Call for Submissions

Call for Submissions 2027

View submission guidelines and submit a presentation from July 7–August 7, 2026, to speak at GDC Festival of Gaming 2027!

If you would like to publicize a product, please visit the Become a Partner page for more information on sponsored sessions.

View our Submissions FAQ page for helpful tips.

Tracks That Span the Ecosystem

Click on one of the GDC Tracks listed below to view descriptions of the topics solicited by the Advisory Board:

Audio

The Audio track is soliciting submissions that cover the following topics:

Innovative, creative, technical, inspirational, practical - we feature talks on every aspect of the art, science, and business of game audio. We want submissions from composers, sound designers, audio directors, and programmers, and all game developers with unique perspectives and experiences with game audio; in-housers, freelancers, academics; indies to AAA; mobile, PC, console, virtual/augmented reality, and other form factors. We strongly favor talks with tangible proofs in shipping consumer experiences and with listening examples, over more speculative or hypothetical proposals. We also prefer submissions that focus on the unique challenges of interactive audio over those which could equally be applicable to linear media.

Examples of evergreen topics include:

The creative process, perspective and challenges of making unique sound design and music experiences for games
Your finest analysis, project postmortems, tips & tricks, innovations, and technology
Platform challenges - opportunities afforded by new hardware, new user interfaces, and creatively overcoming limitations/restrictions
"Post-production" - real-time mixing, DSP, their aesthetics and impact on the player experience
Development - career, culture, teams, management, direction, tools, pipelines, audio QA, audio localization
Business - contracts, copyright, licensing, freelance, budgeting, and operations
Voice/Dialogue - aesthetics, pipeline, casting and recording, asset acquisition and integration, performance, and direction

This year we'd also love to see submissions addressing these hot topics:

Technical Sound Design and Music Design
Practical workflow and technique deep-dives - it’s always insightful to see how others work!
Career development, from getting started to expanding, adapting, and reinventing
Diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and skills
Cross-disciplinary audio: when sound assists or interacts with gameplay in novel ways
Real-time synthesis and procedural/generative/AI-utilizing audio - music, sound, and speech
Novel audio system implementations and programming best practices
Truly interactive, non-repetitive, and just-in-time musical scoring
Sound and music for immersive and interactive virtual/augmented reality experiences
The modern remote workspace: how sound ideas are communicated, made, iterated, and integrated in a time of decentralized studios and globally distributed game production

Business Strategy

Career

Culture & Sustainability

Design

Educators

The Educators track is soliciting submissions that cover the following topics:

The Educators track is dedicated to bringing forward the most innovative and exciting ideas in game education today, bringing together educators from established game development programs with new game course creators that want to understand the challenges they'll face in the next few years. Attendees will discover new experimental and inventive educational approaches as well as best practices that they can bring back to their faculty and classrooms. It is a great professional development opportunity that will explore how new areas of game education will advance the field for the next generation of students.

Who Should Submit

You're an inspired educator with some great ideas to share with others about teaching game design/development, to improve everyone's practice. You've done some ground-breaking work on your curriculum or research that we can all use to improve what we are doing with students. You have a unique point of view on teaching game design/development that you haven't seen anywhere else, that you know could add value. You have an idea for a panel and can assemble some great speakers from various schools to speak to a particular topic. We are looking for new voices, so if you haven't submitted before, please consider doing so. There is probably something amazing and unique about how YOU do things that we would all benefit from hearing about. We are particularly interested in hearing from programs/people who may not be regular attendees.

Audience

The audience consists of educators of game development and studies (working in the context of community college, four-year college/university and graduate education programs, with the occasional K-12 educator). Most attendees are at schools that already have well-established game programs and courses of study (or else they will be in a few short years, once they work the kinks out of a newly-developed program). We are soliciting for the following topics:

Inspired approaches to teaching any aspect of game development or game studies.
Novel ways to fund or publish games research, student game projects, etc.
Proven best practices for successful programs, courses and research structures.
Strategies for encouraging and teaching diverse student communities.
Teaching game design/development online.

