The Game Awards 2026 Start Time: When It Starts and How to Watch

The Game Awards 2026 opens on Thursday, December 10 at 4:30 p.m. PT (7:30 p.m. ET), which is 12:30 a.m. GMT on Friday, December 11. The organizer’s own event page runs the broadcast from 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. CST, so the show is about three and a half hours long. The FAQ calls that opening moment “the opening act starting at 7:30p ET / 4:30p PT”.

Where to watch: The Game Awards streams free across all major streaming services. Its own channels include YouTube and Twitch. Co-streaming is welcome, with a sign-up page for official co-streamers. The show comes from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. A limited number of public tickets went on sale through AXS on October 29.

What is in it: the FAQ promises awards, world premieres, musical performances and more. How that gets decided is published too, and it is stricter than a fan vote. Nominees come from an international jury of more than 100 media and influencer outlets. Each outlet submits an unranked ballot, meaning it lists its top five choices in a category without ordering them. The five games on the most ballots become nominees. Producer Geoff Keighley is not on the jury, and the Advisory Board has no involvement. Winners come from a 90/10 split between the jury and public fan voting. Fans vote on the organizer’s own site and, in China, through Billibili. Fan voting closes on Wednesday, December 9 at 6 p.m. PT.

The eligibility rule sets the rest of the calendar. Games must be commercially available on or before Friday, November 20, 2026 at 9 p.m. PT. The FAQ also answers the questions readers ask every year, such as whether early-access games, expansions and remakes can be nominated. Players’ Voice is the one category with a later deadline, and games in it have until November 30 to ship. Our GTA 6 eligibility story covers why a November 19 launch clears the cutoff by a day. The 2026 nominees land mid-November, per the official site.

The practical part for readers is that the clock does not move. This is one broadcast that starts at 4:30 p.m. Pacific on December 10 for everyone, so there is no regional rollout to plan around and no store countdown to watch. Two other dates matter more than the ceremony itself: December 9, when fan voting closes, and November 20, the eligibility cutoff that decides what can even be nominated. Nominations arriving in mid-November leaves campaigns three weeks to argue for titles most players will not have finished. That is why the eligibility date, not the start time, is the deadline that shapes each publisher’s year.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report