The Game Awards 2026: GTA VI, a tight cutoff and a jury racing the clock

When the spotlights come on at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2026, it will be 1:30 a.m. on Friday in Switzerland. Until 2023, the venue in the L.A. Live entertainment complex was called the Microsoft Theater. The Game Awards will hand out its prizes for the 13th time; millions of people will watch via livestreams on YouTube, Twitch and dozens of other platforms. The most important decision comes at the end: the Game of the Year.

Whether “Grand Theft Auto VI” is among the contenders will be decided not that night but weeks earlier, probably even before the game goes on sale. Rockstar Games is releasing the game, which The Game Awards named the most anticipated title in both 2024 and 2025, on Thursday, Nov. 19, 2026. That is one day before the show’s eligibility cutoff, so the game qualifies, if only just. The organizer, however, has scheduled the nominations for “mid-November” without giving an exact date. If the announcement comes before Nov. 19, 2026, the 160 media outlets on the jury will have to commit before the public knows the game. Whether Rockstar has sent them review copies in advance has not been confirmed.

The case exposes a fundamental problem with a show that likes to be billed as the Oscars of gaming. It wants to be both a serious awards ceremony and a global advertising showcase. Its calendar also leaves the jury little breathing room: In 2022, 2024 and 2025, the organizer announced the nominees before the cutoff had passed. This report examines what the rules say, what earlier cases teach, who is considered the favorite, why the ceremony is controversial and what voice Switzerland has in this chorus.

A cutoff with one day to spare

The rule is unambiguous. “Games must be made commercially available to customers on or before Friday, November 20, 2026, at 9 p.m. PT,” The Game Awards’ rules state. In Switzerland, that will be 6 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 21, 2026. For the Players’ Voice category, decided by the public alone, the cutoff is Nov. 30, 2026. “Grand Theft Auto VI” comes out on Nov. 19, 2026, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S and is therefore eligible, with one day to spare. Rockstar has not announced a PC version.

The situation is not new; what is new is its significance. In 2022, 2024 and 2025, the nominees came before the deadline expired: on Nov. 14, 2022, with a cutoff of Nov. 18, 2022; on Nov. 18, 2024, with a cutoff of Nov. 22, 2024; and on Nov. 17, 2025, with a cutoff of Nov. 21, 2025. A game released in those days is formally eligible but must have won over the jury before it goes on sale. The case of “Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order” shows that late titles can get lost in the process: The game came out in 2019 before the cutoff and was thus eligible under the rules. According to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, however, it was considered ineligible and received no nomination; in 2020, it received one.

By contrast, the organizer has widened the pool of eligible works. Since 2024, expansions, remakes and remasters have been eligible in all categories, provided the jury considers the new creative and technical work worthy of a nomination. In fall 2026, that also affects Nintendo: The new version of “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” comes out on Thursday, Nov. 5, 2026, exclusively for the Switch 2 and is eligible in all categories. Also eligible are early access games, provided they are publicly available by the cutoff, as well as continually updated online games with new content.

The nominations will likely come before the game is in stores

The crux of the problem lies in the calendar. On its website, The Game Awards says the nominees will be revealed in “mid-November”; as of Oct. 30, 2026, the organizer had not named a date. If it follows the pattern of the two previous years, the announcement will come four days before the cutoff, on Monday, Nov. 16, 2026, three days before “GTA VI” goes on sale. That has not been confirmed. The only certainty is that the jury’s ballots must be submitted earlier. For 2025, YouTuber Alanah Pearce, a former journalist at the site IGN, cited a first round of voting on Nov. 4, 2025, according to Journal du Geek.

Whether the jury can play “GTA VI” by then depends entirely on Rockstar. The rules explicitly allow for it: “To meet our balloting deadlines, publishers or developers may provide advance or pre-release access to games” for critical evaluation. According to the gaming site Aftermath, which cites unnamed staff members at several voting outlets, the deadline for such codes expired on Oct. 30, 2026; this deadline has not been officially confirmed. The number of advance codes per game is “traditionally limited,” the site said. At the same time, Aftermath noted that Rockstar had not confirmed sending out codes.

What has circulated since then is rumor. In mid-October, NateTheHate, who is known as a leaker, claimed that codes could go out to media outlets and content creators before the end of October; Kotaku picked up the claim on Oct. 15, 2026. On Oct. 26, 2026, the tech site Notebookcheck, citing an account called NateTheHate2 on the platform X, reported that outlets had received codes. The studio had not confirmed anything, but the review embargo was believed to lift on Nov. 18, just one day before launch, the site wrote. Rockstar and Take-Two have confirmed neither review copies nor an embargo. In early October, Robin Sabbadini, a writer at Journal du Geek, one of the voting outlets, had voiced the opposite assumption: He believed that Rockstar and Take-Two planned to send out neither keys nor review copies before launch.

