Golden Joystick Awards 2026 reveals Ultimate Game of the Year nominees
Alix Wilton Regan will host the 2026 ceremony as public voting opens for the Golden Joystick Awards’ Ultimate Game of the Year.
The Golden Joystick Awards 2026 have opened the final Ultimate Game of the Year vote, with 12 games competing for the headline prize. Voting runs until October 30, ahead of the ceremony at London’s Troxy on November 11.12
The shortlist includes 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 nominees were announced through the awards’ official channels.1
The vote is now live
The new development is that the public vote has opened alongside the host announcement. GamesRadar reports that Alix Wilton Regan will present this year’s ceremony, joined by guest presenters from across the games industry. The event will be streamed through YouTube, Twitch and X, as well as Future Games Show and PC Gamer.3
The Ultimate Game of the Year vote closes at 5pm PT, 8pm ET or midnight GMT on Friday, October 30. That gives voters only a few days to choose before the ceremony reveals the winner.3
The category covers games released between November 8, 2025 and October 25, 2026, which explains the mix of available releases and games arriving near the end of the eligibility window. Phantom Blade Zero, for example, is scheduled for October 29.14
Why this shortlist matters
The final 12 span narrative games, racing, action, horror, role-playing and more experimental releases. Dispatch, Big Walk and The Blood of Dawnwalker give the vote some stylistic range, while Forza Horizon 6, Resident Evil Requiem and Crimson Desert represent the kind of large-scale releases that often dominate awards conversations.12
The Golden Joystick Awards describe themselves as a public-voted gaming accolade, with the wider ceremony also covering categories for audio, indie games, adaptations, hardware, performance and studio of the year.2
Our opinion
The host announcement gives the awards a timely second beat, but the more important change for players is that the vote is now live. This is not a jury shortlist waiting for an industry panel to make the final call: the public has until October 30 to decide which game deserves the headline prize. The spread of genres makes the outcome less predictable than a straight blockbuster contest, although the final result will still reflect visibility as much as quality. The sensible approach is to judge the game you actually found most memorable, rather than treating the biggest name as the automatic winner.