GDC 2026: All the news, interviews, demos and more

Watch this space for ongoing coverage of the event, which runs March 9-13 This week, people from all over the global games industry converge in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference, now in its 37th year. This year, the event has a slightly different name — GDC Festival of Gaming — and a slightly tweaked focus to match. Though it remains an event for industry professionals to network, make deals, and share deep-dive presentations about the development process of recent games, the organizers of this year's show hope to appeal to a broader slice of the game development community beyond the C-suite and studio bigwigs, with more varied panels, discussions and events. There are several emerging and ongoing trends we'll be keeping an eye on at this year's show, including the continued emergence of AI technology in game development, increasing costs of development and hardware, and a more in-depth look at Microsoft's next-gen hardware, Project Helix. GDC Festival of Gaming runs from March 9-13, so be sure to check back here for all of Polygon's coverage of this year's event. My favorite thing about attending GDC every year is the chance to be a fly on the wall as video game dev