DevGAMM Awards Returns for a Third Year — Watch Live on IGN This November

The 3rd Annual DevGAMM Awards will stream live from Lisbon, Portugal on November 18, hosted on IGN.com and IGN's YouTube channel. The show celebrates standout indie games and the developers behind them, handing out prizes across more than a dozen categories.

This year's edition expands to 13 total categories after adding four new ones: Best Small Team Game, Best Game in Early Development, Meaningful Game, and DevGAMM Choice. Best Small Team Game is specifically for independent teams of up to 10 developers with no publisher or investor backing. The Meaningful Game award targets titles that tackle social, cultural, or environmental topics through gameplay and storytelling — DevGAMM founder Lerika Mallayeva says the category exists because "there are so few awards and funding opportunities dedicated to this kind of work." Four partner-sponsored prizes from Epic, Unreal Engine, tinyBuild, and Unity round out the awards. Over 150 industry judges from studios including Larian Studios, Riot Games, PUBG Studios, and Meta evaluate submissions through DevGAMM's online platform, and every participating team gets written feedback from judges.

DevGAMM has been running its awards for three years now, pulling in over 1,000 game submissions across the first two editions and recognizing nearly 30 winners — past honorees include Manor Lords, Cairn, Keep Driving, Drop Duchy, and Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall. The event is part of DevGAMM's broader mission to support the indie development community, and the Lisbon venue continues the show's European footprint.

Submissions are free and open to indie developers and small studios worldwide, with an application deadline of September 7, 2026. More details are at devgamm.com/awards2026.