Tips for submissions, based on some common mistakes we've seen:

This track is not about serious games, it is about how to teach people about games (how to make games, how to analyze and understand games, issues around graduate research in games, etc.) A talk about teaching serious game development, or a game that helps teach about games, would be appropriate. Case studies of serious games that have nothing to do with game education are not.

Don't focus the proposal too much on the speaker and their contributions to the field. If you have an interesting project or case study to share, that's great, but be clear about the audience takeaways. How will attending your talk help hundreds of other educators do their job better?

Speakers vs panels: Single speaker sessions are the most successful structure. It is difficult to justify two or more speakers for a lecture format, so please consider that. Panels should be considered if your topic would benefit from multiple perspectives, and each speaker on a panel should represent a distinct aspect or point of view of the topic, typically from different institutions as well.
Make sure your topic isn't a beginner-level topic, such as "How to start a game development program", which has been covered many times before. When writing your proposal, it may be useful to look at session names and descriptions for the last three years (and watch talks related to your topic on gdcvault.com). In this way we can build up our collective understanding of the theory and practice of game education.
Takeaways and topics should be immediately clear from the initial read. Make it obvious why your peers would want to watch your proposed talk. This isn't the time to conceal information. A proposal titled "Five Things You Can Do to Improve Student Retention" should list what those five things are. Give us enough information to evaluate your talk.

We try not to include sessions in the schedule that seem too similar to a session we’ve had in recent years. It’s good to look at Educators sessions in the Vault to see if we’ve covered your proposed topic recently. If we have covered the topic recently, make sure to include how you’re differentiating yourself from the previous session in your submission.

Conference Program Topic

Discover the most innovative and exciting ideas in game education. Learn best practices to bring back to your classrooms and experimental approaches that will advance the field for the next generation of students. Join educators from established game development programs and new game course creators for professional development and to explore challenges together.

Executive (Luminaries Speaker Series)

The Executive (Luminaries Speaker Series) track is soliciting submissions that cover the following topics:

We are seeking submissions for the GDC Luminaries Speaker Series that explores the macro forces shaping the business of games. This program is designed to provide senior leaders with strategic insights, market intelligence, and transformative ideas to guide portfolio and organizational decisions. We are particularly interested in dynamic, interactive formats that foster engagement and dialogue, delivered by leaders from influential studios, platforms, and adjacent industries.

Key areas of focus include:

Executive Lens: Content tailored for senior leaders responsible for making high-level portfolio and organizational decisions.
Strategy Over Tactics: Emphasis on market outlooks, future trends, and intelligence to help set roadmaps and budgets, rather than operational tactics.
Leadership Insights: TED-style talks that focus on leadership skills, personal growth, and transformative ideas that inspire and empower senior executives.
Cross-Industry Voices: Contributions from experts across entertainment, technology, finance, and policy sectors, providing diverse perspectives that shape long-horizon bets.

We are seeking submissions in interactive and conversational formats, including:

Fireside Chats (30 mins): On-stage interviews with industry leaders that provide unique insights and personal perspectives. We recommend including your preferred interviewer in your submission. No slides will be required.
Ask Me Anything (30 mins): On-stage engaging sessions where speakers address audience questions directly, creating real-time dialogue and deeper exploration of topics. No slides will be required.
Panels (60 mins): On-stage collaborative discussions featuring multiple experts, offering diverse viewpoints and lively exchanges. We recommend including your preferred moderator and full list of panelists in your submission. No slides will be required.
Roundtables (60 mins): Off-the-record, informal, small group gatherings that foster peer-to-peer learning and collaborative problem-solving, providing senior leaders with the opportunity to engage directly, share experiences, and explore solutions to common challenges. No slides will be required.

Submissions should align with one of the following themes:

AI & Emerging Technology: Exploring the transformative impact of artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies in the games industry.
Investment, Global Expansion, and the Player Ecosystem: Insights into funding strategies, international growth opportunities, and evolving player behaviors.
Transmedia Opportunities and Player Engagement: Examining cross-media IP strategies, innovative approaches to player engagement.
Inspiration & Leadership: Focused on leadership skills, personal growth, and motivational insights that empower executives to lead with vision, resilience, and creativity.

