The global gathering for everyone who makes games happen. 30,000+ attendees, 1,000+ speakers, 400+ partners.
GDC Festival of Gaming 2026 unites 30,000+ professionals across the B2B games industry. Attendees from design, code, publishing, marketing, and investment gather to learn, connect, and collaborate. Explore world-class content, curated networking, and celebrate the future of games. Learn more at GDC website
GDC Festival of Gaming 2026 brings together nearly 30,000 game industry professionals from 100+ countries in one central location.
The event attracts qualified executives, decision-makers, and innovators seeking partnerships, funding, and new technologies.
Attendees can build new relationships, generate leads, pitch ideas, and accelerate business development through facilitated meetings.
The Challenge
Without preparation, GDC 2026 becomes an expensive networking trip with nothing to show.
30,000+ attendees. No way to filter by ICP. Finding ideal prospects means manually clicking through thousands of profiles.
30-40% of attendees register in the last 2-3 weeks. Finish reaching out to one batch, hundreds more registered. Always behind.
Without scoring and segmentation, all 30,000+ attendees look the same. Teams waste cycles on low-fit prospects instead of focusing on high-value targets.
Reaching prospects across email, LinkedIn, phone, and in-app manually is impossible at scale. Most teams pick one channel and miss opportunities.
Best Practices
Winning teams follow two phases: preparation and execution.
Monitor attendee lists continuously as 30-40% register in the last 2-3 weeks.
Add verified emails, LinkedIn profiles, company data, and tech stack to raw attendee names.
Score by role, title, job level, company size, revenue, location, industry. Match to target personas and ABM accounts. Focus on top 20%.
Email, LinkedIn, phone, in-app. Goal: pre-book meetings with high-value prospects.
Calendars should be 60-70% full with high-fit prospects before arriving at San Francisco.
Know ICP score and context for every interaction. Focus on high-value targets.
These practices work. But 30-40% of attendees register in the last 2-3 weeks. Manual execution takes 5-7 days per batch. Teams would need to repeat identification, enrichment, scoring, and outreach continuously across email, LinkedIn, phone, and in-app. Most don't have the bandwidth.
The question isn't what to do. It's how to execute continuously at scale.
Spivot automates the event workflow from attendee extraction to post-event nurture. Execute best practices without manual work.
Try for FreeStrategy becomes workflow.
Best Practice: Monitor attendee lists continuously as registrations come in.
How Spivot Helps: Connect to the event portal or upload the CSV. We identify target prospects and refresh daily as new registrations come in. Catch the 30-40% who register late without lifting a finger.
Best Practice: Transform basic attendee lists into rich prospect profiles with verified contact data.
How Spivot Helps: Connect Apollo, ZoomInfo, or any other enrichment provider. We add verified emails, LinkedIn profiles, company data, and tech stack. Full control over provider and costs.
Best Practice: Score prospects against ICP and match to target personas to prioritize outreach.
How Spivot Helps: AI scores every attendee by role, title, job level, company size, revenue, location, and industry. Match to target personas and ABM accounts automatically.
Best Practice: Sync enriched, scored prospects to existing workflow.
How Spivot Helps: One-click sync to Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo, or export to Google Sheets. Enriched, scored lists ready for outreach.
Best Practice: Start personalized outreach 3-4 weeks before the event to schedule meetings.
How Spivot Helps: Launch campaigns in Outreach, Salesloft, or Apollo. Reach prospects across email, LinkedIn, phone, and in-app automatically. Track engagement, responses, and meetings. All attributed to GDC 2026.
Reach every attendee automatically, even the 30-40% who register late. Land in San Francisco with meetings booked. Your competitors are still cleaning spreadsheets.
Your data stays secure and compliant
GDC Festival of Gaming is designed for the entire B2B games industry, including game developers, designers, audio professionals, publishing and marketing executives, and business leaders. With nearly 30,000 attendees from over 100 countries, it's the global gathering for anyone involved in making games happen, from coding and creative direction to investment and operations. The event fosters connections and collaboration across all disciplines and stages of the game-making lifecycle.
Absolutely. GDC Festival of Gaming offers unparalleled opportunities for learning, networking, and business growth. With 1,000+ speakers across 700+ sessions, attendees gain world-class insights into game design, development, business, and more. The event facilitates connections through curated matchmaking via GamePlan, lounges, and GDC Nights, enabling participants to build partnerships, secure deals, and shape the future of games. It's an essential event for industry professionals seeking to advance their careers and projects.
GDC Festival of Gaming covers a comprehensive range of topics vital to the games industry. Key areas include Game Design & Creative Direction, Game Development & Programming, Game Audio & Sound Design, Game Publishing & Marketing, and Game Business & Investment. The program also delves into specialized fields like UX Design for Games and features deep technical talks, design postmortems, production case studies, and business insights, ensuring content for every discipline and role in the game-making lifecycle.
Connect to the event portal or upload attendee data. Spivot automatically identifies, scores, and enriches prospects as new attendees register, with daily updates to catch late registrations.
Yes. Spivot is an AI agent that automates event workflows for any event where attendees are available in the event portal. The same workflow applies across all events.
Spivot's AI uses multi-factor analysis across role, title, job level, company size, revenue, location, and industry. Match attendees to target personas and ABM accounts automatically. Built-in intelligence recognizes equivalent roles like 'VP of Growth' and 'Chief Revenue Officer.'
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Book more qualified meetings. Spend less time on spreadsheets.
Spivot is an independent GTM automation platform. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to GDC 2026 or any event organizers mentioned on this page.