Also striking is what is missing. Over the summer, the industry newsletter Game File pointed out that there had been no press previews of “GTA VI,” which was unusual for Rockstar, as Aftermath noted. The jury would thus have to judge a work about which hardly any independent impressions will be available until shortly before the vote.

How the jury votes: 160 outlets, five names each

The organizer discloses who decides on the nominees. The 2026 jury comprises 160 media outlets: 17 from the United States, 17 from Britain and 126 from 38 other countries and regions. They include gaming sites such as IGN, GameSpot and Eurogamer, the Japanese magazine Famitsu, newspapers and general-interest media such as NPR, Variety, El País, Corriere della Sera and Le Devoir, but also video shows such as Kinda Funny or Skill Up. Seven outlets from the German-speaking world vote: GameStar, Gameswelt, M! Games, PC Games and Die Zeit from Germany, Gamers.at from Austria and Games.ch, the only Swiss outlet. Kotaku and Aftermath are not among them. Esports and accessibility have their own specialist juries.

The procedure is simple. Each outlet fills out a confidential, unranked ballot, naming its five favorites in each category. The titles with the most mentions are nominated, most recently six for Game of the Year; in the event of a tie, there can be more. The winners are then determined by a blended vote in which the jury counts for 90% and the public for 10%. The organizer rejects a vote by the public alone because “a public vote puts single-platform games at an inherent disadvantage over multi-platform titles.” According to the rules, Geoff Keighley, the show’s founder and producer, is not a member of the jury and votes on neither the nominees nor the winners.

The organizer does not regulate how the outlets arrive at their lists internally. “Some circulate a ballot and do it pretty democratically,” Kotaku writer Ethan Gach wrote in mid-October. “Others have certain senior people who pick which games to support.” With “GTA VI,” the problem becomes more acute. Riley MacLeod, a writer at Aftermath, noted that it would be hard to say “whether GTA VI’s inevitable nominations represent the true group opinion of an outlet.” If a newsroom receives only one code, a single person may end up judging for everyone.

The show’s closeness to the industry also breeds suspicion. The Game Awards’ advisory board comprises 15 companies, from Activision, Nintendo and Sony to Tencent and Valve, Rockstar Games among them. The board has “no involvement in the awards process,” the organizer states. Asked whether sponsors and board members have better chances, it answers: “No, there is no connection.” These companies, too, learn the nominees and winners “at the same time as the public,” it says.

Seventeen days: The lesson of Dragon Age

It is on record that a game released shortly before the ceremony can still win. “Dragon Age: Inquisition” from BioWare and Electronic Arts came out in North America on Nov. 18, 2014, a week before that year’s cutoff of Nov. 25, 2014. On Dec. 5, 2014, at the first Game Awards in Las Vegas, the role-playing game was named Game of the Year and best role-playing game, 17 days after its release. No winner since has had so little time. For “GTA VI,” there would be 21 days between launch and ceremony.

Other late titles went far but fell short. “Red Dead Redemption 2,” also from Rockstar, came out on Oct. 26, 2018, 41 days before the ceremony, won four awards and lost Game of the Year to “God of War.” “Death Stranding” came out on Nov. 8, 2019, was nominated for Game of the Year and won three awards 34 days later. “God of War Ragnarök” came out on Nov. 9, 2022, and took six awards 29 days later, more than any other game that night; the top prize went to “Elden Ring.”

An analysis by the newsletter Infinite Lives in November 2025 found a “clear trend” between late release dates and nominations, but no advantage in the choice of winners. Titles that arrive too late are rarely recognized later, either: According to the analysis, games released in December are hardly considered the following year. As an exception, the analysis cites “Super Smash Bros. Ultimate,” released on Dec. 7, 2018, and nominated for Game of the Year in 2019.

The norm looks different. On average, the Game of the Year winners from 2014 to 2025 had been on the market for about half a year at the time of the ceremony; according to the available data, apart from “Dragon Age,” none had less lead time than “Astro Bot” in 2024, with 97 days. As a rule, then, the juries had months to form an opinion, discuss and catch up on what they had missed.

