Game Awards 2026: All Game of the Year Front-Runners and Predictions

At this point, we have a clear idea of what to expect from The Game Awards' voting body, which is composed of a wide range of international games media (Polygon included), with a 10% contribution from fan voting. There are a number of strong indicators for what will perform well in the Game of the Year category. A high Metacritic rating (preferably over 90) is a must; role-playing games and action-adventures are strongly favored, as are games with strong narrative elements; indie and multiplayer games struggle harder for recognition than AAA single-player adventures. We used these metrics to correctly predict last year's winner, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and the 2024 winner, Astro Bot. In 2025, we also predicted all six GOTY nominees and correctly called 20 other categories.