Hello there!

The purpose of this thread is to give community members a platform to report their GOTY contenders for 2026. The idea here is to 1) inspire each other to play games we may have otherwise skipped and 2) give each of us a larger pool of experiences to pull from during the forum's GOTY voting process in December.

A few tips:

• Your nomination doesn't need to be the GOTY of 2026. Think of the games as GOTY contenders — titles that would make your top 10-12 games list at the end of the year
• We are looking for games that saw their first international release in 2026
• Feel free to list collections, remasters, and DLC, but we mainly want new games, including transformational remakes like Resident Evil 4 (2023)
• Please list the game, the platform you played it on, your score, and a short blurb about what makes it special

Please feel free to come here and post every time you finish a new GOTY candidate! I'll track total mentions in the post below.

I figured I'd get this up early, even though I expect not a lot of folks have played a GOTY contender 18 days into the new year

Hopefully I get to play some really winners this year.

Here's our first candidate (in the DLC category)!

Cult of the Lamb: Woolhaven (NS)
By retaining everything the vanilla version does right, and adding several novelties — a somber story about the Lamb's lost clan, two new dungeons filled with unexpected horrors, a wintry weather system that changes the rules of survival, and consequential ranching and rot mechanics — this expansion takes what was already a great game and makes it even better.
Score: 8.5/10

Another one from me:

Dragon Quest VII Reimagined (PS5)
It carries over the core components of the original game — an emotionally powerful narrative, a diverse set of role-playing scenarios, and a tactically rewarding vocation system — and enhances them with gorgeous visuals, immersive voice-acting, several important quality-of-life features, and superior pacing.
Score: 8/10

Resident Evil Requiem is a definite candidate; absolutely amazing game that would have been my 2025 GOTY had it released a few months earlier.

Added! Thanks for posting :)

Forza Horizon 6 or Fable since Playground Games has an excellent track record when it comes to making great games.

I don't really consider it as viable GOTY candidate for actual awards, given that it tries to recreate that particular Disco Elysium feel, and and even that game got massively overlooked at official awards, but one of my picks (so far) would be Esoteric Ebb.