GDC Rebrands as GDC Festival of Gaming, March 9-13 in San Francisco

The Game Developers Conference has been rebranded as the GDC Festival of Gaming, a five-day industry festival March 9-13, 2026 at Moscone Center in San Francisco, and registration is now open, Gdconf copy by Beth Elderkin states: “It’s time to change the game. Registration is now open for the 2026 GDC Festival of Gaming, marking a bold expansion for the world’s premier B2B gaming industry event.”

Coverage and scale are already drawing attention: IGN reported on March 3, 2026 that the festival features “over 1,000 speakers across 700+ sessions,” a figure organizers have yet to confirm via a formal press release. GDC’s own site frames the relaunch as “The Industry's Bold New Era Begins” and lists program navigation items including Passes & Pricing, Festival Hall, GDC Nights, Awards, Partners, and a program agenda with Vault recordings.

Partner programming is heavy on practical technical content. Arm’s developer summit is scheduled for March 10 in Room WH2011 at the Moscone Convention Center and, according to Arm Newsroom, “Our developer summit will cover a wide range of practical mobile gaming topics, including Papergames’ implementation of real-time global illumination in the popular mobile title ‘Love and Deepspace’, mobile performance tuning with Unreal Engine, and how to use the latest neural graphics technologies and upscaling in practice.” Arm’s agenda lists sessions in PDT including 10:10–11:10am “Co-creating possibility: The future of mobile gaming” with Patrick Mendenall (Arm) and Lukas Medez (Sumo Digital), 11:30–12:30pm “Performance tuning and upscaling for mobile development in Unity” with John French (Arm) and Dominic de Graaf (The Naked Dev), 12:45–1:45pm “Neural graphics in practice” with Sergio Alapont (Arm) and Willen Yang (Arm), and 3:40–4:40pm “The evolution of real-time global illumination in Love and Deepspace” with Tianlong Ruan (Infold Games).

Epic Games and Unreal Engine are also prominent on the festival agenda. Unrealengine’s EventNews (Feb 4, 2026) says “This year, Epic Games will be presenting four fascinating lecture sessions, plus we’ll deliver two Power Talks on the show floor.” Unreal lists a Monday, Mar 9 10:10–11:10am session “Hitting 60 FPS in UE5 and Keeping It There” in Room 2011, West Hall, and a Tuesday, Mar 10 11:30am session “Cross-Platform Isn’t a Checkbox: Designing Games for Fortnite” in Room 3009, West Hall, with copy outlining Fortnite’s creator economy and in-island transactions.

A notable scheduling discrepancy appears between partner pages: Arm’s WH2011 summit runs in Room WH2011 on March 10 with a 10:10–11:10am start, while Unreal lists a 10:10–11:10am session in Room 2011, West Hall on Monday, March 9. Eventbrowse’s event snapshot lists the festival dates and hours as Mar 9, 2026 08:00 AM to Mar 13, 2026 06:00 PM and captures pass pricing as USD 649–1999, but its entry also noted “No speakers announced yet,” contradicting partner and GDC listings.

GDC’s site encourages attendees to use the newly relaunched Festival of Gaming pages and to subscribe via social channels for updates, and the festival’s program export tools show session fields such as location, pass types, audience level, and Vault Recording: Video. With a broad partner slate, named speakers from Arm, Epic, Infold Games, Sumo Digital, The Naked Dev, Mobile Game Doctor, PeopleFun, and others, the GDC Festival of Gaming is positioning itself as a practical, partner-driven week of learning and networking ahead of March 9. Expect final schedule and pricing confirmations from GDC in the coming weeks.