AGDQ 2026 will show Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 fans how to beat the JRPG GOTY in 2 hours, sure, but I'm really here for the 70-player Super Mario 64 relay

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's Gustave in a French-inspired outfit — (Image credit: Sandfall Interactive)

It's a new year, which means it's time for all us casual speedrun enjoyers to collectively gasp, "Oh, right, AGDQ starts this weekend!" Yes, folks, Awesome Games Done Quick has once again snuck up on us all, and the 2026 schedule includes some certified bangers ranging from some of the past year's best GOTY contenders to an absolutely wild-sounding Super Mario 64 relay.

AGDQ 2026 officially begins at 8:30am PT / 11:30am ET / 4:30pm on Sunday, January 4 with a 30-minute kickoff show, followed by a Super Mario Sunshine any% run where player inkstar will complete the classic GameCube platformer in an estimated 1 hour and 16 minutes. As always, the event runs for a full week, concluding on Saturday, January 10 when runner adef will do a Pokemon Emerald run labeled "pick-my-main" – presumably dooming him to use an audience-voted Pokemon for the whole run.

Those are the big headline runs that open and close the show, but there are dozens more reasons to tune in in-between on the official schedule. Perhaps a roughly 2-hour any% glitchless race through Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, our pick for the best game of 2025, will catch your interest? Some of 2025's other big titles are also on the list, including an "all weapons" run through Hades 2 in about 2 hours, and a 1-hour any% blast through Donkey Kong Bananza is on the docket if certain donation incentives are met.

But for me, the best parts of GDQ are those weird speedruns you can only see when the community gathers in one spot to do something truly ridiculous. Last year, that was the Crazy Taxi speedrun with a live backing band playing the soundtrack. This year, it might be the 70-star, 70-person relay through Super Mario 64, where a massive cast of runners collaborate to finish the game in under an hour and 40 minutes. Similar runs have been presented at other events in the past, but this sounds like just the kind of chaos a show like GDQ needs.

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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