Games Transformed Festival 2026 is coming. This year, we’re sending a direct message to the racists who keep coming for our neighbours: We’re Here to Stay, Here to Play, and we’re not messing around.
What is the Festival?
The games industry is the biggest media industry in the world. Two billion people play games everyday from mobile, video or board games. But despite this, much of progressive and social justice movements have ignored the potential of games as a way to engage people, imagine new worlds and futures, and create positive change.
It’s well-documented that for decades, the far-right, and racist, misogynistic cultures have run rampant in gaming spaces. They have successfully created a pipeline that begins in Reddit gaming forums, funnels people into Andrew Tate or Elon Musk brainrot content and eventually spits them out into a 4chan “red pill” fascist hellscape. We want to smash that pipeline and reclaim games as a force for joy, community and liberation for all of us.
This year, we’re going big and we’ve just about grown out of Pelican House. Join us as we take over, not one, but three venues across Bethnal Green, East London for three days of radical games, playtests, panels, talks, workshops, a dedicated youth and families’ programme, and importantly answer the question: how can we kick the fash out of gaming and reclaim games for a better future for all of us.
This is one of the only spaces where organisers, activists, academics, game makers, players, and workers come together to fight this struggle and have a wicked fun time along the way.
Here to Stay, Here to Play
This year’s theme is Here to Stay, Here to Play. Inspired by the slogan “Here to Stay, Here to Fight” used by migrant and anti-racist communities as a statement of defiance against racism. Over three days, we’ll explore how racial justice and migrant justice are part of the same fight, and how games can help us resist the systems that try and push our communities out.
And in 2026, this is more important than ever.
Far-right racists are attacking racialised and migrant communities across the UK, attacks on mosques are happening every five days, and governments intent on pushing through more and more cruel immigration policies that criminalise the right to move.