £12.99 / $18.99 by entering an email address and clicking "Register my Votes" when they finish. The titles on offer include 100 Retro Games to Play Before You Die, The History of Videogames, Everything You Need To Know About Fortnite and Ultimate Guide to Roblox.
• Developers could also apply for show time. The hub invites them to apply for "a limited number of trailer slots" in the show.

For scale, Future puts 2025's public vote at a record 21 million votes. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won seven awards that year, including Ultimate Game of the Year.

Where the official pages disagree

Read on October 2, Future's own pages disagree with each other in five places.

• The nomination counts. Six, six and four in the press release against five, five and three in the GamesRadar+ story. Studio of the Year explains it, as above.
• Grace Ashcroft's category. The GamesRadar+ story's text credits Resident Evil Requiem with a "Supporting Performer" nomination for Angela Sant'Albano as Grace Ashcroft. Both published lists put her in Best Lead Performer.
• Who has three nominations. The same story names MECCHA CHAMELEON, Mewgenics, The Blood of Dawnwalker, Valheim and SAROS as the three-nomination group and leaves out Dispatch, which also has three. The press release includes Dispatch among the games with multiple nominations.
• How many critics' awards there are. The press release names three, Streamers' Choice, Breakthrough and Critics' Choice, and says the event features 25 categories. The event site's categories page lists four, adding Hall of Fame, which would make 26. Hall of Fame was one of four critically chosen awards in 2025, per the event site's About page.
• Whether tables are on sale. The event site's home page says "Tables will be on sale soon". Its registration form is already taking table and ticket bookings, and the GamesRadar+ hub says you can book tickets and tables now.

The Troxy's floor laid out with round tables for a 2010 charity night. The Golden Joysticks sells ceremony places as tables and tickets, and its published evening runs drinks, the awards, dinner, then an after-party. Photo: Jorge Royan via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

What is not published yet

• The Ultimate Game of the Year result. The shortlist was announced on October 26 and the vote closed on October 30; the winner is revealed on the night. The 12 nominees are 007 First Light, Big Walk, CONTROL Resonant, Crimson Desert, Dispatch, Forza Horizon 6, Phantom Blade Zero, Pokémon Pokopia, PRAGMATA, Resident Evil Requiem, STAR WARS: Galactic Racer and The Blood of Dawnwalker.
• The stream time. The ceremony is hosted by actor Alix Wilton Regan and streams on YouTube, Twitch and X, plus the Future Games Show, GamesRadar+ and PC Gamer channels, per Future's October 26 announcement, which gives no start time. The September press release said only "live-streamed globally". The event site's running order for the room is a drinks reception at 5:00 p.m., the awards at 6:00 p.m., dinner at 8:30 p.m. and an after-party at 10:00 p.m., London time, with exact timings "advised shortly before the event". The UK is on GMT by then, so 6:00 p.m. is 10:00 a.m. PST and 1:00 p.m. EST. That is the room's schedule, not a stream time. The 2025 stream started at 4:00 p.m. GMT.
• Ticket and table prices. No price appears on the event site's public pages or on the hub.
• The critics' award shortlists, and whether Hall of Fame is awarded this year.
• Any 2026 vote total. The last published figure is 2025's 21 million.

The venue itself is fixed: the Troxy, 490 Commercial Road, London E1 0HX, about 400 metres from Limehouse station on the DLR and c2c lines, per the event site. The Troxy's own site dates the building to 1933, describes it as art deco, and gives the main hall a capacity of up to 3,100.

The upper stalls at the Troxy, which opened in 1933. Photo: Alexander Baxevanis via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

Quick Action Checklist

• The main vote is over. It closed Friday, October 23 at 4:00 p.m. PT / 7:00 p.m. ET / midnight BST (Saturday at 8:00 a.m. in Japan and 10:00 a.m. in Sydney and Melbourne).
• The separate Ultimate Game of the Year ballot ran October 26 to 30 and has also ended. Crimson Desert, Pokémon Pokopia and Resident Evil Requiem are among its 12 nominees.
• Free ebook: it was offered to voters who registered their votes with an email address.
• Do not look for GTA VI. It is on none of the 21 lists, and its November 19 release falls outside the Ultimate Game of the Year window.
• Games we cover on the ballot: Resident Evil Requiem, Crimson Desert, Pokémon Pokopia, Mina the Hollower and The Witcher 3 Remastered are all on the ballot, and so are Minecraft, Fortnite, Roblox and Genshin Impact in Still Playing.
• Do not set a November 11 alarm off the room schedule. The 6:00 p.m. London start is for the room; no stream time is published yet.
• More award and show coverage: the gamescom award 2026 winners, the Gaming Events archive and the Mythras blog.