The 2026 GOTY Race Could Be a Disaster for Indie Games

Published Nov 15, 2026, 12:00 PM EST Oli Welsh has been covering the business and culture of video games for two decades. He started out writing for Edge and other publications (specializing in MMOs and Blizzard, as cover for his World of Warcraft playtime) before joining Eurogamer, where he worked for 14 years as reviews editor, deputy editor, and editor-in-chief; Eurogamer won many Games Media Awards during his tenure. At Polygon, he writes about film and TV as well as games, and provides news, analysis, and criticism on the entertainment we love and the industries that make it, all from his home in London. He loves role-playing, racing, puzzles, tactics, exploration, storytelling, Nintendo, mysteries, spies, fantasy, reality, cars, and classic cinema. He wanted to be a movie critic when he grew up, and now he’s definitely grown up, and occasionally is one. He considers this a win. After three indie nominees last year, this year’s leading contender is in trouble Image: House House/Panic via Polygon Last year was a watershed moment for indie games at The Game Awards. Three games were nominated for both Game of the Year and Best Independent Game: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hades 2, and Hollow Knight: Silksong. Together, they made up half of the GOTY 2025 field. Some quibble with the definition of Clair Obscur, a sizable production, as an indie game. (For what it's worth, the studio that made it is independent, and its publisher Kepler Interactive was founded by a collective of indie studios; it's definitely culturally indie.) But even if you excluded it, this was still the first time more than one game had crossed over between the indie and GOTY categories in the history of the awards. If you interpret this result as a sure sign that The Game Awards is taking indie games much more seriously, I'm afraid you might be disappointed. The 2025 nominations flatter to deceive, and 2026 looks like it will be a different matter. All three 2025 indie GOTY nominees were huge sellers, and two of them were high-profile sequels to critical darlings and popular favorites. These were not normal times. In previous years things were much more patchy. Balatro, 2024's indie nominee, was a massive viral hit. There was no indie nominee in 2023. In 2022, the lucky game was the distinctly slick and mainstream Stray. Prior to that, one indie game would typically break through every other year. Increasing recognition of indie games among the critical community has been counterbalanced by the international expansion of The Game Awards jury. This expansion has tended to flatten the jury's taste, and tends to disadvantage indie developers who can't afford localization into multiple languages — not an issue for 2025's three big beasts. 2026's indie contenders are in trouble So we turn to the 2026 race. There have been some superb and well-reviewed indie games this year, as there are every year: Big Walk, Mina the Hollower, Zero Parades, Mewgenics, Cairn, Denshattack!, Mixtape. None of them have been hits on the scale of the last few indie nominees, however, nor have they penetrated the culture in the same way as 2025’s games. Image: Yacht Club Games Nevertheless, a nomination for one of them is still in prospect, because this year's GOTY slate is relatively weak, with many evenly matched titles fighting over the few nomination slots left after dead certs Grand Theft Auto 6, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Resident Evil Requiem are accounted for. In those circumstances, there's a path to nomination for an indie game with a stellar critical reputation and strong support. The best candidates are Mina the Hollower and Big Walk, both critical darlings with 90-plus ratings on Metacritic. Mina was more widely covered at launch, but didn't click with a big audience. As a multiplayer co-op game, Big Walk has had a longer tail in the conversation, and has more viral stickiness. Jury members have probably been playing it over time with their friend groups. It's been my pick of the two so far, and its case was buoyed by a win in the Critic's Choice category at this week's Golden Joystick Awards. However, also this week, developer House House made the disastrous admission that generative AI had been used to write some code for Big Walk. This will likely rule the game out of contention for several indie awards, like the IGF and Indie Game Awards. (The Indie Game Awards stripped Clair Obscur of its 2025 Game of the Year award over use of generative AI.) Its impact on Big Walk's fortunes at The Game Awards is less clear. Image: House House/Panic The broad-church Game Awards jury is likely less swayed by ethical issues such as AI usage than small, indie-specialist juries. That said, Big Walk will need the whole indie-fan coalition within The Game Awards jury to rally around it if it's going to get a nomination. An added wrinkle is that the AI news hit toward the final stage of The Game Awards' two-step nomination process. Jury members offended by the AI usage would have to actively remove Big Walk nominations they'd already made, rather than just not make them. The controversy might not hurt Big Walk's chances as much as you might think, But it certainly doesn't help them. In a tight race for those final nominations, the leading indie contender just took a big knock. Can Mina the Hollower take up the mantle? Or will Big Walk's loss be some AAA title's gain — Control Resonant, perhaps, or 007 First Light? We'll find out soon enough.