These Five Titles That Might Contend With <em>GTA 6</em> for the 2026's Game of the Year Award.

The previous year, we pondered if anything could potentially outshine Grand Theft Auto 6 for the 2025's Game of the Year honor — "aside from Rockstar's capacity to complete it on time." In the end, it was exactly that that removed Rockstar's blockbuster game from the race, with postponements to May and, afterwards, November 2026 opening the door for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's unprecedented dominance at The 2025 Game Awards.

As a result, gazing forward to GOTY 2026, we are situated with a distinct sense of familiarity. Yet again, GTA 6 kicks off the year as the obvious frontrunner to win the highest honor. Similarly, Rockstar's biggest challenge might be its own schedule. While another postponement at this point is not as probable, it's undoubtedly still plausible, and with its present Nov. 19 release date barely making into The Game Awards' standard eligibility window, it would need merely a slide of 48 hours or more to push GTA 6 into contention for the 2027 awards.

For a third time, GTA 6 seems extremely tough to defeat, but far from insurmountable. Rockstar's own Red Dead Redemption 2 was beaten for GOTY by Sony Santa Monica's God of War in 2018, while GTA 5 was eclipsed in the majority of awards ceremonies and GOTY votes — if not the Game Awards' earlier incarnation, VGX — by The Last of Us. Paradoxically, GTA 6's behemoth status is a ironic kind of vulnerability, as critics and awards juries will be eagerly looking for an attractive alternative narrative to latch onto in order to maintain suspense.

So what other games may be in contention? Forecasting nominees this so soon in the year is, frankly, a bit of a fool's errand: the terrain of indie and smaller releases is mostly murky, while larger games often get delayed or underwhelm, and certain publishers (including Nintendo) have still not announce their games for the latter part of the year. Still, there are at present a handful of 2026 releases that seem like they will be formidable contenders. Here are five that possess a good chance of being selected alongside GTA 6.

1. Control: Resonant

Remedy Entertainment's surreal sequel is easily the most potent challenger to GTA 6's dominance. Indeed, Remedy may well be the quintessential Game Awards studio: It produces expertly engineered, visually striking, narratively sophisticated action-adventure games while operating just adequately outside the industry center to still feel like an underdog. The original Control earned eight nominations and one win in 2019, while Alan Wake 2 pushed Baldur's Gate 3 a close second in 2023, turning three of its eight selections into wins in the highly sought-after Game Direction, Narrative, and Art Direction categories. After a stunning trailer reveal at the 2025 Awards, Control Resonant is far from being dismissed.

2. Resident Evil Requiem

A fresh (or, for that matter) reimagined Resident Evil game is has a higher probability to be nominated for Game of the Year than not. This long-running series has an sterling recent record at The Game Awards — Resident Evil 2 was nominated for the top honor in 2019, Village in 2021, and 4 in 2023 — coupled with a well-earned reputation for reliable quality. Granted, a win would be a much more unlikely proposition, but you can bet on Capcom finding itself in the mix.

3. Wolverine (Marvel)

The Wolverine game from Insomniac is one of the biggest blockbuster prospects of the year, and in terms of budget and technical prowess, probably one of the handful that will be able to give GTA 6 a close contest. Like Resident Evil, Insomniac's high-octane Marvel games series is excellent at accumulating lots of nominations at The Game Awards, and less good at transforming them into wins. Will the move from Spider-Man to an more mature character and (much) more brutal action shift the odds in Wolverine's favor? Maybe, and it will be Sony's flagship contender for the year, which pretty much secures it a seat at the table.

4. Fortune's Weave (Fire Emblem)

Nintendo is rarely absent from the list of Game of the Year nominees. In the absence of a clear idea of what its holiday 2026 game will be (a new core Pokémon and a 3D Mario game are both rumored), Fortune’s Weave makes a compelling placeholder. Fire Emblem is a specialist series, it's true, but it has been expanding gradually in both appeal and regard over the past few years, while its involved anime storytelling style and tactical combat get more mainstream and closer to the gaming mainstream by the day. It would not be a surprise.

5. Dawnwalker's Blood

The ever-growing European voting bloc on the jury is more and more making its presence felt, especially when it comes to nominating epic, sprawling Euro role-playing games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Rebel Wolves' debut is an ideal game to draw those votes and fill this slot, particularly given the Witcher 3 lineage of its developers — and its striking similarity to that 2015 GOTY winner.

Concerning the Indies?

The obvious gap in our list is that it omits an indie contender. While The Game Awards jury usually only nominates one indie game for Game of the Year — 2025's three of indie picks appears to be a anomaly — it also rarely fails to nominate one. It's virtually impossible to predict what that game might be at this point, as the breakout indie games of each year often come out of the blue, but a few potential candidates would be:

• Mixtape: a music-centric, retro road trip of a game supported by the tastemakers at Annapurna Interactive.
• Replaced: a much-anticipated cyberpunk adventure with a lavishly detailed pixel-art visual style.
• Ontos: Frictional Games' enigmatic follow-up to the Amnesia series (assuming it's not excessively frightening).
• Slay the Spire 2: sequel to the immensely popular roguelike deckbuilder (but it might not make it out of early access in 2026).
• Mina the Hollower: Yacht Club Games' Shovel Knight successor, an whimsical retro Zelda homage (provided that the studio can succeed in finish it).

Additional Challengers

• Gears of War: E-Day: One of two huge franchise returns from Xbox Game Studios in 2026, E-Day will have to prove that this decidedly 2000s series is still relevant.
• Fable: After