Key Highlights:
- BAFTA has revealed the full 64 game longlist for the 2026 Games Awards.
- The Best Game category features ten standout contenders ranging from indies to blockbuster sequels.
- The awards themselves take place on 17 April 2026, where this year’s winners will be announced.
BAFTA has published its longlist for the 2026 BAFTA Games Awards, outlining 64 titles that industry voters will narrow down into nominations early next year. These lists matter because they reveal what developers themselves are rating highly, not just what reviewers or social media hype machines push to the surface. I’ve followed BAFTA lists for years and they often predict the tone of the whole awards season, especially for story driven titles and design craftsmanship.
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The biggest headline, as always, is the Best Game category. Ten titles made the cut across wildly different genres and budgets, which is very BAFTA. Here’s the full list:
Best Game longlist
- ARC Raiders
- Blue Prince
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
- Dispatch
- Ghost of Yōtei
- Hades II
- Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
- Split Fiction
BAFTA’s full longlist includes every title in contention across 17 categories, from Animation and Audio Achievement through to Narrative, Debut Game, and Technical Achievement. Given this list is factual and fixed, it deserves to be reproduced in full for reference, rather than trimmed down or paraphrased:
Full BAFTA Games Awards Longlist (64 titles)
- Absolum
- Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
- and Roger
- ARC Raiders
- Assassin’s Creed Shadows
- Atomfall
- BALL x PIT
- Battlefield 6
- Blue Prince
- Borderlands 4
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7
- Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector
- Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
- Consume Me
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Date Everything!
- Death Stranding 2: On The Beach
- Dead Take
- despelote
- Dispatch
- Donkey Kong Bananza
- DOOM: The Dark Ages
- Dune: Awakening
- EA SPORTS FC 26
- ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN
- F1 25
- Fallout 76
- Ghost of Yōtei
- Hades II
- Helldivers 2
- Hitman World of Assassination
- Hollow Knight: Silksong
- Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
- Is This Seat Taken?
- Jurassic World Evolution 3
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
- LEGO Party!
- Lies of P: Overture
- Little Nightmares III
- Mafia: The Old Country
- Mario Kart World
- Marvel Rivals
- Monument Valley 3
- No Man’s Sky
- PEAK
- Pokémon Legends: Z-A
- PowerWash Simulator 2
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
- Sea of Thieves
- SILENT HILL f
- Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
- South of Midnight
- Split Fiction
- Still Wakes the Deep: Siren’s Rest
- Sword of the Sea
- The Alters
- The Elder Scrolls Online
- The Midnight Walk
- The Rogue Prince of Persia
- Tiny Bookshop
- Two Point Museum
- Vampire Survivors
- Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2
- Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
BAFTA splits these across its categories, with Animation, Game Design, Narrative, Multiplayer, Technical Achievement and more showcasing the breadth of talent. As someone who works in games media, I tend to look at which titles BAFTA elevates in specialist areas. For example, Battlefield 6 has a strong showing in technical and audio categories, while narrative heavy games such as Clair Obscur, Ghost of Yōtei, Death Stranding 2 and The Alters appear frequently in storytelling brackets.
Voting now shifts to the BAFTA membership. Best Game and British Game will be voted on in February, while juries decide the rest. Nominations are scheduled for 12 March 2026, with the winners crowned at the BAFTA Games Awards ceremony on 17 April.
If you want to browse the official category breakdowns and rule notes, you can view the full list directly on the BAFTA website, which remains the formal source for all data shared above.
A little cool side note, shortly after in April, BAFTA usually do a poll and give out their special reward. In 2024, Lara Croft was voted the greatest video game character of all time in a poll.
Whilst this year Shenmue was voted as the most influential video game of all time. So who knows what the British Academy Film Awards has up its sleeves come what April 2026.