Public voting in the 44th Golden Joystick Awards closes three days from now, on Friday, October 23 at 4:00pm PT (07:00 on October 24 in Beijing), across the 21 categories whose nominees were announced on September
25. For PC players the headline race is PC Game of the Year, where Order of the Sinking Star, the puzzle game this site covers with a full guide column, faces Big Walk, Crimson Desert, Valheim and six others. A separate Ultimate Game of the Year ballot follows on October 26, and the winners are revealed in London on November 11.
At a glance
Voting closes: Friday, October 23 at 4:00pm PT / 7:00pm ET / midnight BST, which is 07:00 on October 24 in Beijing
Where: the official ballot at goldenjoysticks.com, run by GamesRadar and Future; open to voters worldwide
Scope: 21 publicly voted categories; Streamers’ Choice, Breakthrough and Critics’ Choice are panel awards revealed on the night
Next ballot: Ultimate Game of the Year voting runs October 26 to 30, with its nominees revealed on October 26
Ceremony: Wednesday, November 11 at Troxy in London, livestreamed globally
Eligibility: games released between November 1, 2025 and September 25, 2026, which is why GTA 6, out November 19, is absent
The PC Game of the Year field
The ten nominees are Big Walk, Crimson Desert, Escape from Tarkov, Esoteric Ebb, MECCHA CHAMELEON, Mewgenics, Order of the Sinking Star, STAR WARS Zero Company, The Blood of Dawnwalker and Valheim. The mix is the story: a full-price open-world RPG in Crimson Desert and a veteran survival game in Valheim share the list with self-published experiments such as Esoteric Ebb and Mewgenics. Order of the Sinking Star arrived on October 8 at $29.99, twelve days ago, and its Steam reception gives it a credible case: checked today, 2,718 of its 2,801 user reviews are positive, a 97% rate and an Overwhelmingly Positive rating for Thekla’s thousand-puzzle adventure.
The rest of the ballot
Console Game of the Year runs 007 First Light against Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, Forza Horizon 6, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, Nioh 3, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Pokémon Pokopia, PRAGMATA, Resident Evil Requiem and SAROS. Across the whole ballot, 007 First Light and Big Walk lead the nomination field, with Resident Evil Requiem also collecting nominations in several categories including Console Game of the Year and Best Supporting Performer. The remaining categories cover the usual ground, from Best Storytelling and Best Multiplayer Game to Best Indie Game in two flavours, plus the Still Playing awards, where Minecraft, Palworld, HELLDIVERS 2, Warframe and World of Warcraft are among the PC and console nominees.
One more race matters to this site’s readers. Best Remake / Remaster lists six nominees: Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, Gothic 1 Remake, METAL GEAR SOLID: MASTER COLLECTION Vol.2, Star Fox, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered and Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter. The Witcher 3 entry is the remaster that reached existing owners as a free 5.0 update in September, the version our beginner guide collection is built around. It faces a full remake of Gothic 1 and Ubisoft’s rebuilt Black Flag, which makes the category a clean test of how voters weigh a generous free remaster against ground-up rebuilds sold at full price.
What happens after Friday
The October 23 deadline closes only the first ballot. Ultimate Game of the Year, the awards’ headline category, keeps its own timetable: nominees are revealed on Monday, October 26, and voting in that category runs to October
30. The winners across all categories are then announced at the ceremony on Wednesday, November 11 at Troxy in London, with a global livestream. One absence drew comment when the lists appeared in September. GTA 6 appears in no category, and the eligibility window explains it without any conspiracy: nominations required a release by September 25, 2026, and Rockstar’s game launches on November 19.
Our take
The Golden Joysticks are a pure popularity vote, and that is their value: they measure what players actually loved, with no jury weighting to sand the result down. This year’s PC list is a fair snapshot of where PC gaming energy sits, split between giant productions and games one small team shipped from a standing start. Our readers have two direct stakes on the ballot, a PC Game of the Year nomination for Order of the Sinking Star, a fortnight after launch, and a Best Remake nomination for the free Witcher 3 remaster. If either earned your vote, cast it before Friday at 4:00pm PT. After that, the next date on the awards calendar is the Ultimate ballot on October 26.