May 2026 Game Industry Conference and Convention Events Calendar

We’ve assembled an exclusively curated list of game industry events you can attend in May 2026. The month is giving us a nice glimpse into what the summer event lineup is going to be like. We’ve now moved on from early year conferences (GDC, DICE, etc.) and conventions and festivals (PAX East, SXSW, etc.) and are going to see a slight shift if focus to a broader set of conventions through the summer (gamescom, Gen Con, etc).

Last month (and the month before that…), we talked a lot about AI and its effects on the industry. We’re going to save you the pain of hearing about “AI this and AI that” for this month’s event list, as frankly, where at a point where we can say it’s “business as usual” in the AI space.

Featured Events

Leading the month is the Game Educators Summit 2026 (May 1), and its positioning is telling. As hiring slows and studios restructure, the burden of preparing “job-ready” developers is increasingly shifting onto educators. What was once a loosely coupled relationship between academia and industry is hardening into a pipeline, one expected to produce talent already fluent in live-service production realities. The subtext is hard to ignore: studios want less ramp-up, and education is being asked to absorb that cost.

Mid-month, the A MAZE Berlin 2026 (May 13–16) stands in stark contrast to that pipeline mentality. Its continued focus on arthouse games and experimental media feels almost defiant in a market dominated by scale, retention metrics, and sequelization. Alongside grassroots showcases like the NYC Video Game Festival 2026 (May 9) and Capital Creative Showcase 2026 (May 9), it highlights a growing split: innovation is happening, but often outside the structures that can actually fund and sustain it.

The industry isn’t short on ideas—it’s short on the conditions that allow those ideas to scale.

On the business side, events like Madeira Games Summit 2026 (May 7–8), GameExpo Summit by PocketGamer Connects 2026 (May 20–21), and Nordic Game 2026 (May 26–29) reinforce where the industry’s priorities remain firmly anchored: financing, publishing deals, and growth strategy. The language may evolve – UGC, cross-platform ecosystems, emerging markets – but the underlying question is the same as it has been for years: how to extract more predictable, long-term revenue from increasingly volatile player bases. The persistence of this focus suggests an industry still optimizing known models rather than taking meaningful risks on new ones.

Toward the end of the month, consumer-heavy events such as EGX 2026 (May 22–24), DreamHack Atlanta 2026 (May 15–17), and TwitchCon Rotterdam 2026 (May 30–31) make one thing clear: the center of gravity has shifted decisively toward community and creators. Games are platforms for participation and identity. But that shift comes with its own tension: as publishers lean more heavily on creators and communities for visibility and longevity, they also become more dependent on ecosystems they don’t fully control.

The sheer spread of May’s calendar underscores a deeper structural shift. It’s now becoming a more indie and flexible patchwork of overlapping scenes: corporate, independent, academic, and creator-driven. Especially creator-driven.

New Events

Joining the calendar for the first time ever, check out the following events:

• Start-up, Scale-up, and Grow Conference (B2B – London, UK)
• GDCy Fest (B2B – Limassol, Cyprus)
• PIGCON (B2C – Portland, OR USA)

With all that said, check out the complete month’s event list below! But first…

Special Offers

We recently launched a new feature on the website – Event Ticket Discounts and Offers. Want to know when your event has a 10% off special or early bird rates open? Check out our Free Offers Page regularly!

Here are the latest offers listed as of this blog post:

Have an offer we can add to this list? Please let us know!

We are also looking for folks who want to get some editorial experience (or just prestige of attending an event) by writing about their event experiences (or simply taking photos showcasing an event you are attending). Let us know if you want to contribute!

This Month’s Events

Many of the listed events are included in the calendar thanks to your contributions in submitting events to the calendar.

Thank you so much for continuing to support us!

We’ve made some additions to the overview, including a new test view of the events right from the calendar itself listed below. Let us know which type of list you prefer.

Visit the main event calendar that includes events throughout the year and beyond.

Which events are you attending this month? Let us know by commenting on this article here or on LinkedIn, Twitter, Bluesky, Threads, and Facebook!