The Game Awards 2026: date, start time, when nominees drop and whether GTA 6 qualifies

The Game Awards 2026 streams live on Thursday, Dec. 10, from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, starting at 7:30 p.m. ET and 4:30 p.m. PT, and it's free to watch. The nominees don't have an announcement date yet, though the show revealed them on a Monday in mid-November in both 2024 and 2025.

Grand Theft Auto VI qualifies. The show's official rules cover any game that goes on sale by Friday, Nov. 20, at 9 p.m. PT, and Rockstar releases GTA 6 on Thursday, Nov. 19. Getting nominated is a separate question. If the list comes out in mid-November, as it did in 2024 and 2025, jurors will vote before Nov. 19 and can only pick GTA 6 if they've played it ahead of launch.

Start time and venue

The official site lists 7:30 p.m. ET / 4:30 p.m. PT as the start of what it calls the opening act and gives no separate time for the main ceremony, so tune in then to catch the whole thing. Outside North America, that works out to 12:30 a.m. GMT on Friday, Dec. 11. Last year's show ran just over three hours, so a similar running time would wrap a little after 10:30 p.m. ET.

How to watch

It's free, with no subscription required. The show will stream across the major video platforms, and creators can sign up to co-stream it on their own channels. The 2026 platform list hasn't been published. In 2025, it streamed on more than 30 platforms, including YouTube, Twitch, Steam, X, Facebook, TikTok Live and, for the first time, Prime Video.

When the nominees are announced

There's no official date. Nominees were announced on Monday, Nov. 18, in 2024 and on Monday, Nov. 17, in 2025. If the show sticks to that pattern, this year's list would arrive in mid-November, before GTA 6 launches on Thursday, Nov. 19.

Fan voting opens alongside the nominees on The Game Awards website, and through Bilibili in China. It closes Wednesday, Dec. 9, at 6 p.m. PT (9 p.m. ET), roughly a day before the show.

GTA 6 and the eligibility cutoff

Rockstar set GTA 6 for Nov. 19, 2026, on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S when it announced the game's latest delay, and that date has held since. With the cutoff on Nov. 20, it clears every jury category by a single day. The fan-voted Players' Voice award has a later deadline, Nov. 30. For everything Rockstar has confirmed about the game itself, see our GTA 6 guide to the date, map, characters and price.

If nominees land in mid-November, the outlets on the jury will vote before anyone can buy the game. The rules allow for this by letting publishers send review copies or give jurors early access. Whether GTA 6 makes the list depends on Rockstar doing that and on those outlets playing enough of it to put it on their ballots. Without a nomination it can't win, because both the jury and the fans pick winners from among the nominees.

The Nov. 20 cutoff applies to every November release. Our list of November 2026 games shows which ones land before it and which will have to wait for the 2027 show.

How nominees and winners are picked

Nominees in most categories come from a jury of more than 100 media and creator outlets around the world. Each outlet submits one ballot for its whole staff, listing its top five picks per category in no particular order, and the five games named on the most ballots become the nominees.

Winners come from a blended vote, weighted 90% jury and 10% fans. Studios don't submit their games or pay a fee, since every game that meets the deadline is considered automatically. Expansions, DLC, remakes and remasters can also compete if the jury thinks they bring enough new work.

In 2025, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 arrived with a record 12 nominations and won nine awards, including Game of the Year. Our review explains why it swept.