Rockstar and the awards: Plenty of praise, never the Game Awards’ top prize

Rockstar Games is no stranger to awards ceremonies, but the studio has never made it all the way to the top at The Game Awards. At the Spike Video Game Awards, the show’s predecessor, “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” (2004), “Grand Theft Auto IV” (2008), “Red Dead Redemption” (2010) and “Grand Theft Auto V” (2013) were named Game of the Year, according to Wikipedia, the last of these at the final edition, which ran under the name VGX on Dec. 7, 2013. In the era of The Game Awards, the best “GTA V” managed was the award for best remaster in 2014. In 2018, “Red Dead Redemption 2” won four awards: for Roger Clark as Arthur Morgan, for its narrative, for Woody Jackson’s score and for its audio design.

The 2018 defeat is instructive. On Metacritic, which aggregates reviews into an average score, “Red Dead Redemption 2” and “GTA V” each score 97, “God of War” 94. The jury nevertheless chose the action-adventure game from Sony’s Santa Monica Studio, which also won the awards for best game direction and best action/adventure game. High scores alone do not guarantee the top prize.

Expectations for “GTA VI” are exceptionally high. Rockstar delayed the game twice, most recently on Nov. 6, 2025, from May 26, 2026, to Nov. 19, 2026; Take-Two’s stock then fell 6%. “They (Take-Two) need the game to be great and more time makes that more likely,” Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, told the Reuters news agency. Joost van Dreunen, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, pointed to the calendar: “Releasing it closer to the holiday season allows for more opportunities to bundle with the tail end of current-gen consoles.”

Since then, the company has stuck to the date. In August 2026, Chief Executive Strauss Zelnick emphasized “our high degree of confidence around the November 19th release of Grand Theft Auto 6.” Take-Two expects net bookings of $8.0 billion to $8.2 billion for fiscal year 2027. For the jury, this means that hardly any game of this year’s crop arrives with greater expectations and less lead time.

Glasgow: An employment case in the shadow of the launch

While the jury deliberates on “GTA VI,” an employment tribunal in Scotland is hearing claims against Rockstar. In October 2025, the studio fired 34 employees: 31 members of the IWGB union in Britain and three people in Canada. Rockstar cites gross misconduct as the reason for the dismissals, saying those affected shared confidential company information in a private Discord channel. The union calls it union busting. Since Sept. 10, 2026, the tribunal at the Glasgow Tribunal Centre, presided over by Judge Lucy Wiseman, has been hearing the claims of 23 former employees.

The hearing was originally scheduled to end on Oct. 16, 2026. At the request of Rockstar’s lawyers, two hearing days were added for further cross-examination, on Nov. 17, 2026, and Nov. 18, 2026, according to the site GamingBolt, citing Eurogamer. The British news agency PA expects closing arguments in November; the tribunal has not yet ruled, and no date for a judgment is known. As of Oct. 30, 2026, the scheduled hearing days will thus end one day before “GTA VI” goes on sale and shortly after the expected announcement of the nominees.

The positions are irreconcilable. “For almost a year, the truth about what happened to us has been buried by Rockstar and surrounded by speculation,” Jason Lewis, one of the fired workers, said as the hearing opened. IWGB President Alex Marshall said: “This fight is about more than one studio, one workplace or one sector.” A Rockstar spokesperson countered: “We reject the claims and will defend them vigorously before the tribunal.”

Formally, the case has nothing to do with The Game Awards. But it touches on a question that hangs over every awards ceremony: whether the conditions under which a work is created count alongside the work itself. Rockstar sits on the show’s advisory board. Back at the 2025 ceremony, according to Wikipedia, dozens of members of the union United Videogame Workers protested outside the Peacock Theater against layoffs in the industry; the IWGB demonstrated in November 2025 outside Rockstar North in Edinburgh and outside Take-Two’s offices in London. As of Oct. 30, 2026, no announcements of protests at the 2026 ceremony could be found.

The 2026 field: Many good games, no standout

Judging by the reviews, the class of 2026 lacks a standout. “By sneaking in just under the deadline, GTA 6 is also entering one of the weaker GOTY fields in recent years,” Kotaku writer Ethan Gach wrote. Unlike some previous years with “Breath of the Wild,” “Elden Ring” or “Baldur’s Gate 3,” there is no clear favorite, he wrote, even though “Resident Evil Requiem,” for example, has received glowing reviews.