We encourage thought-provoking, forward-looking proposals that combine strategic insights with leadership inspiration, delivered in engaging and interactive formats that spark meaningful conversations and ideas.

If your submission is geared towards early career professionals through senior managers and directors—who need tactical guidance to solve immediate problems, we encourage you to submit to the Business Strategy track above.

Independent Development

The Independent Development track is soliciting submissions that cover the following topics:

The Independent Development track is the place for the independent game developer at GDC. It features lectures, postmortems, microtalks, and panels from notable independent game creators. It seeks to highlight diverse voices and fresh perspectives alongside the latest learnings, innovations, and successes in indie development.

Keep in Mind

We are looking for talk proposals relevant to recent releases, direct experience, and well-grounded takeaways.
Perspectives and experiences which could be considered marginalized in the context of GDC’s typical offering are actively welcomed and encouraged!
Stories of perfection or success are not required. We find that learning from failure is often much more interesting to our audiences, so you should feel encouraged to speak to the messy realities of game dev, as well as the lessons learned.
If your own project did not yield enough data for a talk on a certain topic, consider consolidating ideas from your peers or people with similar games, or running a panel with several speakers.
Talks which are clearly aimed at marketing a game or upcoming release will not be accepted.

Topics of Interest for Proposals to Speak

Design Practices: Design techniques particularly suited to indies, such as new collaborative practices, rapid prototyping or voluntary constraints, as well as more abstract talks on how you approach indie limitations in practice. We're interested in any talks that fall under this umbrella! Even if you feel like your approach is too "out there", we want to hear from you!
Design Philosophies: We’re also interested in the philosophies underlying your games - do you have a talk about how your game represents an Indigenous perspective? Or how you approached ethical design practices? Or on building tools to represent your specific cultural philosophies on storytelling or design? Tell us more!
Case Studies and Post-mortems: Talks that demonstrate what worked, what didn't, what surprised you and made you wiser. Disciplinary Deep Dives - each discipline in video game development encounters unique challenges working in the independent space. Building games on your own often requires deep, specialized learning in new areas. Talks for specific audiences about advanced techniques in Engineering, Design, Art, Audio, Production/Project Management, UI/UX, or Storytelling, and other areas are all welcome and encouraged.
Indie Business: How to fund your project, ship a profitable game, what tools to use, how to manage teams, pick the right platform, and run a company without self-destructing.
Promotion & Marketing: How to get noticed, build an audience, or even a community, when the "Marketing Department" is also the dev team.
Managing Teams: How to manage and model healthy work/life balance, what are your successful diverse hiring practices, how do you scale a team in a healthy and productive manner, how to lead teams under difficult circumstances, remote working and distributed team best practices, and innovative solutions to building resilient team and process in an era of climate crisis.
Production Methods: How to cut scope for an ambitious project while retaining creative quality and ways to build great games with an emphasis on team health and sustainability.
Indie Publishing Perspectives: Do you have insights on the market, working with publishers, self-publishing, or various strategies, pitfalls, and lessons learned for securing funding you can share? We want to hear more!
Building resilient teams and processes: In an era of climate crisis, or work that finds innovative solutions to same.
Weathering Change: Strategies on how to manage or transition a career or business in independent games during negative economic or other circumstances that bring outsized challenges. Looking for examples of creative resilience and adaptability during hard times rather than solving problems through sheer force.

Marketing

Narrative & Performance

Production & Team Leadership

The Production & Team Leadership track is soliciting submissions that cover the following topics:

The Production & Team Leadership track is looking for experienced producers and team leaders who have shipped games to share their best techniques or experiences which helps them produce better games or build better teams. We are financing/genre/platform/business model agnostic - we are looking for case studies from everyone! Huge, tiny, startup, established, AAA console developers, Indie developers, Mobile teams, Cross-platform teams, Service teams, etc. A few project case topics the Production & Team Management track is looking for, but certainly not limited to, are:

Production Case Studies or day in the life of...

