This year’s Ukrainian Games Festival has expanded significantly—both in terms of the number of games featured and its audience reach. During the event, Ukrainian developers unveiled 73 new announcements, drawing attention to projects that are still in the works and preparing to enter the market.
The numbers also confirm the interest in the festival. During the UGF, its page was visited by approximately 1.9 million users, and banners and other event materials received a total of over 5 million views.
However, as the audience grows, new questions arise for the festival: how to further develop the event, what its relationship with Steam should be, and whether the current format is appropriate for the scale of UGF. The festival’s organizer, Stepan Prokhorenko, spoke with dev.ua about these issues as well as the results of this year’s festival.
73 announcements — and a search for a new format
This year’s festival set a record for UGF in several categories: the number of participants, news items, demos, and announcements. In total, Ukrainian developers presented 73 new games. According to Stepan Prokhorenko, this level of activity was achieved after developers saw the practical benefits of participating: an announcement during the festival can generate significantly more wishlists than an independent game presentation.
Some games were released simultaneously with the start of UGF’s featured spotlight on Steam’s homepage, while other releases took place throughout the festival week. Tukoni was released on the first day, The Sinking City 2 the next day, and later, GSC Game World—owned by Maksym Krippa—released S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Cost of Hope.
Overall, during the festival, the Ukrainian and Western communities received quite a few new releases and other updates from Ukrainian developers.
However, it was the sheer scale of the event that prompted the organizers to consider making changes. When players are offered dozens of new games in a single day, it becomes harder to find something truly interesting among them. Therefore, next year, UGF plans to revise the principles for selecting and presenting projects and slightly raise the requirements for them.
It’s not just the selection process that will change. The organizers want to extend the festival’s duration, as the current one-week format isn’t enough to fully showcase announcements, releases, demos, and trailers. UGF also plans to continue the video showcase format, which debuted this year with new trailers and received a positive response from the audience.
A separate focus is on making it easier for players to navigate the featured projects. To this end, the festival plans to expand the number of curated selections and more actively involve the press, streamers, and bloggers in covering Ukrainian games. The organizers promise to reveal details of the updated format as early as next year.
A “Global Feature” on Steam and 1.9 million visits
This year, the Ukrainian Games Festival received a Steam Global Feature—the four-day festival, held from August 17 to 20, was featured on the platform’s homepage for users worldwide. This is a significant milestone for regional events, as Valve often limits such promotions to specific markets. The UGF itself ran through August 24.
The partnership with Steam began back in 2023. The festival had already been held since 2022, and even earlier, the team had worked with Valve as a third-party organizer through the Indie Cup competition. After seeing the results of the UGF and the potential of the Ukrainian gaming scene, Valve began officially supporting the festival every year.
This support includes, in particular, a UGF banner on Steam’s homepage. However, its placement does not depend directly on the organizers: the team can determine the festival’s overall duration, but the platform itself selects the specific days for the global promotion.
In 2026, the UGF page received 1.9 million visits—the second-highest figure in the festival’s history, following 2.4 million in 2025. By comparison, there were 1.4 million visits in 2024 and 1.3 million in 2023. In addition, the festival set a new record for views of banners and other materials—5 million, which is one million more than last year.
As a result, an even broader international audience learned about the Ukrainian Games Festival this year, and the event itself continued to expand its reach.