On the review aggregator OpenCritic, which compiles reviews from specialist media, “Mythmatch,” a PC game released in March, led on Oct. 30, 2026, with 93 points, ahead of “Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter” with 92; small titles can rank high there on the strength of only a few reviews. Next, with 91 points each, come “Mina the Hollower” from Yacht Club Games and “Forza Horizon 6” from Playground Games, as well as “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered” and “Dave the Diver: In the Jungle,” a new version and, by the editors’ classification, an expansion. Among the 20 best-reviewed titles are at least five remasters, ports, expansions or full releases of older games. They are eligible, but no such title has ever won the top prize at The Game Awards.

In its midyear review in July, Metacritic ranked “Forza Horizon 6” and “Mina the Hollower” first with 90 points each, ahead of “Schrödinger’s Call,” “Pokémon Pokopia” and “Resident Evil Requiem” with 89 each. Major titles have arrived since then. “Phantom Blade Zero” from the studio S-Game came out on Oct. 29, 2026, and stood at 89 points from 55 reviews on OpenCritic the following day. “GTA VI” and the “Ocarina” remake have not yet been scored.

The Golden Joystick Awards, which will be presented in London on Nov. 11, 2026, offer a first pointer. Twelve titles are nominated for their top prize: “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.” “GTA VI” is missing because, according to the site KeenGamer, it comes out outside the eligibility window. The “Ocarina” remake and highly rated titles such as “Mina the Hollower” are not on the list either.

On prediction markets, “GTA VI” is nonetheless considered the favorite, even though not a single review has been published. On the Kalshi platform, a bet on its victory that pays out $1 if successful cost 64 to 65 cents in mid-August, according to the site OddsShopper; at the end of September, the site Covers cited 71 cents. “Resident Evil Requiem” stood at 16 cents at the time, “Phantom Blade Zero” at 6 cents. Such markets reflect wagers, not the jury’s opinion. In mid-October, Kotaku commented dryly: “The people wasting their money on prediction markets currently give GTA 6 a 68-percent chance of winning.”

Twelve winners since 2014: What makes a Game of the Year

A look at past winners shows how the jury judges. All 12 Game of the Year winners from 2014 to 2025 scored at least 88 points on Metacritic, with “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” at the top with 97. With three wins, Sony Interactive Entertainment is the most successful publisher; FromSoftware is the only studio to have won twice.

Winning the most awards does not necessarily mean winning the top prize. In 2018, “Red Dead Redemption 2” took four awards and “God of War” three; in 2019, “Disco Elysium” won four and Game of the Year “Sekiro” two; in 2022, “God of War Ragnarök” received six and “Elden Ring” four. Conversely, “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” set a record in 2025 with nine awards. The previous record had been held since 2020 by “The Last of Us Part II,” with seven.

The victory of Sandfall Interactive’s role-playing game marked a turning point. According to Wikipedia, it was the first debut and the first game developed in France to be named Game of the Year; half of the six nominees were independently produced. James Perkins Mastromarino, a writer for the U.S. radio network NPR, wrote: “As predictable as the night became, the game it honored was anything but.” Jennifer English, honored for best performance, said in her acceptance speech: “To all of you that feel like life is stuck on hard mode, this is for you.”

A few days later, it became clear that honors do not last forever. The Indie Game Awards, which is independent of The Game Awards and had also honored the game on Dec. 18, 2025, stripped it of two awards because Sandfall had used generative artificial intelligence during development; at issue were placeholder textures that had been removed by a patch shortly after launch. “We have a hard stance against gen AI in videogames,” said Mike Towndrow of the nominating committee. As far as is known, The Game Awards itself has not revoked any award.

From niche channel to global event

The Game Awards is inseparable from one name. Geoff Keighley had already produced the Spike Video Game Awards, which the cable channel Spike TV staged from 2003 to 2013. After Spike discontinued the show, Keighley announced The Game Awards on Nov. 10, 2014, backed by Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Valve; the first ceremony took place on Dec. 5, 2014, at the AXIS theater in Las Vegas. According to a New York Times report cited by Wikipedia, he put about $1 million of his own money into the project. Since 2015, the ceremony has been held in Los Angeles, in the venue that has been called the Peacock Theater since 2023; in 2020, it was produced virtually because of the pandemic.

The mix of awards and premieres was built into the concept from the start. According to Kotaku, the announcement of the show’s founding promised “awards, world premieres, musical performances, and appearances by game developers.” Rockstar Games was already on the advisory board in 2014. Besides The Game Awards, Keighley also produces Summer Game Fest in June and Gamescom’s Opening Night Live.