Making games for new platforms
Producing games from concept to launch
Challenges of shipping on multiple platforms simultaneously
Building and running a live service
Managing licenses
Managing teams across time zones
Managing hybrid/remote teams successfully
Managing project scope throughout development
Managing outsource teams

Studios & Teams

Habits and culture of successful teams
Building a new team: Start- up, new teams, mature team
Communication methods for your team and from your team across the organization
Managing creative people through difficult transitions
Managing team growth, studio changes, acquisitions, layoffs, and more.

Production Roles

Producing with multiple types of production processes
Setting games as a service up for success at launch or managing very mature GaaS titles
Working as/with external publisher production
Doing production when not a producer (very applicable for small/indie teams)
Transitioning into a producer role from another discipline
Training and career progression of producers
Producing multiple projects
Working with a Product Management or Business team
Working with or producing your QA group
Producing games being developed by multiple studios
Use of AI in reporting and managing large projects

Leadership

Growing leads at your studio
Bringing on new leaders
Being a director on a AAA title
Defining or building studio culture
Mentoring and coaching of individuals
Balancing production and leadership responsibilities
Maintaining alignment with game vision and product goals throughout the project lifecycle

Programming

Tabletop

Visual Art

The Visual Art track is soliciting submissions that cover the following topics:

The success of the GDC Visual Arts track has grown over the past few years and we want you to help us build on that momentum. We want disruptive, inspirational and amazing artists, art directors, and art managers to speak this year. We're looking for people who are willing to share their skills and techniques with us. We want to hear from directors and managers who can teach us how to build great art teams, and create outstanding visuals on tight budgets and schedules. And we're seeking out top notch technical artists to show us new insights in look development and tool creation.

Inspirational Art Direction Talks

Continuing with our 'coffee table book' art direction sessions from last year we're looking for art directors who are willing to not only talk about the evolution of their game's style but to show us that evolution. Whether you're a AAA big budget developer or a small 2-person indie team, pull back the curtain and reveal the sketches, concepts, prototypes and in-development shots/videos that led you to the final look of your product.

Techniques and Demos

Visual artists are just that, visual. We want to see what you know, not just hear about it. We want artists to teach us new techniques, new tools and new styles. Can't talk and draw at the same time? No problem, we'll even let you have two presenters - one to talk and one to demonstrate. Show off your 3D modeling techniques, concept art drawing, and animation work to the best audience in the world - your peers.

Next Gen Art Techniques

Innovation and efficiency have never been more critical in visual development. Help set the agenda for the next generation of visuals by sharing your cutting-edge procedural art generation, material, and lighting techniques and plans.

Art Management and Production Talks

Did you develop an interesting strategy that saved you art development time and/or money? Did an in-house or 3rd party tool help alleviate your production pipeline woes? How do you manage to keep your artists from seeing the trees instead of the forest? We'd love to hear about your solutions to these problems and more!

Art Culture

What core values are you looking for when you hire artists? How do you manage critiques within your organization? What have you done to adapt to working with off-site development partners and full-time remote workers? Share your successes (and failures) in this with us so we can create better collaborative environments at our studios.

Animation

What sets your game's animation apart from everyone else in the industry? What went right in your latest game's motion capture sessions? What went wrong? What have you learned from studying animation techniques used in other entertainment industries? Share your lessons with other animators as we want to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding animation trials and tribulations.

2D Art Production Pipeline Talks

Games with vibrant 2D art continue to thrive in the market. How can developers better solve the pipeline problems that come with this art style? We want to hear from someone who can talk about an interesting 2D art production pipeline.

Character Design Talks

We'd like to see a character talk that speaks to the DESIGN of the characters, not just how to sculpt high-frequency detail in Zbrush or do pretty rendering in Photoshop so the character design can pass a publisher focus test.

