The Golden Joystick Awards’ Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist is due today, October 26, when the final public vote of the 2026 awards opens. That vote runs through October 30, and the winner is revealed at the ceremony on November 11 at the Troxy in London, closing a voting season that began on September 25.
At a glance
Ultimate Game of the Year: shortlist due October 26, public vote October 26 to
30. No closing time for October 30 has been published.
Standard categories: public voting ran September 25 to October 23 across 21 categories, closing October 23 at 4:00 p.m. PT / 7:00 p.m. ET / midnight BST.
Ceremony: November 11, 2026, at the Troxy in London, live-streamed globally.
The 44th edition, run by Future through GamesRadar, and billed as the longest-running publicly voted game awards.
Not publicly voted: the Breakthrough Award, the Critics’ Choice Award, and the Streamers’ Choice Award, chosen by a panel and revealed on the night.
A five-day vote for the biggest prize
Ultimate Game of the Year runs on its own schedule for a reason: it is the last ballot, not one of the 21 categories that closed on October
23. Voting takes place at goldenjoysticks.com, the awards’ official site, which forwards to the GamesRadar voting hub. Five days is short compared with the month-long main vote, and that compression is the point — the final prize gets a concentrated burst of attention rather than a slow month of it.
One practical warning follows from the published schedule. The main vote had a precise closing time, but for the Ultimate Game of the Year vote, Future has published a closing date, October 30, and no closing time. Players who want a say should not leave it to the final day, because the hour at which the ballot closes is not public. Vote early in the window and the ambiguity does not matter.
The platform fields to watch
The PC Game of the Year shortlist, published September 25, is 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. Readers of this site may recognize two of those names: Order of the Sinking Star is the subject of one of our guide columns, and Crimson Desert is the subject of the expansion covered elsewhere in today’s batch.
The Console Game of the Year shortlist is 007 First Light, 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 field, and the awards’ organizers have described 2026 as one of the most open and unpredictable years in the awards’ history.
What is not up for a public vote
Three awards are decided on the night by a panel rather than by the public: the Breakthrough Award, the Critics’ Choice Award, and the Streamers’ Choice Award. The panel draws on journalists from GamesRadar+, PC Gamer, the Future Games Show, Edge, Retro Gamer, and Future’s network of freelance writers and creators. Those are the awards where critical consensus, rather than fan turnout, decides the winner.
One major game is absent from the whole cycle for a simple calendar reason. Grand Theft Auto VI launches on November 19, eight days after the November 11 ceremony, so it falls outside this year’s awards entirely. Anyone waiting for the biggest launch of the year to settle the Game of the Year argument will have to wait for next year’s ballot.
How to use the five days
The Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist goes live during October 26, London time, so readers checking in the morning in Beijing or in the evening in the Americas will find it at different points of the day. The list itself is the news; the platform shortlists above are the context for it. Once it is live, the vote at goldenjoysticks.com is the only public ballot left in this year’s awards.
Last year’s ceremony ended with Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 winning seven awards, a sweep that set the bar for what a dominant year looks like. This year has no such favorite, which makes the five-day vote genuinely open. If a platform-category favorite takes the top prize, the story is consolidation; if a game that lost its platform race takes it, the story is a split verdict — and either way, the result is decided by whoever votes before October 30.