The show’s rise can be measured in livestreams, even if the figures should be read with caution. According to the organizer, their number rose from 1.9 million in 2014 to 171 million in 2025, an increase of 11% over the previous year. What is counted is an estimated 171 million “global livestreams of the full broadcast” on platforms ranging from YouTube, Twitch and TikTok to Chinese services, not individual viewers; Prime Video, on board for the first time in 2025, is not included. At its peak, according to the analytics service StreamCharts, 4.4 million people were watching the show simultaneously on Twitch, YouTube and other Western platforms.

The figure invites comparison with the Oscars, whose name the show likes to claim for itself. On its website, it quotes a headline from The Washington Post saying Keighley created “the Oscars for Gaming,” as well as one from The Hollywood Reporter declaring the show “the video game industry’s Superbowl.” The comparison is flawed. According to Nielsen’s measurements, the 98th Academy Awards on March 15, 2026, drew 17.86 million viewers in the United States on ABC and Hulu, and the Grammys on Feb. 1, 2026, drew 14.41 million on CBS and Paramount+.

Nielsen measures average viewers in one country, while The Game Awards counts estimated streams worldwide, including co-streams by influencers. The peak number of concurrent viewers would be a closer methodological match; at 4.4 million, it is considerably lower. Symbolically, however, the worlds are converging: According to Wikipedia, the Primetime Emmys have been presented at the Peacock Theater since 2008. Starting in 2029, the Oscars are also set to move to the venue, according to a Vanity Fair report cited there.

Awards ceremony or advertising show

One accusation has followed The Game Awards for years: that the awards are mere trimmings to an advertising broadcast. According to a tally by a user of the ResetEra forum, publicized by the site DualShockers, the 2025 ceremony lasted about three hours and 35 minutes; “only 17 minutes were actually dedicated to the award presentations,” or about 8%. The rest of the evening belonged to hosting, music, trailers and world premieres. The official recap itself sums it up this way: “Expedition 33 wins Game of the Year, plus reveals from Star Wars, Larian, Tomb Raider, and a performance by Evanescence.”

Airtime comes at a price. A 60-second trailer at the 2025 ceremony “can cost up to $450,000,” and a three-minute one “over $1 million,” Kotaku reporter Alyssa Mercante reported in December 2025, citing two anonymous sources; two people at publishers considered that order of magnitude typical. Keighley also hands out curated free slots for games he personally wants to promote, she reported. For the nominees, the setting is more modest: According to Kotaku, they received only two tickets, and the studio behind “Clair Obscur” bought additional ones at a face value of about $300. The organizer did not respond to Kotaku’s inquiries.

The criticism is not new. “Biggest Video-Game Awards Ceremony Is Heavy on Promotion, Light on Awards,” ran the headline on Jason Schreier’s 2023 piece for Bloomberg; in 2022, The Guardian wrote of “three patience-testing hours of video game advertorials.” In 2023, while the developers of “Baldur’s Gate 3” were dedicating their award to a late colleague, the prompt “Please wrap it up” was displayed to them. In 2024, the Muppets Statler and Waldorf joked during the show itself that “it was like the game commercials with award interruptions!”

Keighley is aware of the accusations. “Some people online think that we’re oblivious to it,” he told Christopher Dring of The Game Business, a trade publication in which Keighley himself holds a stake, in December 2025. “And it is a balancing act.” His view, he said, is always “that the announcements create a very wide audience that tunes into the show.” And: “Lots of games get sold out of The Game Awards. Balatro had a huge boost.” That balance is hard to strike, he conceded, and “we don’t always get it right.” After the 2023 criticism, he had written on X that he agreed “that the music was played too fast for award winners this year.” Even sympathetic voices see the dual role: Claire Lewis, a critic at Polygon, wrote of the 2025 ceremony, according to Wikipedia: “Yes, it was a three-and-a-half-hour commercial. But it was a good three-and-a-half-hour commercial.”

What a win does for sales

What an award is worth can now at least be estimated. Keighley’s argument partly holds up under scrutiny. After “Clair Obscur” won, the game immediately sold more than 200,000 additional copies, according to estimates by the market research firm Alinea Analytics, a good three-quarters of them on the PC platform Steam. According to Mat Piscatella of the market research firm Circana, the share of active players in the United States who were playing the game more than tripled between Dec. 10, 2025, and Dec. 13, 2025.

Even a nomination can make a difference. In Europe, sales of “Astro Bot” rose 61% in the week after the 2024 nominees were announced, and those of “Final Fantasy VII Rebirth” 268%, as Christopher Dring showed using GSD data. He cautioned that “we’re not talking huge sales figures overall, but a definite uptick.” Announcements also have a ripple effect: After Larian unveiled a new “Divinity” game at the 2025 ceremony, the older “Divinity: Original Sin 2” reached a 24-hour peak of 10,898 concurrent players on Steam.

