GDC 2026 brought together more than 28,000 professionals in San Francisco over five days. The event confirmed what many had sensed for several years: independent studios are no longer a niche — they have become the creative engine of the industry.
The major announcements of this edition came mainly from studios of fewer than fifty people. A spectacular reversal compared to editions of the previous decade, which were dominated by major publisher presentations.
The central topic of the talks was generative artificial intelligence, its uses in development — and its ethical limits, widely debated by participants.