Independent Game Festival (IGF)
Genre-Bending Creativity
The Independent Games Festival (IGF) Awards is the biggest annual celebration of indie talent – encouraging innovation within game development as a medium and recognizing the best independent developers from around the world.
The festival sees hundreds of competition entries annually that are judged and juried by a diverse, industry-leading group of industry professionals from mainstream video games, the press, independent gaming websites, previous winners, previous finalists, and more.
This independent review, finalist, and winner voting process is reflective of our own independent spirit that drives us to find and honor the incredible talent at the forefront of redefining what video games can be.
The festival also consists of two additional components to the awards ceremony where finalists are honored and winners announced in San Francisco during the week of the Game Developers Conference (GDC): the IGF Pavilion where all of the nominated finalists and their games are featured on the Expo floor, and the Independent Games Summit where experts and stakeholders from the independent game development community participate in talks and roundtables on the latest issues facing the industry.
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Celebrating Fearless Independent Development
IGF celebrates independent talent in the following main categories:
Seumas McNally Grand Prize
$10,000
This category is open to all Finalist games and are nominated by the Finalist Committee. Nominations will be based on the overall innovation, quality, impressiveness, and enjoyability of each Finalist game.
Audience Award
$2,000
Nominee list comprised of the full list of finalist games from every main category except for the alt.ctrl.GDC Award through a vote open to all GDC attendees and members of the public.
Excellence in Audio
$2,000
Nominations will be based on the quality and impressiveness of each Entered Game's music, voice acting and sound effects.
Excellence in Design
$2,000
Nominations will be based on quality and impressiveness of each Entered Game's storytelling - including but not limited to scenario, plot construction, story and dialogue.
Nuovo Award
$2,000
Nominations will be based on how each Entered Game fearlessly executes a challenging, unusual, or idiosyncratic approach to game making, takes substantive risks and/or makes the Nominating Committee and Finalist Committee think differently about video games as a medium.
Excellence in Visual Art
$2,000
Nominations will be based on the quality and impressiveness of each Entered Game's appearance and visual effects.
Best Student Game
$2,000
Nominations will be based on the overall quality, impressiveness and enjoyability of the Entered Game.
alt.ctrl.GDC Award
$2,000
alt.ctrl.GDC is a unique showcase of alternative controllers created by independent developers. alt.ctrl.GDC exhibitors are chosen through an open submission process which is free to enter and open to all.
Empowering Indies
In addition to the above prizes, IGF is proud to provide each Finalist game's team with a $1,000 travel stipend, regardless of whether they win an award, to help them travel to GDC and participate in the festival.
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Sponsors & Partners
Learn more about our 2025 sponsors and request information on available opportunities for GDCA and IGF 2026.
IGF Archives Coming Soon!
Get inspired by previous main category and individual award winners honored during past IGF ceremonies.
Contact
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Connecting the Global Game Development Community