For a game the size of “GTA VI,” an award is of secondary commercial importance. For debuts such as “Clair Obscur” or for small studios, by contrast, a nomination can help determine visibility and sales. That explains why the industry takes the ceremony seriously despite all the criticism, and why the question of who gets nominated is more than a matter of prestige.

Switzerland: One vote among 160

Exactly one Swiss outlet has a vote in 2026: the site Games.ch. With 160 jury outlets, that amounts to about 0.6% of the jury’s votes. By comparison, France is represented by nine outlets, Germany and Italy by five each; Canada adds two more French-language voices, Le Devoir and Le Bêta-Testeur. It is not known whether Games.ch has received a code for “GTA VI.”

No Swiss studio appears among the Game of the Year nominees since 2014 or in the complete winners’ lists for 2014, 2018 and 2025; the other categories could not be fully checked. Studios checked include Okomotive (“FAR: Lone Sails,” “FAR: Changing Tides,” “Herdling”), Giants Software (“Farming Simulator”), Blindflug Studios and Stray Fawn Studio. Even so, the Swiss scene draws international attention. At the 2025 German Developer Award (Deutscher Entwicklerpreis), nine nominations, or just under a quarter, came from Switzerland; “Dungeon Clawler” by Stray Fawn of Zurich won the award for best casual game and an innovation award. “The studios and the budgets may still be small, but creative ideas keep attracting international attention,” concluded SRF, Switzerland’s German-language public broadcaster.

The industry is small but has grown. A 2019 study by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland and the Swiss Game Developers Association (SGDA) counted about 130 game companies with 592 jobs and revenue of 150 million Swiss francs in 2018; the number of studios had roughly quintupled since 2010. No more recent overall figures were found for this report. The SGDA has presented the Swiss Game Awards since 2013; in 2025, “Herdling” by Okomotive won the award for best entertainment game, and “Danger in Pompeii” by DNA Studios the award for best serious game. Entries for 2026 are closed; the association has not yet announced a date for the ceremony. The topic has been on the political agenda since 2015, when Jacqueline Fehr, a National Council member for the Social Democrats (SP), called for a Federal Council report on promoting the industry.

Anyone in Switzerland who wants to watch the ceremony live will need stamina. The opening act begins at 1:30 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 11, 2026, and the main show is likely to follow half an hour later, as in 2025; last time, it ran about three and a half hours. The show streams free of charge on YouTube and Twitch, among other platforms; in 2025, it was also on Prime Video. As of Oct. 30, 2026, it was not known whether the Swiss public broadcasters SRF, RTS or RSI would carry the ceremony. The fan vote, which counts for 10% of the result, closes in Switzerland at 3 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 10, 2026. The ticket vendor AXS has been selling a limited number of tickets for the Peacock Theater since Oct. 29, 2026; the organizer has not disclosed prices. In 2025, according to Kotaku, they ranged from $58.92 to more than $1,000 on the resale market.

Arena: Can a jury judge GTA VI fairly so soon after its release?

Commentary: The cutoff is the problem, not GTA VI

It would be convenient to dismiss the dispute over “GTA VI” as a luxury problem. A game that millions have been awaiting for years comes out just before a deadline; the jury will surely find a way. But the case lays bare what is wrong with The Game Awards. A ceremony that likes to be celebrated as the Oscars of gaming has lately been announcing its nominees before the eligibility deadline has passed.

As a result, a game’s chances depend not only on its quality but also on its publisher’s willingness to hand out codes and on the working methods of the newsrooms that receive them. Those who deliver early get played; those who keep their work under wraps until the last minute get nominated on trust, or not at all. Both damage credibility. If the jury nominates “GTA VI” without broad hands-on experience, it looks like hype. If it passes it over, it looks like defiance. And because Rockstar sits on the advisory board, every decision will be viewed with suspicion, even though the rules exclude any involvement by the board.

The opposing view deserves respect. A late cutoff keeps the big fall titles in the race. “Dragon Age: Inquisition” also showed in 2014 that a jury can reach a defensible verdict in just over two weeks. Critics review big games under time pressure; that is their job. Anyone who crowns the 2026 Game of the Year without “GTA VI” also risks never honoring what is probably the most closely watched work of the year: The following year, it would be eligible only with new content.

