Resident Evil Requiem has walked away with the biggest prize of the night at the Golden Joystick Awards 2026, claiming the title of Ultimate Game of the Year.
Competition was fierce for this year's main award, with Resident Evil Requiem coming out at the top of the pile of 12 of this year's biggest games. Those included the massive launches of Crimson Desert and Phantom Blade Zero, blockbuster 007: First Light, surprise hits like Control Resonant and Pragmata, and late additions in the form of Star Wars: Galactic Racer and The Blood of Dawnwalker. Also nominated were Big Walk, Dispatch, Forza Horizon 6, and Pokemon Pokopia.
The win capped off a big night for Resident Evil Requiem, which came away from this year's ceremony with four awards; Best Game Trailer for its 'Evil Always Has a Name' promo, Best Lead Performer for Grace Ashcroft actress Angela Sant'Albano, and Console Game of the Year. That might have made it the outright winner, were it not for an astonishing challenge from a very different game - two player-voted and two jury-voted awards for Meccha Chameleon saw the hide-and-seek sensation tie Resi's four wins.
But Resident Evil Requiem has still walked away with the biggest prize, and depending on exactly how you count each award, may have pipped Meccha Chameleon to the title, thanks to a Studio of the Year award for Capcom - though with that shared with fellow winners Pragmata and Onimusha: Way of the Sword, perhaps that's a total of just 4.33 awards for Resi.
Requiem has been a long-time frontrunner for this year's GOTY conversations. With the spectre of GTA 6 just over the horizon it will likely struggle to complete the sweep of the Big 5 awards, but it's certainly shrugged off the recency bias that can always affect awards shows - when it launched back in February, we described it as "a loving pastiche of the series' greatest hits," and "a seesaw of terror and wonder."
