From multiple business parties and dinners to 45-minute industry lines and a 420-stand indie arena: here’s everything I saw, played, and ate at Gamescom 2026.
Arriving on Tuesday: I met up for the Kickstarter dinner as every year, followed by another great evening at Courage Cologne featuring multiple indie games, with Game Taste as one of the partners; and finally caught up with Sledders developers from Hanki Games, whom I have been helping with their community & social media, press, and influencer management over the years at Bonus Stage, who I am attending the conference for.
Menno from Courage, who hosts multiple Courage events both here in Cologne and also in San Francisco, gathered some amazing indies like always to showcase them to the indie lovers, with special VIP and publisher hours to check for any potential games.
If you are ever going to Gamescom or GDC, you need to check Courage out!
First impressions – Day 1
On Wednesday, industry, press, and creators get to see everything before consumers do on the upcoming days, so the lines are shorter. Even so, this year the industry day felt much busier than usual. Last year you’d stand in line for about 10-20 minutes before getting in, whereas this year it took up to 45 minutes. Still a lot shorter than the consumer days, where queues can run up to 3 hours.
For my first business meeting, I met the developers from Eggscape behind Banana Airways, a fun friend-slop game with its own twist to the airline theme, not to be confused with Dear Passengers.
Alongside them, I also met with FirstLook for our publishing side, as they have their new creator-facing service available. It’s interesting because it connects both playtesting and marketing, tying into my industry experience and use of both as a business but also as a gamer. So if you want to try out the latest games, get review requests, or get paid for your content, you should check it out.
Throughout the day I met up with a ton of mutuals in the industry: people I met last year, plus more introductions from other countries’ industries.
Basically, the business halls are a gathering of the game industry from all over the world. For example, Spain has a booth with Spanish games, the Netherlands has one with service providers from the Netherlands, and so on. All of these booths also have their own mixers and happy hours where you can network, grab a Kölsch, or, this year, even a custom shot glass at the Dutch booth with a DropShot (licorice shot).
After the happy hour, we left with the team for the Savoy to enjoy the rooftop view of Cologne with some gin & tonic and Flammkuchen. We split up afterwards: they went to the Nordic party, and I went to the great Polish party in the old Polish embassy, where they host networking alongside a great BBQ dinner with Kraków sausage and Oscypek grilled sheep cheese. This is also where I met more game developers, one making Game Tank Marauder and another that, looking afterwards, is mostly based on NSFW content, which I didn’t know at the time, so I am not able to share those here.
First impressions – Day 2
Starting the day with breakfast at the Steam Coffee event, where Steam staff mingle with game developers and publishers to gather feedback, show off their latest hardware, and answer questions. You can really see how dedicated they are to the developers who put their games on Steam, and they keep up with the games we’re working on. I finally got to hold the Steam Controller, and it actually wasn’t as uncomfortable as I expected it to be.
After that, a nice meetup with the guys from mod.io, where we talked a bit more about their new features that could help our modders, since we’ve already implemented it across multiple games. Also got some cool mod.io socks.
Before the meeting started at the Australia booth, there was also a photo op with Bluey and Bingo, since I wanted to get my oldest kid some Bluey sticker sheets. It’s also the only picture that proves I was actually at Gamescom.
Overall a good, shorter day. I went to check out the consumer hall and found it completely packed. There weren’t a lot of new games compared to last year, and the ones that were new (like Tomb Raider, Rayman, and similar) I’ve already played so much that I didn’t feel the need to queue up for them. There were definitely some cool booths, though, from Ubisoft’s Galactic Racer to Total War: Warhammer 40K and Halo Campaign Evolved from the Xbox stand.
The indie arena grew to 420 stands, and there were too many games to play. However, I did get to play some games afterwards at home like NINE ROUNDS RAPID, Dunebound Tactics, and awaiting anything on DeadRoot.
I did escape the venue a bit early after hearing rumors that McDonald’s had the famous McRib here, so I went to get that and headed back to the hotel to write some more and pre-install Star Wars Zero Company (Read our review here) on the hotel Wi-Fi. It currently has about 3 hours left on a 30 GB install on my Steam Deck, accompanied by a pack of salty nuts and Mezzo Mix (a German Fanta-cola mix).
There are some mixers and parties again, but I also just want to play some games. That said, my Music Taste runs to techno, and there’s a party at Dom Klub until 3 AM, so I think I need to find a good schnitzel in the meantime and get some dance moves in after playing for a bit.
I actually ended up staying in to watch the GTA 6 Extended trailer, which was okay, but did not really feel like a GTA. I hope to get our hands on it in November to see what it is actually bringing.
First impressions – Day 3
Trying to look for some souvenirs for the kids after finally getting my luggage through security, I found a cool CD Projekt Red merchandise booth, a third-party stand from Ellinger Clothing, dedicated to Witcher and Cyberpunk premium merchandise. I couldn’t find anything special for the kids, and I’m not looking to spend 25-50 euros for yet another Creeper plushie.
The lines were even longer today, and the halls are full, so most likely I’ll be at the business hall catching up with industry peers from around the world until my last meeting at 13:00 with Sunderbound. After that, leaving the venue to score souvenirs for family members, since I’ve already been to the Dom shop. My train back is around 16:00, through a storm between the Netherlands and Germany that was predicted during travel. I heard a tree fell on the rails, so the ICE isn’t running, and otherwise I’ll need to find another way back.
In the meantime, while riding back, another developer posted about a stolen laptop at Gamescom, and I kind of opened a can of worms by mentioning that multiple developers have had this happen. I connected those cases to Rob from GameRant to add a bit more to it. These are some indie developers who lost hardware; if you’re able to help, they could use the wishlist in case it’s something for you. On top of that, for those mentioning that Gamescom is super expensive per day for indies, just to clarify: the indie arena has booths ranging from 3k+ to 5k+. There are also booths that are free when developers join their country, for example (Games from Spain), or are under PR companies.
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— Tessera Studios (@tesserastudios) August 2026
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— Ryan Laley (@RyanLaley) August 2026
Some other great announcements were made as well, both during Opening Night Live and the Xbox x IKEA collaboration.
The goal for next year’s trip is to go as members of the press, so we can write more about upcoming and released games. So, a short thank-you note to everyone reading: your views and engagement with this recap bring that goal a bit closer to actually happening!
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