The solution, therefore, lies not in favoring or excluding individual games but in the calendar. The Game Awards should nominate only after the cutoff has passed, or set the cutoff early enough to leave time for playing in between. The Golden Joysticks close their eligibility window before their ceremony; the British film academy BAFTA does not present its games awards until April. Both approaches come at a price: Late titles slip into the following year, and the show loses some of its timeliness. But an award whose jury knows what it is voting on is worth more than one that arrives just in time for the holiday shopping season.

For 2026, it is too late for that. The Game Awards therefore owes its audience all the more transparency: the date of the nominations, the jury’s deadlines and the number of outlets that were actually able to play “GTA VI” before casting their votes. Whether the game wins on Dec. 10, 2026, is secondary. What matters is that the verdict can be trusted.

As of Oct. 30, 2026. No reviews had yet been published for “Grand Theft Auto VI” or the remake of “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.” The date of the nominations had not been officially announced; information on review copies and on the review embargo for “GTA VI” is based on unconfirmed reports. The start time of the main show is derived from the 2025 schedule. The livestream figures are estimates by the organizer and are not comparable to television ratings. Some original sources (Bloomberg, The Guardian, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Polygon) were not directly accessible; the information attributed to them comes from Wikipedia. The release dates of “Overwatch,” “God of War,” “It Takes Two,” “Elden Ring” and “Baldur’s Gate 3” in the chart on lead time could not be verified against a primary source as of Oct. 30, 2026; they come from the editors’ prior knowledge (that of “Elden Ring” from Wikipedia) and are shaded lighter in the chart. Expertistan will update this article once the nominations and the first reviews are available. Statements originally made in English are quoted in their original wording where it was available and paraphrased otherwise. Quotes originally given in another language were translated by the editors. Sources are cited in their original language.

Related coverage: Zelda at 40: Nintendo rebuilds the highest-rated video game · Grand Theft Auto VI: Thirteen years of waiting and a fever gripping the world · Modern Warfare 4: Call of Duty heads to Korea and fights for its crown

