Watch the 2026 DevGAMM Awards Live on IGN This November, Featuring Four New Categories Honoring the Best Independent Games of the Year
Posted
: Aug 11, 2026 5:00pm UTC
This Fall, IGN will stream the 3rd Annual DevGAMM Awards, a show “celebrating outstanding games and the teams behind them,” live from Lisbon, Portugal. On November 18 be sure to tune into IGN.com and IGN’s YouTube channel to watch prizes given out in more than a dozen categories.
Over the last two years, the DevGAMM Awards have received more than 1,000 game submissions and recognized nearly 30 winners including Manor Lords, Cairn, Keep Driving, Drop Duchy, and Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall.
This year, four new categories have been announced including Best Small Team Game, Best Game in Early Development, Meaningful Game, and DevGAMM Choice.
According to DevGamm, the four new awards bring the total number of categories to 13 including:
- Grand Prize: Awarded to the best overall game in the competition.
- Excellence in Game Design: Awarded to the game with the most innovative design solution or engaging gameplay.
- Excellence in Visual Art: Awarded to the game with the most distinctive art style, coherent art direction, and outstanding visual execution.
- Excellence in Narrative: Awarded to the game with the most compelling and well-crafted story.
- Excellence in Audio: Awarded to the game with the best sound direction, music, audio clarity, dubbing, and voice acting.
- Best Mobile Game: Awarded to the strongest entry designed for mobile devices.
- Most Anticipated Game: Awarded to the unreleased game with the greatest potential to become a future standout.
- Best Game in Early Development: Awarded to the most promising demo or vertical slice demonstrating creativity and strong potential.
- Best Small Team Game: Awarded to the best game created by an independent team of up to 10 developers without publisher or investor support.
- Meaningful Game: Awarded to the game that best addresses important social, cultural, or environmental topics through gameplay and storytelling.
- Best Innovation: Awarded to the game that pushes boundaries with the most original or experimental concept.
- Best Game from Portugal: Awarded to the best game created by Portuguese developers.
- DevGAMM Choice: A special award selected by the DevGAMM team, recognizing a standout game that left a lasting impression.
Additionally, the show will feature four partner-sponsored prizes from Epic, Unreal Engine, tinyBuild, and Unity.
“Making a great game is already a challenge, but creating a meaningful game can be even harder, especially when there are so few awards and funding opportunities dedicated to this kind of work,” says Lerika Mallayeva, Founder of DevGAMM. “We hope this award gives greater visibility to developers creating games that help players see, feel, or understand something differently.”
The DevGAMM Awards are evaluated by more than 150 game industry professionals through DevGAMM’s online judging platform. Judges represent companies including PUBG Studios, Riot Games, Unity, Epic Games, Meta, Larian Studios, Kepler Interactive, and many others. Participating teams will receive feedback and recommendations from the judges throughout the process.
The DevGAMM Awards are open to indie developers and small studios worldwide. Submissions are free, and the application deadline is September 7, 2026. You can read more about DevGAMM at devgamm.com/awards2026/ .