Billed as “The biggest games event in the world”, gamescom 2026 is coming up in a weeks’ time.
With E3 long gone, this is now the biggest week on the gaming calendar. To give you a sense of scale, the 2025 edition saw over 357 000 visitors and had over 1 500 exhibitors. 2026 is expected to be as big, if not bigger.
Running in its Cologne home from Wednesday 26th to Sunday 30th August at the Koelnmesse, with, as has become tradition, Geoff Keighley opening proceedings at Opening Night Live the evening of before the start of the expo (Tuesday, 25 August). ONL kicks off at 20:00, with the pre-show from 19:30, and it’s streaming free on YouTube and Twitch.
(Germany is currently CEST, and CEST is UTC+2 as is SAST, so the entire schedule lands exactly on our clocks.)
The show week is stacked. Here’s some of the highlights that I’ll try track in this thread. (All times SAST):
| Date | Time | Show |
|---|---|---|
| Tue 25 Aug | 19:30 | Opening Night Live pre-show |
| Tue 25 Aug | 20:00 | Gamescom Opening Night Live |
| Wed 26 – Sun 30 Aug | 10:00 – 19:00 daily | CD Projekt Red REDstreams |
| Wed 26 Aug | 16:00 | Xbox Live Broadcast 1 |
| Wed 26 Aug | 19:00 | Future Games Show at Gamescom |
| Wed 26 Aug | Straight after FGS | FGS Live from Gamescom |
| Thu 27 Aug | 16:00 | Xbox Live Broadcast 2 |
| Thu 27 Aug | 20:00 | Gamescom Awesome Indies |
| Sun 30 Aug | 19:00 | FGS Best of Gamescom |
On the show floor, playable demos are lined up for Gears of War: E-Day, Forza Horizon 6, Persona 4 Revival, Alien: Isolation 2, Fable, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 and Minecraft Dungeons 2, among many others.
This thread will be our collection point for all of it - post reveals, trailers, stream links, your reactions and anything else you stumble across.
Live on Tuesday, August 25 at 8:00 PM (CEST), 7:00 PM (BST), 2:00 PM (ET), 11:00 AM (PT)