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• The Game Awards: God of War wins Game of the Year (Dec. 6, 2018)
• Kotaku: GTA 6 Avoids A Very Awkward Situation By Officially Being Eligible For The 2026 Game Awards (Oct. 15, 2026)
• Aftermath: There’s No Conspiracy For GTA VI To Be In The Game Awards (Oct. 16, 2026)
• Journal du Geek: GTA 6 ne sera probablement pas le jeu de l’année (Oct. 2, 2026)
• Gameblog: GTA 6 n’aura certainement aucune chance d’être le GOTY 2026 malgré les attentes (Oct. 1, 2026)
• Notebookcheck: GTA 6 review codes are out in the wild giving outlets just over three weeks (Oct. 26, 2026)
• GamesBeat: Take-Two reports $1.39B in bookings, down 2.7% for June quarter (August 2026)
• Reuters via The Star: ‘GTA VI’ delay to November 2026 allows Take-Two potentially bigger launch, analysts say (Nov. 7, 2025)
• Game Developer: ‘Justice at last feels within reach:’ Fired Rockstar workers rally in Glasgow as union busting tribunal begins (Sept. 10, 2026)
• PA Media via Irish News: Rockstar Games president Houser did not ‘scream’ at anyone, tribunal told (Oct. 16, 2026)
• GamingBolt: Rockstar Games’ Union-Busting Tribunal Hearing Will End One Day Before GTA 6’s Release (Oct. 14, 2026)
• Aftermath: Following Firings And Grand Theft Auto VI Delay, Union Plans To Keep Pressure On Rockstar (Nov. 10, 2025)
• Attack of the Fanboy: Dragon Age: Inquisition delayed to November (July 22, 2014)
• GameRevolution: Dragon Age, Nintendo Win Big at The Game Awards 2014 (Dec. 6, 2014)
• Game Developer: Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarök dominate The Game Awards 2022 (Dec. 9, 2022)
• Prima Games: God of War: Ragnarok’s Metacritic Score is Out: Where Does the Game Rank in the Series? (Nov. 3, 2022)
• VGC: It Takes Two wins the top prize at The Game Awards 2021 (Dec. 10, 2021)
• VGC: The Game Awards 2023 full winners list: Baldur’s Gate 3 dominates (Dec. 8, 2023)
• Infinite Lives: Explainer: Does release timing really affect The Game Awards? (Nov. 12, 2025)
• Gematsu: VGX successor The Game Awards announced (Nov. 10, 2014)
• Kotaku: There’s A Big New Game Award Show Happening This December (Nov. 10, 2014)
• VGC: The Game Awards 2025: Complete list of winners as Clair Obscur wins Game of the Year and sets a new record for awards won (Dec. 12, 2025)
• NPR via WUSF: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sweeps The Game Awards: analysis and full winners list (Dec. 12, 2025)
• NPR: The 2024 Game Awards recap: All winners and most surprising reveals (Dec. 13, 2024)
• PC Gamer: Indie Game Awards pulls two awards from Clair Obscur over generative AI use (Dec. 21, 2025)
• Metacritic: Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4), Metascore; other Metascores of the Game of the Year winners in the legacy view (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• OpenCritic: Best Games of 2026 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• OpenCritic: Phantom Blade Zero (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Pure Xbox: Metacritic Unveils Its Top 20 Games For The First Half Of 2026 (July 13, 2026)
• Vice: Phantom Blade Zero Review Roundup (Oct. 26, 2026)
• Windows Central: Golden Joystick’s “Ultimate Game of the Year” nominees are revealed, and votes for the winner are open until October 30 (Oct. 26, 2026)
• KeenGamer: Golden Joystick Awards 2026 Opens Ultimate Game of the Year Voting With 12 Nominees (Oct. 28, 2026)
• OddsShopper: Game Awards 2026 Odds (Aug. 19, 2026)
• Covers: Game of the Year Odds 2026 (Sept. 29, 2026)
• Game Informer: The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time Remake Launches This November (Sept. 8, 2026)
• Nintendo of America via Business Wire: The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Celebration Revealed in New Nintendo Direct Presentation (Sept. 8, 2026)
• Neowin: The Game Awards will now consider DLC and remasters for all its award categories (November 2024)
• BAFTA: 2027 BAFTA Games Awards now open for entries (Aug. 11, 2026)
• DualShockers via OpenCritic: Less Than 10% of The Game Awards Was Actually Focused On the Awards (Dec. 15, 2025)
• Kotaku: Some Nominated Devs Can’t Even Afford To Be A Part Of The Game Awards (Dec. 10, 2025)
• GamesRadar+: Geoff Keighley agrees that The Game Awards winners were played off too quickly, but says “no one was actually cut off” (Dec. 8, 2023)
• The Game Business: Interview: Geoff Keighley on the impossible balancing act of running The Game Awards (Dec. 9, 2025)
• WN Hub: Geoff Keighley has invested in The Game Business, a gaming media outlet founded by the former head of GamesIndustry (March 25, 2025)
• VGC: ‘Lots of games get sold out of The Game Awards’: There has to be a balance between reveals and awards, Keighley says (Dec. 9, 2025)
• Multiplayer.it: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ha ottenuto tante nuove vendite subito dopo i The Game Awards (Dec. 16, 2025)
• VGChartz: The Game Awards 2024 Finalists Saw a Boost in Sales in Europe (November 2024)
• GamesRadar+: Divinity series sees spike in players on Steam following new RPG’s reveal at The Game Awards (Dec. 15, 2025)
• TheWrap: Oscar Ratings Fall 9% From Last Year With 17.9 Million Viewers (March 17, 2026)
• TheWrap: 2026 Grammys Dip 6.4% From Last Year With 14.4 Million Viewers (Feb. 3, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Game Awards, with references to Bloomberg, The Guardian and The New York Times (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Game Awards 2025, with a reference to Polygon (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Game Award for Game of the Year (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Game Awards 2014 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Game Awards 2015 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Game Awards 2016 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Game Awards 2017 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Game Awards 2019 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Game Awards 2020 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Game Awards 2022 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: Spike Video Game Awards (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: The Last of Us Part II (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: Elden Ring (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: Astro Bot (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: Red Dead Redemption 2 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: Death Stranding (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: Grand Theft Auto VI (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• Wikipedia: Peacock Theater, with a reference to Vanity Fair (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)
• SRF: Swiss Game Awards 2025: «Herdling» ist das beste Schweizer Game des Jahres (Dec. 19, 2025)
• SRF: Preis für Schweizer Game: «Dungeon Clawler» aus Zürich gewinnt Deutschen Entwicklerpreis (Dec. 3, 2025)
• SRF: Digital: Die Schweizer Politik entdeckt das Gamen (March 12, 2015)
• GamesMarket: Swiss Games Awards 2025: The Winners (Dec. 19, 2025)
• Netzwoche: Studie zeigt Wachstum der Schweizer Game-Branche (Oct. 15, 2019)
• Swiss Game Developers Association: Homepage, Swiss Game Awards 2026 (accessed Oct. 30, 2026)