Show us your tech, TAs

You're the glue that holds art production together, TAs. What new ideas in tools and pipelines have you developed this past year? What new shader techniques are you investigating for next-gen? Is there look development work you've done that would enlighten us? Come show us and inspire us!

Generative AI Art in the Pipeline

As AI continues to revolutionize the art world, it brings both excitement and skepticism. We are eager to learn from studios that have incorporated AI into their art production pipelines, but we also want to acknowledge the concerns that many in the industry are feeling. What has worked? What hasn't? What challenges have you faced, and what benefits have you reaped? Share your insights on integrating AI tools into traditional workflows, and help us understand the potential pitfalls and ethical considerations. Whether you're a large studio or an indie team, your experiences—both positive and negative—can guide and inspire others in navigating this cutting-edge but contentious frontier.

GDC Summits

This year, GDC Summits are evolving — bringing the focused, discipline-specific programming you know, now shaped by community voice.

Built from accepted talks and guided by your vote, Summits offer one discipline, one room, one day — giving you sustained depth in the craft that matters most to your work.

Each Summit is curated for specialized learning, peer connection, and year-round community engagement. Beyond the Summit day, Summit Guides help you discover related sessions across the week, building a complete learning path around your discipline.

Learn more about Summits

Submission Guidelines

Before submitting your proposal, please review the following requirements and expectations:

Diversity and Representation

GDC Festival of Gaming is committed to achieving diversity of voice, experience, and perspective across all sessions. When selecting speakers — whether representing your company, department, or panel — please prioritize inclusive representation that reflects the breadth of our global game development community.

Vendor-Specific Proposals

GDC Festival of Gaming does not accept product-focused or vendor-related submissions. If your session primarily promotes a product, technology, or service, please do not submit it to the Core Concepts program. For promotional opportunities, visit our Become a Partner page to learn about sponsored session options.

Original Authorship

All submissions must be created and submitted by the original author(s) of the presentation. PR firms, speaker relations agencies, and third-party representatives are not permitted to submit proposals on behalf of clients or speakers. GDC Festival of Gaming requires direct communication with presenters throughout the review process to ensure clarity and responsiveness. Submissions generated using AI tools (ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, Bing, etc.) will not be accepted.

Selection Criteria

The Advisory Board evaluates submissions using the following criteria:

Concept: Is the idea interesting, relevant, and beneficial to game developers? Both innovative and proven approaches are welcome.
Depth: Is the concept well-developed? How much insight will the audience gain? Greater depth is prioritized.
Organization: Are your ideas clearly structured and suitable for presentation? At GDC Festival of Gaming, we are happy to accommodate a number of different presentation formats (Not sure which is right for you? Check out our Submissions FAQ). Clear organization strengthens your proposal.
Credentials: Do your qualifications and experience support your authority on this topic?
Takeaway: Will attendees leave with new knowledge or inspiration? This is the most critical factor.

Submissions are rated on a 1–5 scale by multiple reviewers, and scores are averaged. The highest-scoring submissions in each track are prioritized. To maintain program variety, a lower-scoring submission may be selected if higher-scoring proposals overlap significantly in topic.

Speaker Expectations

GDC Festival of Gaming attendees are experienced professionals seeking advanced, non-obvious insights. They will evaluate your session based on delivery, subject mastery, and visual quality. Preparation is essential.

Key Commitments

Content Accuracy: Your final presentation must match the outline submitted in your proposal. Plan content appropriate to your session's duration.
Time Investment: Allocate at least 25 hours to prepare your session.
Rehearsal: Practice your delivery, ideally in front of peers or by recording and reviewing yourself. This improves pacing and timing.
Materials Review: Your presentation must be completed and reviewed by the Advisory Board before GDC Festival of Gaming.
Availability: Sessions may be scheduled Monday through Friday of GDC week. Ensure you're available to present on any of these days.

NOTE: GDC Festival of Gaming does NOT supply any hardware (e.g. laptops) for attendees. If you need attendees to bring anything, this must be CLEARLY stated in your proposal.

Call for Submissions